It wasn’t the bombing. My column today in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Special to the Post-Gazette

Jun 30, 2025

4:30 AM 

Now that there is (as I write) a ceasefire, we can see the serious mistake President Donald made with regard to Iran.

His mistake was not that he joined the Israeli bombing campaign (if you worry about what Iran might do with a nuclear weapon). His mistake was abandoning the original Iranian Agreement negotiated by the Obama Administration in 2015, which he did in 2018.

Because he did that, he was forced to bomb Iran, but that has made the world a more dangerous place than it would have been with the agreement. And — this is a crucial point — Iran is just as close to building a bomb now as it would have been.

The same result

That agreement had substantially impeded Iranian progress toward attaining a nuclear weapon — precisely the result aimed at by the recent bombing campaign.

The Iranian Agreement had two parts. First, Iran agreed to decommission two-thirds of its centrifuges, to limit enrichment of uranium to 3.67% — far below bomb grade level — until 2030 and to permit full and rigorous inspection to ensure its compliance.

This part of the Agreement was working well. The Trump Administration never claimed that Iran was violating the agreement.

The second part of the deal was that the U.S. and its allies agreed to substantial sanction relief, including immediate access to $100 billion in frozen assets.

To decide whether leaving the agreement was a mistake, we must assess the effect of the agreement on two levels — preventing an Iranian bomb and reducing Iran as a threat more generally.

On the first level — preventing an Iranian bomb — leaving the agreement was an obvious mistake. Even if you assume that the bombing was totally effective — and there is some question about that — then Iran is today perhaps 10 years away from replicating that work.

But, what if Trump had not left the agreement? Then, in 2030 — five years from now — Iran would have had uranium enriched only to 3.67% and would have had a smaller number of centrifuges.

In other words, if the U.S. had not left the agreement, Iran would, today, be at least 10 years from having a bomb. Exactly the same result without our having to take military action.

Clearly, on the core question of preventing an Iranian bomb, leaving the agreement proved to be a costly mistake.

Disagreement over the regime

However, many critics of the Iranian Agreement, especially the Trump Administration in 2018, argued that the agreement empowered Iran to be more of a threat in the region. They also objected to what seemed to be the larger goal of the Obama Administration — a permanent rapprochement with, and acceptance of, the current Iranian regime.

The critics pointed out that allowing Iran to build ballistic missiles, while increasing the nation’s economic power by relaxing sanctions, would make Iran more dangerous than ever.

Iran was supporting proxy conflicts all over the Middle East, including supporting Hamas. How many more Oct. 7 attacks might there have been if Iran had benefited from sanction relief?

Plus, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and, now we see, Trump himself, believe that regime change in Tehran is the only realistic solution to the Iranian threat. The agreement made regime change less likely because it normalized the Iranian government.

A judgment call

Admittedly, these kinds of evaluations are a judgment call. With regard to regime change, it is true that adverse military action can make a government unpopular. Some Palestinians, for example, have turned against Hamas because of the overwhelming Israeli response to the Oct. 7 attack.

But that kind of response is actually unusual. Most of the time, and especially with regard to air attacks, military action strengthens a government by causing a patriotic response. That appears to be happening in Iran today.

Certainly, leaving the agreement did not lead to regime change.

And maybe the agreement itself would have fostered regime change. Perhaps a more prosperous Iran, with a growing middle class, would have challenged the restrictive policies of the Iranian government.

We’ll never know.

We’ll also never know if a normalized Iranian government might have decided at some point to cease its proxy wars. Leaving the agreement certainly did not improve Iranian behavior.

And, of course, leaving the agreement only accelerated Iran’s ballistic missile program. Iran now has the missile capability that the Trump Administration feared.

Military action is sometimes necessary. And the bombing by Israel and America seems to have been successful.

But even when military action is necessary and successful, it can still point to a deeper diplomatic failure. That is the case with Iran.

Trump made it worse

We had a way to peacefully limit Iran’s nuclear ambition. Trump discarded that opportunity in 2018, gambling that in the interim Iran would be thwarted in other ways. That did not happen and military action became necessary.

Because America left the agreement, the world is a more dangerous place today. Iran is still a threat, retaliation against American interests is still possible, and future military action may again be needed.

All because of the mistake Trump made in 2018.

Bruce Ledewitz is a professor of law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University. He writes every other Monday. The views expressed do not represent those of Duquesne University. His previous article was “Why the Democrats can’t defeat Donald Trump.”

First Published: June 30, 2025, 4:30 a.m.