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Peter Wildeford's avatar

It doesn't seem like you even tried to look up what opponents of the JCPOA were saying at all?

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Ari's avatar
21hEdited

Under the sunset clauses Iran would have very little incentive in 2030 to enter a new deal. Yes, there were still US primary sanctions, so it's not like there would be no leverage at that point, but if Iran wanted to do exactly what it ended up doing (namely enriching a ton of uranium to 60% and becoming a nuclear threshold state) it could have done that even without withdrawing from the NPT and even under IAEA inspections. So the bet was always that by 2030 either the regime would be different, or it would have moderated. Obviously we don't know the counterfactual but given that we are now in 2025 I think it's a fair bet that that would not have happened. In addition, even before the pullout, it was clear that its behavior was not moderating in terms of its missile program or its support for proxies around the region or its core ethos of trying to destroy Israel.

From Israel's perspective, the missile program, building 10,000 ballistic missiles, was also viewed as an existential threat and so at some point Israel may have attacked in any case.

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