President Donald Trump has claimed that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was “a road to a nuclear weapon” and the country “would be sitting with a massive nuclear weapon three years ago” if he hadn’t withdrawn the U.S. from the deal in 2018 during his first term. The multilateral deal aimed to restrict Iran’s uranium enrichment program, and experts told us that after the U.S. withdrawal, Iran accelerated it instead.
It’s not possible to predict what would have happened if the agreement, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and negotiated by former President Barack Obama’s administration, had remained in place. In addition to imposing restrictions on Iran’s enrichment of uranium, the deal required international inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities.
The president went on to say that Obama “was giving them the right to have the path to a nuclear weapon,” saying that the deal “expired.”
The next day, Trump said: “If we didn’t terminate the worst deal, one of the worst deals ever made, the Obama nuclear deal … it was a road to a nuclear weapon. Bad things would have happened four years ago, because they would’ve had a weapon four years ago, if I didn’t terminate that deal.”
