What was in the Iran nuclear deal and why did Trump withdraw the US from it?

Nearly 10 years ago, the United States and other world powers reached a landmark nuclear agreement with Iran.

Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, the deal followed two years of negotiations. Then-President Barack Obama, who campaigned on resolving the Iranian nuclear threat, called the issue the “most consequential foreign policy debate that our country has had since the invasion of Iraq.”

Two years after the deal went into effect, President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear accord, in one of the most significant foreign policy actions during his first term as president.

Iran’s nuclear program is at the heart of its conflict with Israel, which has been engaged in aerial strikes with Iran in the days since a surprise attack on Tehran that Israeli officials said killed several nuclear scientists as well as high-ranking military leaders.

Here’s what to know about the Iran nuclear deal, which is now “essentially defunct,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

What was in the deal?

The JCPOA, which imposed restrictions on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief, was signed on July 14, 2015. It was agreed to by Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — as well as Germany and the European Union.

The JCPOA was designed to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program would be exclusively peaceful and provided for the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions in order to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“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,” Obama’s White House said at the time.

Under the 159-page deal, Iran “significantly reduced its nuclear program and accepted strict monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure its program is solely for peaceful purposes,” the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation said.

“In exchange, Iran received economic sanctions relief from nuclear-related sanctions” only after the International Atomic Energy Agency verified Tehran had completed certain requirements under the deal.

The deal went into effect on Jan. 16, 2016, after the IAEA verified that Iran had completed steps, including shipping 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium out of the country, dismantling and removing two-thirds of its centrifuges and allowing for more extensive international inspections of its nuclear facilities.

The U.S. and many European nations lifted oil and financial sanctions and released about $100 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

If all parties adhered to the deal, experts held that it likely would have prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon for more than a decade, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Should Iran try to build a nuclear weapon, sanctions would go back into effect.

Many of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program “have expiration dates,” according to the Council on Foreign Relations, noting for example that centrifuge restrictions would be lifted after 10 years and limits on how much low-enriched uranium Iran can possess after 15 years.

“Some of the deal’s opponents faulted these so-called sunset provisions, saying they would only delay Iran building a bomb while sanctions relief would allow it to underwrite terrorism in the region,” the organization said.

Israel was among those who opposed the agreement, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it a “historic mistake” at the time.

Why did Trump drop out of the deal?

Trump campaigned prior to his first election on pulling the U.S. out of the deal, and on May 8, 2018, he did just that, terminating U.S. participation in the JCPOA and reimposing economic sanctions on Iran.

Trump argued at the time that the deal was so “horrible” it had to be discarded to move forward.

“It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” he said. “The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen.”

The Trump administration said at the time that Iran “negotiated the JCPOA in bad faith, and the deal gave the Iranian regime too much in exchange for too little.”

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal after ignoring the advice of America’s allies, who had urged him to stay in the agreement and build upon it. The leaders of France, Germany and the U.K. noted their “regret and concern” at Trump’s decision, calling on Iran to maintain its commitments under the deal.

What’s happened since?

After Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in January 2020, the Iranian government announced it would no longer abide by any of the operational restraints on its nuclear program under the Iran nuclear deal.

In early 2023, the IAEA reported they had detected traces of uranium at Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility that was enriched to “near weapons-grade level that Iran claimed was accidental.”

“Since the United States abrogated the deal and Iran in turn stopped honoring some of its commitments, Iran has reduced its breakout time — the amount of time it would take to accumulate enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon — from more than a year to about 3-4 months, although the IAEA remains on the ground to verify the peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation said.

As some provisions of the JCPOA were set to expire in October 2023, former President Joe Biden’s administration imposed new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile and drone programs, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Biden sought to negotiate a return to the JCPOA. However, in the last few months of his term last year, a State Department spokesperson said they were “far away” from returning to negotiations with Iran.

During his second term, Trump has threatened potential military action against Iran to keep it from developing nuclear weapons.

In recent weeks, delegations from Iran and the U.S. have met for multiple rounds of nuclear negotiations, though talks have stalled amid the conflict between Israel and Iran.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement from Trump in which the president said he believes there’s a “substantial chance of negotiations” in the near future. He also said he will make a decision “whether or not to go” within the next two weeks, though Leavitt did not clarify what that meant.