What was in Iran’s nuclear agreement and why Trump withdrew his United States?

Almost 10 years ago, the United States and other world powers reached a historical nuclear agreement with Iran.

Known as the joint comprehensive action plan, or JCPOA, the agreement followed two years of negotiations. The then President Barack Obama, who campaigned to resolve the Iranian nuclear threat, described the issue the “most consistent foreign policy debate that our country has had since the invasion of Iraq”.

Two years after the agreement entered into force, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear agreement, in one of the most significant foreign policy actions during his first mandate as president.

Iran’s nuclear program is in the heart of its conflict with Israel, which has been involved in air attacks with Iran in the days elapsed since a surprise attack against Tehran that Israeli officials said they killed several nuclear scientists, as well as high -ranking military leaders.

This is what Iran’s nuclear agreement should know, which is now “essentially deceased”, according to the Foreign Relations Council.

What was in the deal?

The JCPOA, which imposed restrictions on the Iran Civil Enrichment Program in exchange for relief relief, was signed on July 14, 2015. It was agreed by Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as Germany and the European Union.

The JCPOA was designed to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program was exclusively peaceful and provided for the lifting of nuclear sanctions to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons.

“It blocks all the possible ways that Iran could use to build a nuclear pump while guaranteeing, through a regime for integral, intrusive and unprecedented transparency, that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful in the future,” Obama’s White House said at that time.

Under him Treatment of 159 pagesIran “significantly reduced its nuclear program and accepted strict monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure that its program is only for peaceful purposes,” “El” Weapons control center and non -proliferation said.

“In return, Iran received relief from economic sanctions from nuclear -related sanctions” only after the Atomic Energy Agency verified that Tehran had completed certain requirements under the agreement.

The agreement entered into force on January 16, 2016, after the OIEA verified that Iran had completed the steps, including the shipment of 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium outside the country, dismantling and eliminating two thirds of its centrifuges and allowing more extensive international inspections of its nuclear facilities.

The United States and many European nations raised oil and financial sanctions and released around $ 100 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

If all parties adhered to the agreement, experts argued that they would probably have prevented them from obtaining a nuclear weapon for more than a decade, according to the Foreign Relations Council. If they will try to build a nuclear weapon, the sanctions would go back into force.

Many of Iran’s nuclear program “have expiration dates,” according to the Foreign Relations Council, pointing, for example, that centrifuge restrictions would rise after 10 years and the limits of the amount of uranium under enriching that Iranian can possess after 15 years.

“Some of the opponents of the agreement criticized these so -called dispositions at sunset, saying that they would only delay Iran to build a bomb, while the relief of sanctions would allow him to subscribe terrorism in the region,” the organization said.

Israel was among those who opposed the agreement, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described him as “historical error” at that time.

Why did Trump abandon the deal?

Trump campaigned before his first election to get the United States out of the agreement, and on May 8, 2018, he did exactly that, ending the participation of the USA in the JCPOA and reimpose the economic sanctions against Iran.

Trump argued at that time that the agreement was so “horrible” that it had to be discarded to advance.

“It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decomposition and rotten structure of the current agreement,” he said. “Iran’s agreement is defective in its nucleus. If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen.”

The Trump administration said at that time That Iran “negotiated the JCPOA of bad faith, and the agreement gave the Iranian regime too much in exchange for very little.”

Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement after ignoring the council of the United States allies, who had urged him to remain in the agreement and build on him. The leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom noticed their “regret and concern” for Trump’s decision, asking Iran to maintain their commitments under the agreement.

What happened since then?

After Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Iran elite Quercas force, was killed in an American air attack in January 2020, the Iranian government announced that it would no longer comply with any of the operational restrictions in its nuclear program under Iran’s nuclear agreement.

In early 2023, the OIEA reported They had detected uranium traces in Iran’s Nuclear Fordow installation that was enriched in “level of grade close to the weapons that Iran said it was accidental.”

“Since the United States annulled the agreement and Iran in turn stopped honoring some of its commitments, Iran has reduced its breakup time: the amount of time that will have to accumulate sufficient fistible material for a nuclear weapon from more than a year to approximately 3-4 months, although the IEA remains in the field to verify the nuclear nature of its nuclear program, the weapons control center and not proliferation.

As some provisions of the JCPOA will expire in October 2023, the administration of former President Joe Biden imposed new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile programs, according to the Foreign Relations Council.

Biden sought to negotiate a return to JCPOA. However, in the last months of his term last year, a state department spokesman said they were “far” to return to negotiations with Iran.

During his second term, Trump has threatened the possible military action against Iran to prevent nuclear weapons from developing.

In recent weeks, the delegations of Iran and the United States have met for multiple rounds of nuclear negotiations, although the conversations have stagnated in the midst of the conflict between Israel and Iran.

On Thursday, the White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, read a Trump statement in which the president said he believes there is a “substantial probability of negotiations” in the near future. He also said he will make a decision “whether or not to go” in the next two weeks, although Leavitt did not clarify what that meant.