Yes, Reviving the Nuclear Deal Is 'Worth It'

The nuclear deal was not and never could be a panacea for all the region’s ills, but the region has been worse off since “maximum pressure” started.

Steven Cook ends up arguing that good and bad policies are all basically the same:

The obvious answer to all of this for many in Washington is to return to the JCPOA. They have a point. For whatever the shortcomings of the agreement Obama negotiated, maximum pressure failed to arrest Iran’s nuclear program and brought it ever closer to being able to build a weapon—something even some Israeli security experts and officials now acknowledge. Still, the regional dynamics haven’t changed all that much, which makes reentering the JCPOA as potentially destabilizing as either the original agreement or Trump’s decision to get out of it [bold mine-DL].

If Cook were right about all this, rejoining the JCPOA would still make the most sense of any of the available alternatives. It is bizarre to claim that the original agreement and U.S. reneging on it were equally destabilizing to the wider region. As a direct consequence of Trump’s decision to renege and reimpose sanctions, U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria started coming under attack, oil tankers were targeted, Saudi oil facilities were attacked. Those attacks all came in response to the economic war that the U.S. was waging on Iran. Let’s not forget that the U.S. and Iran came to the brink of war twice within two years. Nothing like that had happened when the U.S. was still a party to the agreement. It seems clear that regional tensions have worsened and conflict with Iran has become more likely than it did when U.S. was party to the deal.