Robert Radu HERVIAN
Looking from the American side, former President Donald Trump’s decision to break the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA, (the Iran Nuclear Deal) for short, signed during the Obama Administration, has proven to be one of the most counterproductive national security decisions taken by the USA.
That being said, it is fair to say the plan has plenty of apologists and for some good reasons too.
Among these apologists Mike Pompeo the former Secretary of State as well as former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both heartedly and insistently contributed to the decision to withdraw America from the treaty.
From the Israeli side, Moshe Ya’alon who was the Israeli defense minister when the nuclear agreement was signed, strongly opposed it just the same. He was part of the wholeheartedly apologists at the time. However, recently he changed his mind. He described the decision to abandon it as follows: “as bad as that deal was, Trump’s decision to withdraw from it – with Netanyahu’s encouragement – was even worse.” Ya’alon called it “the main mistake of the last decade” in Iran policy.
At approximately the same time, Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s top military commander when Trump withdrew from the deal, used the following wording to describe the situation: “a net negative for Israel: It released Iran from all restrictions, and brought its nuclear program to a much more advanced position.”
The IAEA (The International Atomic Energy Agency) communicated repeatedly that in the interval of time since the treaty was abandoned, Iran has amassed enough enriched Uranium hexafluoride to, according to independent experts, produce weapons grade uranium for a nuclear bomb in as little as three weeks.
So what was the former American Administration plan B? Hardly any.