Iran Closer to Defeat
On July 18, 2015, the JCPoA was signed between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany. The intention to engage Iran had already been made clear by President Obama in his landmark Cairo speech on June 4, 2009, when he had said, “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government. This history is well known.” He was referring to the 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq by a coup engineered by the US and the UK.
The deal signaled a significant change for Iran’s future. Tehran emerged from the negotiation process as a successful interlocutor for the P5+1, enhancing the regime’s legitimacy. The JCPoA shifted Iran from being an adversary to a potential partner. The gradual removal of sanctions injected dynamism into Iran’s economy. In short, Iran advanced to a higher league.
Would Iran have honored the commitments it has undertaken? The JCPoA contained elaborate monitoring and verification measures to be implemented by the IAEA. As for the overarching question of political trust, Secretary Kerry said at the time that, “Confidence is never built overnight. It has to be built over time.”
Three years later, on May 8, 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPoA. According to a long-standing and well-established principle of public international law, “pacta sunt servanda”, states are obligated to abide by the agreements to which they commit. This principle is enshrined in Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Was the US withdrawal from an agreement negotiated over a long period with the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council a violation of this principle? Yes, but such concepts are only relics of the past under the so-called “rules-based international order”.
The withdrawal was followed by sanctions aimed at Iran’s energy and banking sectors. Iran’s oil exports fell sharply. The Iranian rial depreciated. Its GDP contracted. Inflation and unemployment rose significantly. Sanctions, under the policy of “maximum pressure,” continued to escalate.
Upon taking office in January 2021, President Biden signaled a desire to return to the agreement, setting the stage for a complex and often fraught diplomatic effort to revive the JCPoA. His administration’s stated goal was to restore the JCPoA as a platform for negotiating a “longer and stronger” agreement that would address not only nuclear issues but also Iran’s ballistic missile program and regional activities.
Despite several rounds of negotiation, talks repeatedly stalled. Elections in Iran in June 2021 brought a more hardline government under President Ebrahim Raisi, further complicating diplomacy. The new Iranian administration insisted on guarantees that Washington would not again exit the deal and demanded the lifting of all Trump-era sanctions.
For its part, the Biden administration faced pressure from Congress and regional allies to secure a “better” deal. The diplomatic process was also complicated by Iran’s continuing nuclear advances, with the IAEA reporting increased uranium enrichment and reduced transparency.
The Biden administration also sought to address broader concerns with Iran, including ballistic missiles and regional security issues, sometimes referred to as “JCPoA Plus.” However, Iran consistently rejected efforts to expand the negotiations beyond the original nuclear parameters, viewing the deal as a technical agreement rather than a comprehensive regional compact.
Thus, the Biden administration’s effort to secure a better deal failed.
With the Israeli attack on Iran on June 13, the situation changed dramatically. The public discourse on a negotiated solution became less persuasive. Mr. Trump’s ultimatum to Tehran, declaring a two-week wait before making his final decision on whether to join the Israel-Iran war, prompted a meeting between the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Britain, the EU’s foreign policy chief Kallas, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi in Geneva.
Mr. Trump dismissed the European efforts, stating, “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us.” As expected, the Geneva talks yielded no results. After all, Prime Minister Starmer has been fully supportive of the Trump administration’s regional policies, as Mr. Tony Blair was during the invasion of Iraq. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has recently stated that Israel “has the courage” to do “the dirty work for all of us” by attacking Iran. And, President Macron has agreed all along with the principle that Iran should not have nuclear weapons.
Was a diplomatic solution possible if the Geneva talks had been followed immediately by negotiations between Washington and Tehran? No. Because the Biden administration aimed for a JCPoA Plus deal and failed. The Trump administration wanted much more. Iran’s willingness to relent on enrichment, secured with solid international guarantees—perhaps involving Russia for supplying enriched uranium at agreed levels—was unlikely. Furthermore, pressuring Tehran to include its missile program and regional security issues in a new deal had no chance of success. Tehran would not have agreed to Mr. Trump’s call for “unconditional surrender”.
