According to the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Islamic Republic is allowed to continue research and development on more advanced nuclear centrifuges. In 2024 it will be able to begin using these, and in 2026 it can enrich as much uranium as it wants, short of levels suitable for making atomic weapons. By 2031, all restrictions will be lifted. The results, writes Ephraim Asculai, are that even without cheating, Iran can gradually abbreviate the amount of time it would require to start producing nuclear weapons:

[I]f Iran abides by the agreement to the letter, by the eighth year, if not before, Iran can have perfected one or more centrifuge models capable of high rates of enrichment. Iran would be in a situation in which it had already prepared the capacity to produce as many centrifuges as it wants and at the rate of production it chooses, even if not actually producing these before the eighth year.

By year ten, Iran’s breakout time will already have been reduced considerably; and by year fifteen Iran is officially permitted to do all it wants, including significant amounts of enrichment to military levels (around 90 percent). The breakout times will then be measured by weeks, not months. . . .

Iran knows how to be patient. There should be little doubt that unless something dramatic changes in the Iranian regime or its policies, it will seek this nuclear capability.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”