Michael Eisenstadt is the Kahn Senior Fellow and director of The Washington Institute's Military and Security Studies Program.
Articles & Testimony
The gaps between Washington and Europe's positions on the JCPOA remain wide, but the potential price of failure will hopefully provide enough motivation to bridge them.
In the run-up to the 2016 US elections, Donald Trump vowed that if elected president he would, alternatively, "rip up" the nuclear deal with Iran (which he called "the worst" deal ever), or strictly enforce it. This binary approach continues to characterize the Trump administration's handling of this issue. On 12 January 2018, President Trump announced that his administration would seek a "new supplemental agreement" with key European allies "that would impose new multilateral sanctions if Iran develops or tests long-range missiles, thwarts inspections, or makes progress toward a nuclear weapon." He also pledged that the United States would pull out of the nuclear deal if the allies could not reach an agreement by May. No one really knows what he will do in May. But Americans and Europeans who want the deal "fixed" and not "nixed" must work quickly to address concerns about its shortcomings...
