Thread by @Nick_L_Miller

The JCPOA is 6 years old today. Having spent a decent chunk of this time writing/arguing about it, I thought I’d offer a few reflections.

What’s most striking to me is people’s reluctance to recognize how hard it was to get the JCPOA and how rare of a success it was. 1/x

From 2003-2013, diplomatic negotiations repeatedly collapsed, Iran continuously expanded its enrichment program, “all options were on the table,” and the United States had to work hard to convince Israel not to conduct a preventive attack. 2/x

The deal that was finalized in 2015 substantially rolled back Iran’s nuclear capacity. You probably know the basics: 98% of enriched uranium eliminated, 2/3 of centrifuges removed, no enriching with advanced centrifuges, no reprocessing, stringent monitoring procedures, etc. 3/x

What many people don’t seem aware of is how historically unique this deal is: never before had the United States rolled back an adversary’s nuclear program that was so close to the weapons threshold —and done so diplomatically rather than through war. 4/x

While the US struck a deal to dismantle Libya’s nuclear program in 2003, it had made very little progress at the time so Qaddafi wasn’t giving up nearly as much as Iran did a decade later. 5/x

The US also rolled back Iraq’s nuclear program in the 1990s but it too was much less advanced than Iran’s in 2013. And it was done mostly through brute force, not diplomacy, leaving more space for uncertainty about intentions that helped justify the 2003 war. 6/x

The closest analogue to the JCPOA is probably the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, which defused a serious nuclear crisis peacefully. 7/x

Yet even this deal was less impressive than the JCPOA: it required North Korea to freeze rather than roll back capabilities and allowed Pyongyang to keep the significant amount of plutonium it had already produced. 8/x

None of this history stopped critics from attacking the JCPOA as “too weak”—whether due to its sunset provisions, failure to totally end enrichment in Iran, or failure to address Iran’s non-nuclear behavior. 9/x

Yet all of this misses the point: there is essentially no historical precedent for believing a significantly better deal was possible with an adversary like Iran with decades of mistrust of the US. 10/x

When Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and imposed “maximum pressure”, I opposed the move—given that Iran had been complying and that it would almost certainly lead Iran to ramp up its nuclear program as it had been pre-2013. 11/x

Trump’s move gave JCPOA critics an opportunity to test the theory they could get a “better deal.” Instead, Iran dramatically expanded its nuclear program on multiple fronts and the U.S. and Iran came close to war on multiple occasions. 12/x

Despite this massive policy failure, once Biden assumed the presidency, JCPOA opponents continued to argue that Biden should seek a “better deal” rather than seeking to rejoin—flying in the face not of only of decades-old historical precedent but also the *last three years* 13/x

Even now, as negotiations on reviving the JCPOA drag on and Iran enriches to 60% and produces uranium metal, you still hear calls for a “better deal”—even though the reality is that no deal at all is probably more likely than an enhanced agreement at this stage. 14/x

I don’t have any profound way of concluding this thread, other than to say that the opposition to the JCPOA is just one example of the hubris that has often driven U.S. policy toward adversaries with nuclear ambitions since 9/11.

More on that here: warontherocks.com/2021/01/the-le…