Trump Shattered Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal to Fuel a Reckless War

In July 2015, Wendy Sherman, then a top Obama State Department official, stood before a room of diplomats and policy wonks visibly exhausted but hopeful. She had just led the U.S. delegation that negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, a landmark arms-control agreement designed to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions through diplomacy, not war. The moment was emotional — Secretary of State John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, choked up recalling his own experience with war and his commitment to preventing another.

This deal was a beacon of a different kind of American foreign policy — one rooted in expertise, patience, and multilateral cooperation. It was the high-water mark of the Obama administration’s belief that even the most fraught conflicts could be managed without bombs. The deal followed other diplomatic milestones like the U.S.-Russia arms control treaty and the thaw with Cuba, signaling a moment when negotiation still seemed possible.

But all that changed with Donald Trump. From his first term, Trump denounced the Iran deal as a “horrible, one-sided deal” and tore it up unilaterally. The consequences were swift and brutal. The fragile diplomatic framework collapsed, sanctions and military threats escalated, and the region edged closer to open conflict. Trump’s administration replaced careful diplomacy with economic warfare and saber-rattling, including deploying multiple aircraft carrier strike groups to the region.

Despite the mounting humanitarian and political costs, Trump’s hostility toward the deal remains a political cudgel, even as his administration awkwardly pursues new talks with Iran. Recent negotiations led by Vice President J.D. Vance ended in deadlock, undermined further by Trump’s sidelining of experienced diplomats in favor of unqualified real estate associates. Meanwhile, Trump’s public posturing — including a bizarre social media image of himself wielding an assault rifle — underscores the dangerous theatrics overshadowing any real progress.

Wendy Sherman, now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, remains committed to diplomacy. She acknowledges the deal wasn’t perfect but insists it was far better than the war Trump has chosen. Her reflections offer a stark reminder: the path of war is not inevitable, but Trump’s administration has made it so by discarding expertise and embracing chaos.

This story is not just about a failed agreement. It’s about the cost of abandoning diplomacy in favor of authoritarian bravado and reckless power plays. Trump’s war with Iran is a tragic undoing of years of painstaking work to keep the world safer. And until that changes, the only certainty is more conflict, more suffering, and more lies from an administration that refuses to learn from history.