There are two Iran wars being waged at the moment. There is the real war, where America and Israel have pounded Iran’s vast nuclear program. Then there is the Iran war of the Democratic Party’s imagination, where that military campaign is somehow disconnected from Iran’s ability to race for a nuclear weapon.
In that second war, all of the bombing has led President Donald Trump right back to where President Barack Obama’s negotiators were in 2015 when they forged the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, made the point earlier this month when he posted on X: “Reminder that under Obama’s Iran Deal, the Iranians shipped 98 percent of their enriched uranium out of the country—without a pointless and devastating war.”
Rhodes is not alone in deploying this talking point. Earlier this month, Rep. Gregory Meeks, a Democrat from New York, said, “From what I’m hearing thus far—we’ve got to hear more—it’s going to be less than what we got out of the JCPOA.” And the same idea is echoed in press coverage. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an analysis with the headline “Trump Eyes Iran Deal with Many of the Trade-Offs He Blasted Obama for Accepting.”
