Will Obama Get the Last Laugh on Iran?

By Noah Rothman

Monday, June 15, 2026

 

Former President Barack Obama told the hosts of ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday that he’s “doubtful” Donald Trump’s negotiating team can improve on his nuclear deal with Iran. It’s unlikely, Obama speculated, that this president will hammer out terms with Iran that represent “a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place and had worked for, for a long stretch of time before we, the United States, pulled out of it.”

 

Trump shouldn’t want to give his predecessor the satisfaction of being right. But to hear the president and his administration’s officials talk about the deliberations with Iran that will follow the implementation of an emerging cease-fire agreement, Obama may get the last laugh.

 

For now, though, talk is all we have, and pronouncements about what is and isn’t in the cease-fire vary depending on who is doing the talking.

 

The Iranians insist that they’re getting up-front financial relief in the form of unfrozen assets. Trump administration officials disagree. Tehran appears convinced that a postwar $300 billion reconstruction fund is a done deal. The president’s representatives insist that provision could be a possible sweetener, but it is contingent on Iran’s compliance. Everyone seems to believe that Israel’s defensive operations against Hezbollah will cease and the IDF will withdraw from Southern Lebanon — everyone, that is, save the Israeli government.

 

It seems that the Trump administration isn’t even clear on the terms it negotiated to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. In a Sunday interview with the New York Times, reporter David Sanger confronted Trump with the Iranian interpretation of the memorandum of understanding, which the Islamic Republic claims only suspends tolling on the strait for 60 days while a new status quo is established. By contrast, Trump insists the contested waterway will be “permanently toll-free.” But Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on Trump’s definitive pronouncement.

 

“Well, our expectation is that the strait is going to be opened in a toll-free way for the long term,” he told CNBC, “and that’s the sort of thing that we’re going to figure out in these technical negotiations.” What was the point of a negotiated cease-fire but to relieve the Trump administration of the obligation to restore free navigation through the strait by force, as the U.S. had done in the past?

 

The contradictions and inconsistencies on offer from the Trump administration deprive good-faith observers of confidence in the administration’s willingness to impose desirable terms for a more durable peace in forthcoming talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Already, seasoned foreign affairs observers, like Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, see shades of Obama’s JCPOA in the emerging contours of a final deal within the cease-fire.

 

“It does look very similar to the JCPOA, which Trump scrapped,” Ignatius said Monday. “Some of the provisions may even be somewhat weaker.” Subsequently, the vice president lent some credence to that pessimistic assessment.

 

During his Monday media blitz, Vance told CBS News hosts that the U.S. seeks a final agreement that “ends” Iran’s nuclear program, deprives it of its enriched uranium stockpiles, and is backed by a robust verification regime. But, he added, there is no resemblance to the JCPOA here. “We have comprehensively destroyed their nuclear program,” Vance told CBS News.

 

“What this agreement does is say to the Iranians that you don’t have access to the money to rebuild that nuclear program,” Vance clarified in his sit-down with CNBC. How? Apparently, through an unfalsifiable construct. If Iran wants access to the “world economy,” it will have to “give up the long-term nuclear ambition.” If they don’t do that, “they’re never going to have the resources to rebuild it from where it is today.”

 

How that assertion comports with the Trump administration’s openness to “unfreezing” the Iranian economy as well as a Gulf-region-funded reconstruction fund is probably subject to interpretation.

 

Vance is correct to observe that the conditions that prevail on the ground in Iran today cannot be compared with the status quo in 2015. The JCPOA flooded Iran with cash, compelled the regime only to mothball (not destroy) its nuclear bomb program’s components, and included terms that legitimized Iran’s pursuit of advanced uranium enrichment capabilities when it sunset. With the destruction of much of the Iranian nuclear program and its defense industrial base, the Trump administration couldn’t recapitulate those Iran-favorable terms even if it wanted to.

 

Yet, Trump told the Times that he was contemplating an agreement in which he could settle for an Iranian commitment to suspend domestic enrichment for 15 or maybe even 20 years — a far cry from his initial objection to any uranium enrichment on Iranian soil ever. Now, that enrichment must only be “for non-military purposes,” Trump said after he apparently entertained revivifying the JCPOA’s farcical “caps” on enriching uranium beyond the grade necessary for use in civilian reactors. In addition, Trump is “in no rush to get the near-bomb-grade fuel out of its underground sites,” Sanger’s report continued.

 

After all, the final backstop ensuring Iran’s compliance is America’s willingness to go back to war to ensure that Iran never digs out the bomb-making material entombed in its devastated nuclear sites.

 

But the United States demonstrated unequivocally over the last two months that it is not willing to go back to high-tempo combat operations against Iran, even to conclude the conflict on terms unambiguously favorable to America and the West. “Fundamentally,” Vance insisted, “we have the leverage; we have the diplomatic, economic, and military leverage.” That’s little more than a self-affirming mantra if the U.S. isn’t willing to apply the leverage it is holding in reserve.

 

Many will be tempted to draw definitive conclusions about both the war that brought us to this juncture and the trajectory of events that they are certain will follow it. Those conclusions would be premature. To the extent the terms of this agreement are known and not contested by the parties it supposedly binds, it is an agreement to keep talking. And that would be fine if the U.S. and Israel intended to proceed with the plan for this war that they articulated at its outset.

 

“Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach,” Trump said in a message to the Iranian people at the war’s outset. “This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.” He and his subordinates restated Trump’s premise more than once that there will be a “clear signal” to the Iranian people “for you to be able to come out” and take down the Iranian regime.

 

Of all Trump’s departures from the JCPOA’s framework, that was the most important. He rejected the logic of a deal that recognized the Islamic Republic as a permanent feature of the regional landscape. In his interview with Sanger, Trump warned only that if Iran’s leaders slaughtered protesters again, Tehran might forfeit access to sanctions relief.

 

This might be the most humiliating of the apparent retreats to which Trump may have committed the United States. The threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran will not abate until the Islamic Republic of Iran ceases to exist. If Trump has forgotten that central paradigmatic feature of successful efforts to contain and roll back the Iranian menace, he will fail at the negotiating table.