It was almost inevitable that Iran would announce its withdrawal from the new inspection arrangement on Thursday. The decision came just hours after the International Atomic Energy Agency asked for details about the country’s enriched uranium stock and the condition of the sites Israel bombed in June. This effectively buries the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the zombified 2015 agreement designed to trade strict verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program for the country’s reintegration into the global economy.
The JCPOA will no longer exist because the conditions that sustained it are now relics of the past. The accord relied on three specific pillars to function: coordinated international pressure, a credible enforcement mechanism, and political continuity in Washington and Tehran. In 2015, those conditions existed, but today, not a single one remains. The events of this week confirm that we are interacting with the shell of an agreement rather than a living framework.
Myth of International Unity
The JCPOA was often described as a “masterpiece of diplomacy,” but a closer reading of its origins points instead to a masterpiece of leverage. The deal emerged from a very specific geopolitical alignment that concentrated pressure on Tehran with unusual consistency. Washington operated inside a coalition rather than above it, signaling that the United States had partners willing to translate political commitments into economic pain.
The economic trap set for Iran snapped shut in 2012. Europe implemented a full embargo that removed around 600,000 barrels of Iranian oil from global markets, reshaping the country’s economic horizon. At the same time, China, India, Japan, and South Korea reduced their purchases under U.S. waiver pressure, and Russia supported Security Council resolutions that closed procurement channels. To seal the trap, the SWIFT banking network disconnected Iranian banks, making it nearly impossible for the regime to repatriate the revenue it did manage to generate.
The combined effect of these measures drove Iranian exports from roughly 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.1 million within a year. Tehran confronted a landscape in which the path toward negotiation carried much more promise than the path toward defiance. This moment of alignment carried extraordinary weight because each actor had separate interests yet acted in concert.
But that arrangement has since faded from relevance. China has become the single most important buyer of Iranian oil, acquiring more than a million barrels a day through channels designed to bypass scrutiny. Beijing capitalized on the deep discounts created by Western sanctions, securing cheap energy for its independent refineries while signaling that American financial power could no longer dictate its strategic inputs. Meanwhile, as the war in Ukraine stretched into its later stages, Moscow turned to Iran for drones and related technology. Shared isolation forced a strategic convergence, as Tehran provided the cheap, mass-producible hardware Moscow needed to sustain its campaign against a NATO-backed Ukraine. This military reliance changed Russia’s incentives; the country that once supported pressure on Tehran now benefits from a deeper partnership.
When France, Germany, and the United Kingdom attempted to initiate snapback sanctions in the summer of 2025, Russia and China moved quickly to block the effort. This is the environment that the IAEA’s request arrived at. Iran just understood the geopolitical equation and responded accordingly.
Enforcement Vacuum
The JCPOA’s architects created snapback to ensure automatic penalties in the event of a violation. The design appeared elegant because it reversed the standard logic of the Security Council: instead of requiring a vote to impose sanctions (which Russia or China could veto), it required a vote to continue lifting them. This meant that any single participant could force the return of penalties, and no great power could stop them.
But this mechanism relied on a premise that collapsed in May 2018: U.S. support. The United States’ withdrawal from the JCPOA exposed Europe’s dependence with clarifying brutality. The moment Washington reimposed secondary sanctions, Europe’s firms reassessed their commitments based on their exposure to the U.S. dollar. Total abandoned a $4.8 billion gas project, Siemens suspended infrastructure investments, and shipping giants like Maersk and MSC halted shipping services at Iranian ports. When companies were forced to choose between the Iranian market and the American banking system, they chose survival.
The consequences of this exodus became obvious in 2019, when Iran responded to the economic pressure by expanding its uranium stockpile, and European leaders recognized the breach but simply hesitated to act. They understood that without the United States, they possessed the legal right to snap back sanctions but lacked the economic weight to make them bite. The enforcement system was designed to be automatic, but in practice, it depended entirely on American participation.
