Trump's Iran reset echoes pact he ditched in 2018
What the JCPOA was and what it had achieved? Live Events ET Online Key milestones: Iran-US MoU How the deal collapsed and what followed What
What the JCPOA was and what it had achieved? Live Events ET Online Key milestones: Iran-US MoU How the deal collapsed and what followed What the recent Iran-US MoU says on nuclear issues and what it defers The harder question remains The bottom line: What has changed since 2018 as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Addas a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now! (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel US President Donald Trump signed a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding with Iran at the Palace of Versailles in France on Wednesday, ending nearly four months of war and opening a 60-day window to negotiate a final peace deal.Trump has called the agreement "the exact opposite of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) disaster," referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated under President Barack Obama, which Trump walked out of in 2018. But arms control experts and foreign policy analysts are pointing to an uncomfortable parallel: the new agreement commits both sides to begin negotiating the very nuclear questions the JCPOA had already resolved.The JCPOA was signed on July 14, 2015, between Iran and the P5+1; the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany, along with the European Union.According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the deal was designed with a specific strategic goal: to extend Iran's nuclear "breakout time", the period it would need to produce enough fissile material for a weapon, to at least one year, giving world powers enough time to detect and respond to any violation.According to the Arms Control Association, an independent Washington-based research and advocacy organisation focused on nuclear policy and arms control, under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent, reduce its centrifuges by two-thirds, cap its uranium stockpile at 300 kilograms, and accept intensive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections.
In exchange, nuclear-related sanctions were lifted, unfreezing billions in Iranian assets and allowing oil exports. The US and many European nations also unfroze about $100 billion worth of frozen Iranian assets, according to CFR.The deal also required Iran to ensure its Fordow, Natanz, and Arak facilities pursued only civilian work, including medical and industrial research, and established a Joint Commission, comprising all negotiating parties, to monitor implementation and resolve disputes, according to the Arms Control Association.Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Arms Control Association, told ET Online ahead of the MoU signing that the JCPOA was functioning as intended at the point of Trump's withdrawal."The JCPOA was working as designed to block Iran's pathways to build nuclear weapons when, in 2018, Donald Trump withdrew and reimposed sanctions. The deal included limits on centrifuge machines, a cap of 300 kg on Iran's uranium stockpile at 3.67 percent enrichment, no uranium introduced to the underground Fordow facility, plus very intrusive IAEA inspections of Iran's declared and undeclared nuclear sites. As a result, Iran would not have been able to amass enough highly-enriched uranium for even one bomb in any less than a year, and any such activity would have been quickly detected," Kimball said.According to the Congressional Research Service, until July 2019, a full year after Trump's withdrawal, official reports from the United Nations, the IAEA, and non-US participating governments confirmed that Iran had fulfilled its JCPOA requirements.Trump pulled out in May 2018, reimposed sweeping sanctions, and launched what his administration called a "maximum pressure" campaign with the stated goal of forcing Tehran into a broader agreement.According to CFR, Trump said the agreement failed to address Iran's ballistic missile programme and its proxy warfare in the region, and claimed that the deal's sunset provisions would eventually enable Iran to pursue nuclear weapons. That broader agreement never materialised.Iran accelerated its uranium enrichment, limited inspector access to its nuclear facilities, and moved closer to developing a nuclear weapon than it had been before the deal, according to CFR.
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