Why were Netanyahu and Trump so opposed to Obama’s nuclear deal?

So why will things look different this time? “The huge difference,” said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “is that we did it from a place of strength.” We will not argue with the issue of power, but it does raise a question: how different will Trump’s agreement be from Obama’s? So that things can be examined when the agreement is signed, it is useful to put everything related to that controversial agreement in order.

What was before the agreement?
According to an article written by Dr. Shoki Friedman – who, in addition to his duties as CEO of the Jewish People’s Policy Institute and as a law professor at the Peres Academic Center, chaired the sanctions committee against Iran – in 2002, the nuclear reactors in Arak and Bentanz were exposed, which according to Western experts were intended to achieve the ability to produce nuclear weapons.

As a result, Iran, which had previously signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), agreed in 2003 to sign the additional protocol of the IAEA and receive closer supervision. In 2004, it even agreed to stop its uranium enrichment operation.

But in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president, and he took Iran out of the agreements and accelerated the nuclear program. This led to a series of sanctions on Iran starting in 2006. The UN Security Council mainly imposed sanctions on the nuclear project itself, while the European Union, the US and Israel focused on the Iranian economy. The second type of sanctions, according to Friedman, is what led Iran to agree to negotiations and compromises with the West.

Why in the world did they want to reach an agreement?
The West’s decision to reach compromises with Iran, instead of continuing to strangle the Ayatollah regime, was not trivial. According to the Western experts, this was due to the fact that, despite the sanctions, Iran reached the status of a “nuclear threshold state”. That is, from the moment a decision is made, only a few months will separate it from the threatening bomb.

“Our prime minister stood up and said that Iran is weeks away from reaching the enriched material necessary for the nuclear threshold,” says Halit Barel, former director of the National Security Headquarters, nuclear deterrence researcher and member of the Deborah Forum. “The world took it seriously and tried at the very least to freeze the situation.”

“The regime was constantly moving toward nuclear power, and the options were military or diplomatic,” Friedman tells us. “Obama thought that the military option was not realistic – and as we have seen recently, it is indeed complex to implement – and preferred to slow down the uranium.”

What did Obama’s nuclear deal say?
In 2013, an interim agreement was signed, and after lengthy negotiations, Iran and the powers – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom) and Germany – reached the nuclear agreement identified with Obama (the so-called JCPOA).

As part of that agreement, Iran committed to several things: reducing the unenriched uranium in its possession from 10,000 kg to only 300; enriching a limited amount of uranium to a level of up to 3.67% (a level suitable for civilian uses); and limiting the number of centrifuges to 6,104 and completely shutting down the advanced centrifuges. As part of this, Iran also agreed to close supervision of IAEA and return to the special protocol of the NPT. These sections were supposed to last between 10 and 15 years.

In exchange, the sanctions on Iran were gradually lifted. First, the U.S. sanctions and some of the European and American sanctions were lifted, and later – in accordance with agreed upon milestones – additional sanctions were to be removed. To this was added the snapback mechanism, which made it possible to return the U.S. sanctions, as indeed happened last year in the decision of the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Baral explains the logic behind the agreement: “The goal was to buy time. If you sign an agreement for 15 years, the thinking is that this time will be used to find a long-term solution. It did keep Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, and apart from Israel and the Gulf states, the world saw it as a satisfactory achievement at the time.”

What was the criticism in Israel?
The one who led the line opposing the agreement was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as you know, when after the signing he claimed that “the world’s leading powers bet on our shared future in a deal with the main sponsor of global terrorism in the world. They bet that within a decade, the terrorist regime in Iran will change, while removing every possible incentive for this type of change. In fact, the deal gives Iran the full incentives not to change.

“In the coming decade, the deal will reward the terrorist regime in Tehran with hundreds of billions of dollars. This cash will be used to finance Iran’s terrorist activities around the world, its aggression in the region and its ceaseless efforts to destroy Israel. Amazingly, this deal does not require Iran to stop its aggressive behavior in any way.”

Dr. Shuki Friedman explains that “the main disadvantage of this agreement was that it was short-term. The restrictions were for 10-15 years, during which the sanctions are removed, not knowing what is waiting at the other end. The Israeli opposition stemmed from the claim that the Iranians will do everything to cheat, and that after this period the Iranians will be able to move forward with less of a critical international eye.”

What happened following the US withdrawal?
As we know, the US did not remain in the JCPOA for the entire period: in 2017, a new president, Donald Trump, took office. Even before entering politics, he criticized the agreement, and after several attempts to amend it, he decided to withdraw. The main reason, he explained, was that it was proven that Iran does not want nuclear weapons only for peaceful purposes and in fact was striving and still is striving for a bomb, and the agreement does not deliver the goods when it comes to preventing the matter. In 2020 he also tried to activate the snapback mechanism, something that Europe doubted was possible due to his withdrawal from the agreement.As mentioned, they finally did it in 2025.

As Sima Shein and Eldad Shavit explained in an article for INSS, Iran did not remain obligated and presented demands to the European partners for the agreement, if they were not met, it would feel free to continue the uranium enrichment that was stopped as part of the agreement. Among other things, promoting a resolution in the OAB against the American decision, a European promise to oppose sanctions on Iran, a European promise to purchase Iranian oil if the US prevents other countries from doing so, and more. In 2019, according to Barel, the Iranians began violating the agreement.

Was this step by Trump helpful or harmful? “On the one hand, the Iranians said following this that they no longer cooperate with the inspection and do what they want,” replies Friedman. “On the other hand, the reasonable assumption is that even when there was supervision they were able to promote the project, so it’s an open question.”