On May 8, 2018, the United States withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Why
“We cannot prevent an Iranian bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement…” “Therefore, I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.”
– Remarks by President Trump on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on May 8, 2018
[Vox] The problem, though, is that the deal wasn’t “rotten”: The best evidence we have suggests Iran was actually complying with the deal. Iran has dismantled a huge portion of its nuclear program and given international inspectors wide latitude to make sure it isn’t cheating; the country is significantly further from a nuclear weapon than it was when the deal came into force.
The rationale:
The first one is that the deal isn’t entirely permanent; the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program start to relax about 10 years after the deal was signed (though the agreement not to build a nuclear weapon is permanent).
The second is that the deal didn’t cover other problematic things Iran was doing, including ballistic missile development and its support for violent militias around the Middle East (like Hezbollah in Lebanon).
One year after
On 5/8 2019, one year after US President Donald Trump announced his country’s pullout from the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran says it is no longer committed to parts of the agreement. [aljazeera.com]
On 6/13, two tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman, a month after four other ships were struck in the region. Tehran has denied any involvement and described them as a false flag operation.
On 6/17, Tehran has sped up the countdown to its breach of the nuclear deal with the announcement that it will exceed its uranium stockpile limit in the next 10 days. The country’s atomic agency also said Tehran might also start the process of enriching uranium up to 20% from 7 July. Kamalvandi, the spokesperson for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (AEOI), said Iran needed 5% enrichment for its nuclear power plant in the southern Iranian port of Bushehr and 20% enrichment for a Tehran research reactor.
Iran also announced water supplies at the Arak water reactor would exceed a 130-tonne limit within the next two and a half months if the country did not find a client to buy heavy water byproducts.
On 6/20, a US military surveillance drone has been shot down by Iranian forces while flying over the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most vital shipping routes.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said the aircraft had violated Iranian airspace, and that the incident sent a “clear message to America”.
But the US military insisted the drone had been over international waters at the time, and condemned what it called an “unprovoked attack” by the IRGC.
After President Donald Trump’s last-minute pullback from military retaliation, the American focus has shifted to diplomacy and an effort to build international support for Trump’s approach.