Washington. A top US official has said that the former Donald Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, a key deal on Iran’s nuclear programme, is one of the biggest strategic blunders of US foreign policy in recent years. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal or the Iran deal.
It was agreed upon on 14 July 2015 in Vienna between the ‘P5+1’ grouping with Iran and the European Union (EU). “This (President Joe Biden) administration is considering the previous administration’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, the biggest US foreign policy decision in recent years,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said at his daily press conference on Monday. One of the strategic mistakes.
The ‘P5+1’ grouping includes the five permanent members of the Security Council – China, France, Russia, Britain and the US and Germany, which struck a deal with Iran during the Barack Obama administration. Price said the reason the US was able to reach a diplomatic settlement to the JCPOA was because it worked with allies and partners around the world to apply significant economic pressure on Iran.
“What ultimately brought Iran to the negotiating table was not at all a strategic change in mindset on the part of the regime,” he said. It was a realization, I think, that they were under tremendous economic pressure. And their nuclear program was a strategic obligation at that time.
According to Price, our goal is to make sure Iran continues to feel the pressure until it changes course. “You can do it now because the previous administration tried to do it with a strategy of maximum pressure,” he said. “It was clearly ineffective. History teaches us that economic pressure is most effective. ”
