The US Abandonment of the JCPOA: How Coercive Diplomacy Backfired

Abstract

In July 2015, Iran, the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany), and the EU reached a landmark agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that promised to relieve sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. After the JCPOA went into effect, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regularly verified that Iran was fully compliant with its terms, and the agreement achieved its goal of curtailing Iran's nuclear activities. However, in May 2018, President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the JCPOA and instate a “maximum pressure” strategy of sanctions against Iran—both reimposing the U.S. sanctions that the JCPOA had lifted and adding new ones aimed at Iran's oil and banking sectors. The Trump administration aimed to coerce Iran into negotiating a stricter nuclear deal on U.S. terms, but President Trump’s intended negotiation never happened. In the years since the U.S. exit, Iran has incrementally abandoned its commitments under the JCPOA and escalated its nuclear activities, reaching unprecedented proximity to weaponization capability