JCPOA Withdrawal ‘One of the Dumbest, Most Dangerous’ Foreign Policy Decisions - Murphy

By Staff, Agencies

US Senator Chris Murphy described former US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the multilateral Iran agreement as something that will go down as one of the dumbest, most dangerous foreign policy decisions of the last fifty years.

Murphy made the comment in a tweet on Sunday, invoking a graph illustrating the rapid growth of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile in the aftermath of the US withdrawal.

“Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA … will go down as one of the dumbest, most dangerous foreign policy decisions of the last fifty years,” he wrote, using the official acronym of the 2015 deal, that is, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, has been a vocal critic of Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and his sanctions on Iran. He has urged US President Joe Biden to reverse his predecessor’s Iran policy and rejoin the nuclear pact.

Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the JCPOA in 2018 and unleashed the “toughest ever” economic sanctions against Iran.

Iran initially refused to take reciprocal actions as stipulated under the JCPOA, giving diplomacy a chance, but after an entire year of strategic patience, it finally began to advance its nuclear program beyond the limits set by the deal.

Talks have been underway for almost ten months under Biden, who had vowed to undo Trump’s Iran policy and re-enter the nuclear agreement.

In the course of the negotiations, held in Vienna, the Islamic Republic has maintained that the removal of US sanctions must happen in practice and that it seeks guarantees that the US will not leave the deal again.

In a recent interview, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian stated, “We demand guarantees that include not imposing any new sanctions, and not re-imposing sanctions after removing them under any pretext.”