OPINION ARTICLES

Statement on President Trump's decision to leave the JCPOA

We urge all Western parties involved in the deal to take advantage of this new situation and to work together to create a new framework and a coherent strategy to deal with Iran comprehensively.

2018-05-09 by Friends of Israel Initiative


The members of Friends of Israel Initiative sincerely regret the lack of agreement between Europe and the United States on ways to fix the grave flaws of the nuclear deal with Iran.  When the JCPOA was signed in 2015, we denounced it and called for a better agreement because we believed it was a bad deal that couldn’t accomplish its stated goal: to avoid a future nuclear armed Iran. 

In January President Trump demanded amendments to the deal so as to create a new and more robust framework that would more effectively restrict the nuclear path for Iran, as well as roll back Iran’s dangerous regional behavior. Unfortunately, the negotiations to achieve this didn’t make sufficient progress. We thus understand President Trump’s entirely legitimate decision to unilaterally leave the JCPOA.

We urge all Western parties involved in the deal to take advantage of this new situation and to work together to create a new framework and a coherent strategy to deal with Iran comprehensively. In truth, it is Iran which has been the great beneficiary of the 2015 deal: not only has it kept intact most of its capabilities to produce a nuclear bomb and continued to modernize its nuclear infrastructure, but Iran has received billions of dollars spent on the export of instability and violence across the entire Middle East, instead of on the betterment of its own people crying out in the streets.

Iran was emboldened not curtailed by the JCPOA. The US leaving this bad deal should be seen as a new opportunity to confront the many challenges, not only the nuclear one, that Iran poses to her neighbors and to the world in general.