Thus, only two days after Mr. Trump’s “two-weeks for diplomacy or else” ultimatum to Tehran, the US joined Israel in the war against Iran. Now, “sources” say that the two-week window was designed to conceal the plan of attack.
In his statement to the world following the attack, Mr. Trump, to underline the unique nature of his relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, said:
“I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done. And most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight, and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades.”[i]
Indeed, they are a team, though one wonders at times who wears the captain’s armband.[ii] Despite Mr. Trump’s strongly worded condemnation of ceasefire violations by both Iran and Israel, his aforementioned statement makes it amply clear that the two leaders will continue to act in unity.
After the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, Russia and China condemned the attack. Washington’s Western and regional allies made their routine calls for restraint. President Trump urged Iran to “come to peace” and mused about regime change. Iran said it will not return to the negotiating table as Israeli and American bombs keep falling.
Following the attacks on three nuclear sites, the White House claimed that the US had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites. However, according to Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, the US bombing had likely caused “very significant damage” to the underground parts of Iran’s Fordow nuclear site. Mr. Grossi has also called for an end to the fighting so that “Iran can let IAEA teams into the sites to assess the situation.”
On Monday evening, President Trump announced in a post on social media what he called “a Complete and Total” ceasefire between Israel and Iran.
As shown by Iran’s missile attack on Qatar, with an advance notice from Tehran to minimize potential casualties, Tehran is no longer capable of responding to either the Israeli or the US airstrikes, despite its state media reporting that Mr. Trump had “begged” for a ceasefire after Iran’s missile attack on Qatar. Do the people of Iran believe what they hear? No.
Does this mean the war is over? Only time will tell. There is already a lot of speculation that, with the enriched uranium moved elsewhere, Tehran might still try to produce a few nuclear warheads in a short period. This has made Mr. Trump furious, leading him to use strong language against news outlets publishing such reports. Nevertheless, for Mr. Netanyahu, this is a long-sought and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he would not easily let it slip away. And President Trump still aims for Iran’s unconditional surrender, which means a lot more than Mr. Biden’s JCPoA Plus.
The broadening of the war, its engulfing other regional countries is an unlikely scenario. The war may end either with regime or leadership change or with Tehran’s admission of defeat, regardless of what it tells its people. One way or the other, this war would be remembered as a most unfortunate episode in Iran’s history, an episode that the people of Iran do not deserve.
Beyond the regional parameters of the war between Iran, Israel, and the US, the ferocity of the US airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear sites, the B-2 bombers flying thousands of kilometers with in-flight refueling, the first operational use of bunker-busters, and the comments by Mr. Trump and his senior officials about America’s unmatched military power may trigger yet another arms race.
President Trump may now have some worries regarding his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize despite his senior officials’ insistence that the US is not at war with Iran. However, he is fully entitled to the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor, the highest civil medal awarded by the President of the State of Israel, for outstanding contributions to the State of Israel or to humanity through their talents, services, or in any other form. And who knows, after a regime change in Iran, he may even claim that the US has made up for the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953.
Today, President Trump attends the NATO summit in The Hague. Before his arrival, he was welcomed by a remarkably fawning message from NATO’s Secretary General Rutte. He said, “Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer.” [iii] However, the contradicting claims about the success of strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites are likely to keep him focused on Iran.
As for Türkiye, despite the war and regional uncertainties that call for utmost national unity and solidarity, we remain divided like the two banks of a big river, with all the bridges swept away by the floodwaters of our democratic decline.
[i] https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-speech-transcript-text-ff4b286992309ec1337e04260247bb1e
[ii]https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/23/netanyahu-iran-attack-nuclear-intelligence/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert
[iii] https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250624-trump-posts-nato-chief-gushing-message-praise-extraordinary-iran-action-rutte