A year after completion of the agreement in Geneva, Raymond Tanter considers its faults, the White House’s failure to enforce it, and what a new president can do. In particular, he notes that the UN resolution designed to ratify the nuclear deal replaced an earlier resolution firmly prohibiting Iran’s ballistic-missile program with a polite request. And that’s only for starters:

The Obama administration failed to hold Tehran accountable for nuclear violations [prior to the deal or since]. But the appeasement of Iran is also tied to state sponsorship of terrorism. In selling the nuclear deal, the administration expressed a hope and implied an expectation that Tehran would moderate its participation in terrorism, for which it has quite a history. . . . [Subsequent] interviews with President Obama [made clear] his faith that Iran’s terrorism can be moderated, which has not been borne out by the facts. . . .

Even more troubling is the Obama administration’s continued support for sanctions relief, irrespective of Iran’s behavior. . . .

Regardless of who is in the Oval Office [come 2017], he or she could work with our partners to counter Tehran’s provocations. Such actions might include the interdiction of illicit arms shipments and sanctioning terrorism financing by the Iranian regime. There also is a need to fix the gap in the nuclear deal—which offers no agreed-upon penalties for Iranian violations of the deal’s terms, short of the last-resort punishment of a “snapback” of UN sanctions against Iran.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.