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Trump violated the JCPOA first. Why should Iran hold up their side of a broken agreement? The JCPOA was working fine but Netanyahu didn't like it because he wan

• CivBase 5y ago
  > Why should Iran hold up their side of a broken agreement? Because - and correct me if I'm misunderstanding things - so far as I can tell it wasn't really an "agreement" to begin with. The US essentially just said they would tolerate an Iranian nuclear program so long as it adhered to a set of guidelines which assured Iran was being honest about their goal of pursuing a peaceful nuclear energy program. The US was providing Iran an incentive to keep its word. For better or for worse, that incentive was removed. But that doesn't mean Iran is incentivized to go against its word. Continuing to adhere to those guidelines would help build trust from the rest of the world that Iran really just wanted a nuclear energy program. Instead, their recent actions only continue to build distrust.
  • boomboomsubban 5y ago
    >Because - and correct me if I'm misunderstanding things - so far as I can tell it wasn't really an "agreement" to begin with. Your somewhat understanding things. It definitely was an agreement, passed by the UN, the EU, and thus somewhat the US. The disagreement is whether a congressional vote is necessary as well, which most UN agreements don't require but allow for congress to vote against them. There weren't enough senators against the agreement for that to happen, but because there weren't enough to vote in favor of it either Trump's team argued it wasn't an official treaty. So whether it was an official agreement is somewhat unclear, but your description that it was an ad-hoc trust building exercise is not correct.