And yet this deeply flawed, temporary solution - reached after 2 years of formal negotiations and countless false starts - was deemed sufficient for the US administration at the time, the PS+1 and the EU to agree to its contents. It was also - as I mentioned in my previous post - sufficient for the independent adjudicator to confirm that, when implemented, Iran was complying with the terms of the Agreement which implied that she would not be in a position to develop a nuclear bomb. The fact that JCPOA had a 10-year duration does not mean that the Agreement was not delivering. It clearly was. Obviously an extension/ replacement would have needed to be negotiated before JCPOA expired. There is no guarantee that these negotiations would have been successful, but to scupper them before they even started was the height of irresponsibility on Trump's part. Of course it does. The success criteria (compliance terms) were laid out in the Agreement. Why would you expect Iran to go over and above meeting those terms? That is conjecture. It depends on what and how any negotiations about extending JCPOA had progressed. We will never know. Why should Iran be prevented from having ballistic missiles? Rightly or wrongly, it views Israel and Saudi Arabia as aggressive neighbours. Given that, why should it not be allowed to defend itself? Curtailing Iran's destabilising effect in the region and stopping her funding of Hezbollah and others would have been ideal and, perhaps, greater restrictions should (could?) have been placed on how the unfrozen monies could be used. However, none of this negates the view that while in operation, JCPOA was a success (qualified or not). It appears that your idea of a deal would have been for Iran to have surrendered any bomb-making capability and effectively render itself helpless in the face of aggression from either Israel or Saudi Arabia. That was clearly never going to happen. Imo Obama and Kerry were absolutely right. A flawed deal - if that is what JCPOA was - that stopped a nuke was clearly better than no deal: The last 8 years and the current predicament are testament to that.
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