If there is one thing every U.S. president, regardless of political party, says on foreign policy, it is this: Under no circumstances will the United States allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump, are four very different leaders. However, all of them sang from the same song-sheet when it came to the Iranian nuclear matter.
Unfortunately, Trump will enter office on Jan. 20, 2025, with Iran as close to nuclear-grade bomb fuel as it has ever been. The Iranian government is first and foremost responsible for this development. However, make no mistake: Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in favor of a campaign of maximum pressure against Tehran is where the story fell off the rails.
Far from buckling under U.S. economic sanctions and crawling back to the negotiating table, Iran upped the ante by engaging in maximum resistance—installing and using more advanced centrifuges, limiting international monitors from accessing certain parts of its nuclear apparatus, producing higher-grade uranium, and increasing its overall stockpile. Outside of an informal arrangement with Tehran that collapsed after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, the Biden administration didn’t have much luck in stopping Iran’s nuclear progress.
Today, the Iranians are rapidly boosting the production of 60% highly enriched uranium, a short step away from bomb-grade fuel, in two underground nuclear facilities that are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to destroy from the air. The question, then, is obvious: How will Trump manage this matter to ensure it doesn’t turn into a crisis? There are three tracks available.
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