So What Have We Gained and At What Cost?

Aug 4, 2015:  The Iran Deal

Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)

The United States and the world’s major powers — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the European Union — and Iran sat around the negotiating table month after month, negotiating every detail that would inch us ever-closer to delivering on a promise President Obama had made before he first took office. Then, on July 14, 2015, with a shared commitment to peace, the United States and our international partners announced we had secured a nuclear deal that would achieve the necessary: Verifiably prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

It is an historic deal — a promise fulfilled. It blocks every possible pathway Iran could use to build a nuclear bomb while ensuring — through a comprehensive, intrusive, and unprecedented verification and transparency regime — that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful moving forward.

May 8, 2018: The Withdrawal

President Donald Trump officially announced that the United States would withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear agreement.

 

BBC: New leak claims Trump scrapped Iran nuclear deal 'to spite Obama' 

July 2019: The Mail on Sunday reports that Sir Kim wrote to Mr Johnson informing him Republican President Trump appeared to be abandoning the nuclear deal for "personality reasons" - because the pact had been agreed by his Democrat predecessor, Barack Obama.

Trump tore up the deal in 2018, and a return to that framework has Obama alums wondering what, exactly, was the point in abandoning it in the first place.

April 20, 2026 Trump stated:

PBS: What do you want from the negotiating team in Islamabad?

Trump: No nuclear weapons. Very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Very simple.

Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration said. “And how many people had to die to gain what we already had?” [cost?]

Fact Check Team: How much is the Iran war costing the US?

KOMONEWS: One widely cited tracker called the Iran Cost Ticker estimates the U.S. has spent nearly $51 billion so far. That figure is based on an initial $11.3 billion spent during the first week of strikes, as reported by the Pentagon, followed by roughly $1 billion per day in ongoing costs. At about 46 days into the conflict, that pushes the total near the $51 billion mark.

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My Notes: 

All of this money and cost to the American people and lasting harm to the reputation of the USA worldwide, over what?  A personal vendetta / jealousy; malignant narcissism?

Politico: Threatening to annihilate an entire civilization or its essential civilian infrastructure is widely considered a violation of international law and, according to many legal experts, constitutes a war crime.

Action today is needed from The Congress (immediate impeachment) or the Cabinet (25 amendment); less you be co-conspirators. 

Stop the madness!

Post Script: From HuffPost today, 4/21: Eight Weeks In, Trump May Be Headed Toward An Iran Deal Similar To Obama’s.

Sanctions relief in return for a moratorium on nuclear fuel enrichment is the exact arrangement that Trump and many Republicans criticized for years.