Donald Trump hates Barak Obama. Even before he was elected in 2016, Trump spearheaded an ugly campaign trying to prove the Obama was not born in the US and therefore not eligible to be President. After taking office as the 45th President of the United States in 2017 he immediately set to erase any and all of Obama’s achievements and successes. In 2018 he unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that had been negotiated under Obama and agreed to by Iran as well as the US, Russia, China, Germany France as well as the EU.
The JCPOA had been a major achievement. Iran agreed to give up Plutonium research, limit its’ uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent, way below weapons grade, transfer the highly enriched uranium it already had accumulated to Russia, agreed to limit the number of centrifuges to about 5’000, down from 19’000, and allow inspections of its’ nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In my Blog of April 1, 2026, I had noted that “the elder Khameni issued a fatwa in the mid1990s banning nuclear weapons“, and that the Iranian government had stated that “the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam,” attributing this ruling to Khamenei. In essence the JCPOA was a “Trust but Verify” type of deal. The signatories trusted the Iranians, but the IAEA was tasked with verifying that Iran’s deeds matched its’ words.
In exchange the signatories to the JCPOA agreed to lift some of the economic sanctions on Iran and unfreeze Iranian assets that had been held abroad. The planeload of USD bills shipped to Iran that Trump always criticizes was not a payment, but rather returning to the Iranians their own money. The sanctions connected to terrorism and supporting groups like Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah remained in place.
The IAEA and the US State Department repeatedly confirmed that Iran was living up to its’ commitments under JCPOA. Despite all this, Trump continued badmouthing the deal with a slew of miss-statements about its’ contents and outright lies. The deal was working, Iran was compliant, but for Trump it had two major flaws: It was based on a multinational coalition, this alone was a major diplomatic win, and it had been negotiated by Obama, a win for one of the people Trump really hates.
In 2018, within a year of becoming President, Trump abrogated the JCPOA, against the advice of the professionals in the State Department and the CIA and against the will of all the other signatories. For a while, Iran kept its’ end of the bargain. But later it decided to expel the IAEA inspectors and resume Uranium enrichment. The roughly 400 kg of enriched Uranium, which are now cited as the casus belli for the war Trump and Netanyahu started, was all generated after Trump had cancelled the JCPOA. Iran would not have been able to enrich Uranium to 60 percent had it still been under the supervision of the IAEA as it was under the agreement Obama had negotiated.
To sum up: Trump now must go to war to get Iran to give up its’ nuclear program, something Obama had achieved before through negotiations. Iran will never trust the US again. Being attacked and having its’ leader, who had issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, killed out of the blue is a breach of trust which cannot easily be fixed again.
Yes, the Iranian regime is corrupt and very bad. But that can be changed only by the Iranian people themselves, not by a bombing campaign that degraded the regime’s military capabilities but failed to eliminate them. Estimates vary, but it is generally believed that Iran has retained between half and two thirds of its’ missile capabilities. The regime is firmer in place than before, the population is rallying around the flag. It still holds the 400 kg of enriched uranium and, most importantly, it controls the strait of Hormuz. The Iranians believe they have won.
Trump believes the US and Israel have won. I don’t see much evidence of that. Iran has damaged US military capabilities in Gulf quite seriously. We have all seen the images of
the US air force E-3 sentry AWACS plane destroyed on the tarmac in Saudi Arabia. The cost of this aircraft is roughly 500 million USD, and it cannot be replaced as it is no longer produced. In addition, Iran has inflicted massive damage on US radar installations all throughout the Gulf. Fortunately, only about 13 service members have been killed so far. But the US has burnt rapidly through a large chunk of its’ stockpile of missiles and other ordnance. The estimate by the US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, that the Iran war so far has cost a mere 35 Billion Dollars is probably massive understatement.
And all this just to fix a problem Trump created by abandoning the JCPOA in 2018. To me it looks like Iran “holds all the cards” (to quote Trump’s favorite phrase). The best Trump can hope for now is an Obama like deal to end the hostilities. But that will be exceedingly difficult. Trust is broken and it is very doubtful that Iran will enter such an agreement again. And no matter what, the World will continue to be at Iran’s mercy for the transit through the strait of Hormuz.