Trump is trying to rebuild the Iran nuclear deal he destroyed, then declare personal triumph, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
There is deep irony in the current efforts by the Trump administration to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, given it was the previous Trump administration that broke a fully functioning agreement already in place to ensure Iran did not develop nuclear weapons.
The JCPOA — or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — also known colloquially as the Iran nuclear deal — was agreed in Vienna in June 2015 between Iran and China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. It involved significant monitoring and verification of Iran’s nuclear enrichment activities to ensure it remained within the confines of commercial grade. It also lifted UN Security Council sanctions on Iran as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to its nuclear program.
But under the first Donald Trump presidency, the White House effectively tore up the agreement, rendering it worthless when the US withdrew in May 2018. In his classically hyperbolic style, Trump labeled the JCPOA “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”
The Natanz Nuclear Facility, Iran’s largest uranium enrichment center, was sabotaged in a 2021 attack that Iran says was carried out by Israel. (Photo: Hamed Saber/Wikimedia Commons)
The JCPOA was agreed in Vienna in June 2015 between Iran and China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. It involved significant monitoring and verification of Iran’s uranium enrichment activities to ensure it remained within the confines of commercial grade. It also lifted UN Security Council sanctions on Iran as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to its nuclear program.
But Trump withdrew the US from the agreement in 2018, effectively ending it, and calling it at the time “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”
In recent weeks, the new Trump administration has been feverishly negotiating, most recently in Oman, to establish an Iran nuclear deal that could turn out to be remarkably similar to the JCPOA. But this, of course, is the Trump modus operandi: Destroy something perfectly effective, then rebuild it almost in the exact image and declare it his own invention.
So far, the administration has wavered between demanding that Tehran dismantle its entire nuclear program, backtracking to allow Iran to enrich uranium to within commercial grade, then reversing again, with Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff telling Iran it must “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment” before the US would sign a deal.
Whether any of this will work remains uncertain, but it certainly wasn’t helped by the recent ravings Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat and former Bernie Sanders supporter whose politics — and especially rhetoric — on Israel and immigration, have become indistinguishable from many of the more extreme Republicans.
Of the current Iran talks, Fetterman pronounced: “The negotiations should be comprised of 30,000-pound bombs and the IDF,” referring to the Israeli Defence Forces.
“You’re never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime that has been destabilizing the region for decades already, and now we have an incredible window, I believe, to do that, to strike and destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities,” said Fetterman, whose bellicose views are in line with Israel’s but not, so far with those of the White House.
Democratic Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has urged the US and Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, but the health and environmental consequences could be catastrophic. (Photo: Jewish Democratic Council of America.)
Speaking to a Pennsylvania newspaper, the Free Beacon, Fetterman said the US should “Waste that s—t,” referring to Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
“Oh yeah. Blow it up! Blow it up! I think we should waste what’s left of their nuclear facilities,” Fetterman told the Jewish News Service during an interview in his Jerusalem hotel room, while visiting Israel, a trip that included a personal meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But if carried out, what would the health and environmental impacts be of a major bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities? Such an act could release clouds of radioactive dust into the atmosphere, contaminating land and water downwind. Contamination of surface and ground water would result in prolonged harmful consequences through ingestion by exposed populations.
Protracted exposure to enriched uranium dust by inhalation and ingestion can cause bone toxicity and reproductive toxicity and lead to renal failure. Uranium is also neurotoxic to the brain.
Tehran had been keeping its uranium enrichment well within the 3.67% limit, even after Trump withdrew the US from JCPOA. But in 2021, an act of sabotage against Natanz, Iran’s largest uranium enrichment facility, which Iran blamed on Israel, blacked out the plant and damaged centrifuges. The attack prompted Iran, unfettered by the shattered nuclear deal, to begin enriching its uranium to as high as 60% U-235 — some sources assert it has even reached 85% — either way a level that is considered weapons usable. Uranium enriched to 90% is considered weapons grade.
Iran’s nuclear facilities have been targeted on several occasions. In 2010, a powerful computer worm known as Stuxnet, designed by US and Israeli intelligence, was used to disable a key part of the Iranian nuclear program. Last year, a strike by the Israeli Air Force hit Iran’s Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center for uranium conversion and fuel production.
As negotiations began with Iran this spring, Trump also used threatening rhetoric at first, warning in late March that if the country did not dismantle its nuclear program, “there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” He made similar threats during the last gasps of his first presidency, when he weighed an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear center but never followed through.
If Iran does indeed agree to end all its nuclear activities, the question remains about what to do with its stockpile of already enriched uranium. One idea apparently mooted by the White House is to allow Russia to store it, with a clause that would let Russia return the stockpile to Iran should the US breach any deal made in the coming weeks.
What all of this points to, of course, is the blurry line between commercial and military nuclear programs. Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, can claim to be abiding by the terms laid out in Article IV which gives countries who agree not to develop nuclear weapons “the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” The trouble is, no one believes them, exposing the weakness in — and wrongheadedness of — the treaty clause that leaves the back door perpetually open to the production of nuclear weapons.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Views are her own.
Headline photo after the signing of the JCPOA in Vienna, 2015 by Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äusseres
