A comparison between former President Barack Obama's approach and that of the current president and Donald Trump in dealing with the Iran file reveals a clear transition between two different generations of policies, with the 2015 agreement built on multilateral diplomacy and gradual containment, while the 2026 memorandum of understanding is based on direct deals and the rapid dismantling of Iran's regional influence.
Trump insists that his Iran deal is better than Obama's in 2015, while Trump's critics say his gains at this point are far less than Obama's, and the concessions he made to Tehran are more.
Significant difference in content
The two agreements are very different, and the memorandum of understanding that Trump signed with Iran is not a final agreement but rather a one-and-a-half-leaf framework consisting of 14 points that has been negotiated intermittently over the course of weeks.
The memorandum triggered a 60-day negotiation period to seek a comprehensive settlement to the nearly four-month war, but many obstacles remain to be overcome on issues including Iran's nuclear program, sanctions relief and the future of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Obama agreement was a final and detailed document titled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in more than 160 papers. That agreement focused narrowly on curbing Iran's nuclear activities but included strict criteria. Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, calling it bad.
While Trump's approach relied on bilateral negotiations between the United States and Iran, Obama engaged China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain, and the European Union in nearly two years of negotiations.
Nuclear Program
Both agreements included a written commitment by Iran to never seek a nuclear weapon, but Trump insists, untruthfully, that Tehran has never pledged to do so before. Trump said the nuclear threat was the main reason he entered the war.
Obama's deal severely restricted Iran's efforts to produce weapons-grade uranium in order to prolong the "launch" period it would need to produce a bomb. The U.S. government said Tehran was committed to the deal until Trump withdrew from the JCPOA.
Trump's interim agreement sets out only a general path toward curbing Iran's nuclear activities without any specific commitments from Tehran other than discussing nuclear issues within the 60-day period.
The deal signals Iran's willingness to resolve the dispute over its stockpile of uranium enriched to a level close to the bomb-making level, including the possibility of "deconcentrating" at the site under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, but leaves that decision up to the final deal.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) included extensive international inspections, but the memorandum of understanding did not call for any future reinstatement of that process.
Penalties and Assets Frozen
The two agreements include sanctions relief and the release of frozen assets, but in very different ways. Iran is now more eager than ever to shore up its struggling economy.
Obama eased some sanctions early on, but that didn't happen until after a comprehensive settlement was signed, and then began implementing gradual sanctions relief after verifying steps by Iran.
Trump's memo first eased sanctions, allowing Iran to export oil immediately while postponing negotiation of a final package to a later stage.
The memorandum also opens the door to the release of billions of dollars of frozen funds, without specifying when that might happen.
Another item calls for the United States and its allies in the Middle East to create a $300 billion fund for Iran for economic development, but the terms and timeline for the fund's work remain unclear.
That drew criticism from anti-Iran advocates within Trump's own Republican Party, who saw him as making too many concessions.
Trump has criticized Obama for years for returning to Tehran the Democratic president's $1.7 billion in proceeds from arms sales frozen since 1981.
But now it appears that Trump, who has clearly expressed disdain for any comparison between his deal and Obama's, will give Iran exponentially more money.
Strait of Hormuz
The JCPOA only addressed nuclear issues, a deliberate choice made by the Obama administration, which saw that including other issues for the region in the plan would make a final agreement impossible.
But Trump's memorandum of understanding is the diplomatic starting point for ending the war he waged alongside Israel on Feb. 28, which has sent shockwaves through the global economy.
As a result, one of the main pillars of the current agreement is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, an important corridor for oil shipments that Iran has kept closed since the beginning of the war. Iran is now insisting on retaining an administrative role in the strait that it did not enjoy before the war, and that could be a sticking point in future negotiations.
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