Although the United States claims that the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities was a legitimate measure for international security, some are pointing out that this would not have happened if President Donald Trump had not unilaterally withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) in 2018.
On the 28th, the New York Times (NYT) reported the opinions of nuclear experts that the US military’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the 22nd was a measure by President Trump to offset the threats he had brought upon himself in the past.
Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue at the US State Department during the Barack Obama administration, said, “If the first Trump administration had not withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal, we would not have needed to bomb uranium metal production facilities today.”
Michael Rubell, a physics professor at the City University of New York who has federal access to government secrets related to nuclear weapons, had a similar opinion, saying, “President Trump has created this mess.” “There is no doubt that the Iran nuclear deal was working,” he said. “He tore up the deal, created chaos, and now he’s saying, ‘I’m the savior.’
” They believe that if President Trump had not torn up the Iran nuclear deal, which was led by the Obama administration in 2015, in 2018, the “uranium metal conversion facility,” which was the main target of the recent US bombing, would not have been built.
The Iran nuclear deal was basically about Iran freezing or reducing some of its nuclear program in exchange for the West easing economic sanctions on Iran. It also included a ban on converting enriched uranium gas into high-density metal that can be used as nuclear fuel for a nuclear bomb.
The metallization process is one of the final steps in creating the explosive core of a nuclear weapon. But President Trump has called the deal a “giant fiction,” and has reimposed severe sanctions on Iran after pulling out of the nuclear deal.
With the deal gone, Iran has begun construction of a uranium metallization facility, formalizing plans to start the process by the end of 2020.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in February 2021 that Iran had begun producing uranium metal at its Isfahan nuclear facility. The amount was only 3.6 grams, but nuclear experts saw this as a dramatic escalation in Iran’s weapons threat.
Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran’s nuclear facility on the 13th, focusing on the uranium metallization facility in Isfahan, and the United States, which then participated in the war, launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Isfahan to expand the scale of the destruction.
Nuclear experts believe that these Israeli and US attacks have temporarily destroyed Iran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb, especially its ability to handle the explosive core.
The White House responded to the claim that the Iran problem was brought upon by President Trump, saying, “President Trump was right on every count,” and “The United States should never have participated in Obama’s horrible Iran nuclear deal.”
He emphasized, “President Trump has put into practice what past presidents have only talked about. The Iranian nuclear program has been eliminated, a historic ceasefire agreement has been brokered, and the world has become safer.”