Europe attempted to preserve the illusion of sovereignty by launching INSTEX, a clearinghouse designed to facilitate trade outside the dollar. It was a failure. Over its entire operational life, the mechanism facilitated just a single transaction for medical goods. The pressure system that once surrounded Iran had relied on American financial dominance as its central pillar. Once the facade was removed, “snapback” transformed from a threat into bureaucracy with no real force behind it.
Domestic Trap
A long-term nonproliferation agreement requires political stability to survive, and the last decade proved that neither Washington, Tehran, nor Jerusalem can offer.
The roots of this failure lie in the precedent set in May 2018. Although the IAEA verified Iranian compliance repeatedly between 2015 and 2018, the United States withdrew anyway, establishing a fatal new norm: a treaty tethered to American election cycles cannot synergize trust. President Obama signed the deal in 2015; President Trump reversed course three years later; President Biden attempted a revival in 2021 with limited traction. By 2025, Republicans had returned to a posture centered on maximum pressure, confirming the warnings of analysts like Vali Nasr and Trita Parsi that any agreement faces reversal the moment domestic tides shift.
The JCPOA ceased to be a technical agreement and became a political emblem. In the United States, it evolved into a touchstone for broader debates about America’s role in the world. Republican senators linked it to weakness, conservative commentators described it as “appeasement,” and Donald Trump elevated opposition to the deal to signal a total rejection of Obama-era diplomacy.
Tehran internalized this dynamic. Hardliners used the precedent of the U.S. withdrawal to undermine the arguments of the moderates who had invested their political capital in the agreement. The narrative framing inspections as concessions to imperial powers ceased to be rhetorical leverage. Following the death of Ebrahim Raisi, it calcified into state policy. While his successor, Masoud Pezeshkian, campaigned on engagement, the real power centers, the IRGC and the Supreme National Security Council, consolidated around a doctrine of “resistance economy.” In this new domestic equilibrium, any concession to the IAEA became politically fatal.
This internal logic dictated the events of this week. Following the intensification of security incidents at nuclear facilities, the nuclear file became a primary test of regime legitimacy. The IAEA’s November 20 inquiry had only routine significance within international guidelines, yet the political environment placed on its shoulders a symbolic weight. When conservative lawmaker Mojtaba Zolnour characterized the request as an affront to national dignity, he was drawing a red line for his own government. Tehran’s decision to withdraw followed the logic of that domestic climate: in a system built on defiance, cooperation looks like treason.
A similar hardening of domestic politics transformed Israel’s strategic calculus. For years, the Israeli security establishment operated under the “campaign between wars” (MABAM) doctrine, which is a strategy of covert sabotage designed to delay Iran’s progress without triggering a full-scale conflict. The events of October 7 and the subsequent multi-front war ended that consensus. The prevailing political demand shifted from managing threats to eliminating them. By 2025, the government could no longer justify a policy of quiet containment to a public demanding absolute security guarantees.
This shift forced the country’s leadership to abandon ambiguity in favor of overt action. The strikes in June 2025 were the output of a new domestic mandate that views international agreements as dangerous distractions. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition framed the JCPOA as a shield that allowed Iran to build capacity under diplomatic cover. When the IAEA requested updates this week, Jerusalem viewed the move as proof that the international community remained stuck in a pre-war mindset. Israel’s domestic politics now demand kinetic solutions rather than paper guarantees.
Discussion surrounding the JCPOA often suggests that the agreement can return with enough diplomatic determination, but interpretation understates how deeply the international environment has changed. Iran’s announcement on November 20 carries meaning because it clarifies the state of an arrangement that has relied on memory rather than function. A future agreement requires a different foundation. A durable successor must reflect the geopolitical competition between major powers, the economic architecture that shapes compliance, and the domestic incentives that determine political survival. A structure built around the conditions of 2015 cannot endure in the environment that defines 2025.
Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: JCPOA Implementation, Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made