Trump’s Iran Accord And The 2015 Nuclear Deal: What’s Different This Time?

(Ray Furlong – RFE/RL) The US-Iranian deal to end their war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz is inevitably being compared with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed with Tehran by then US President Barack Obama. That deal was fiercely criticized by his successor, Donald Trump, who pulled the United States out of JCPOA in 2018 during his first term of office. Trump has repeatedly said his deal would be better, although the text he signed in Versailles on June 17 is not the final one — it leaves many issues to be negotiated over the next 60 (or more) days. “If it were easy we would have resolved it, you know, two wars ago,” Naysan Rafati, Iran Senior Analyst at the International Crisis Group, told RFE/RL, referring both to the 12-Day War in June last year and to this year’s hostilities, that reignited with US and Israeli air strikes on February 28. “The fundamentals of the Iranian nuclear program since last June have been different to what they were like under the JCPOA,” he added. – Trump’s Iran Accord And The 2015 Nuclear Deal: What’s Different This Time?