A Near-Nuclear Iran Awaits Trump

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : "The clever thing for Iran to do is to tie Trump up in negotiations while its nuclear program secretly advances," Elliott Abrams, U.S. special representative for Iran during the first Trump administration, told TMD.
54% : The multilateral 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for the country dismantling portions of its nuclear program, limiting its enrichment activity, and consenting to international monitoring.
50% : In late October, Israel's airstrikes across Iran targeted buildings in Parchin -- a top-secret military base 20 miles southeast of Tehran -- now believed to have been used for weaponization research.
46% : As Tehran accumulates enriched uranium with an eye toward weaponization, Trump is keeping all options on the table to thwart the program, members of his transition team told the Wall Street Journal last month, including airstrikes.
30% : All of this, I think, is meant to say, 'There are negotiations going, so not only should Trump not attack, he should prevent an Israeli attack.'
27% : "Genuine or not, the threats put Trump -- who has repeatedly expressed his desire to avoid a Middle East war -- in a tight spot going into his second term.
20% : Trump cited Tehran's destabilizing activities in the region as one of the reasons for his decision to scrap the deal in 2018, denouncing it as "one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into."
15% : But the incoming administration's threat of military action, coupled with harsh economic penalties, may be part of a broader strategy to reach another deal with the Islamic Republic six years after Trump himself withdrew from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.

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