The revival of the Iran nuclear deal, formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), now proceeds under the long shadow of a former administration that unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018. For many observers, including the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, this raises an inescapable question: what was the campaign of maximum pressure, the sanctions and the sabre-rattling, actually for?
The deal itself is a technical artefact of non-proliferation. It caps Iran’s uranium enrichment at 3.67% purity, limits its stockpile to 300 kg, and permits intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. These are the same parameters that existed before President Trump tore up the agreement. The intervening years have seen Iran accelerate its nuclear programme: it now enriches uranium to 60% purity, stockpiles far more material, and restricts inspector access. The net effect of the US withdrawal has been to push Iran closer to a nuclear breakout capability, not away from it.
Bowen’s question is a cold geopolitical arithmetic. If the goal was to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, the Trump administration’s approach failed. If the goal was to collapse the Iranian regime, that also foundered. If the goal was to renegotiate a better deal, that never happened. The only observable outcome is that Iran now has a shorter breakout time than it did in 2015. The cost has been borne by the Iranian people, who have suffered under crushing sanctions, and by regional stability, which has frayed further.
We must be precise about what this deal does not do. It does not address Iran’s ballistic missile programme, its support for proxy forces in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, or Iraq, or its human rights record. These are separate issues that require separate negotiations. The JCPOA is a narrow non-proliferation agreement. Its critics on both sides want to load it with extraneous demands, but that is a recipe for paralysis.
The scientific reality is that enrichment is a dual-use technology. The same centrifuges that produce reactor fuel can produce weapons-grade material. The JCPOA’s verification regime is designed to detect any diversion of material quickly enough to allow the international community to respond. That system was working before 2018. It can work again. But time is not a renewable resource. Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be unwound. Every month of delay is a month in which that knowledge deepens.
There is a broader lesson here about the physics of foreign policy. Unilateral action, like withdrawing from an agreement, is a perturbation that propagates through the system. It creates vibrations that can amplify into instabilities. The Trump administration’s decision did not erase the deal; it simply transferred it to a different energy state, one with higher entropy and lower predictability. Now, the Biden administration is trying to return to the original equilibrium, but the path is not reversible. Hysteresis is a fact in materials science and in diplomacy.
Bowen’s question is not rhetorical. It demands an answer from those who championed the withdrawal. If the war on Iran was a war of economic attrition, what victory condition was defined? If there was none, then the war was fought for its own sake, a self-licking lollipop of policy. That is a comfortable conclusion for no one.
The renewed talks in Vienna are a chance to arrest the drift. But they occur in a context where trust has been dissipated. Iran has now exported enriched uranium to Russia in the past; it has tested advanced centrifuges; it has conducted simulated war games. The margin for error is thin. The JCPOA is not a permanent solution. It is a pause, a time-buying mechanism. What we do with that time is the real question.
For now, the deal survives as a framework. Its resurrection is a testament to the persistence of diplomatic processes. But the shadow of 2018 will not lift quickly. The question of what was the point will continue to haunt every future negotiation. And that is the tragedy: war, even one of sanctions and threats, leaves scars that do not heal when the peace agreement is signed.
