Obama Questions Trump’s New Iran Deal and Urges Diplomacy

Former U.S. President Barack Obama said he doubts the Trump administration can reach an Iran agreement that is materially different from the 2015 nuclear deal his own administration negotiated. In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” recorded at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago a day before Trump announced a new accord, Obama argued that diplomacy remains more effective than military force.

Trump said the United States and Iran had reached an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the U.S. naval blockade, though the full terms were still unclear. A senior U.S. official said the deal would also reopen the strait, dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, and give the United States access to Iran’s most enriched uranium stockpile.

The announcement comes eight years after Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, the pact led by Obama’s administration and later denounced by Trump as the “worst deal ever.” Obama said there was “doubt whether any deal proposed by the Trump administration would be significantly different or a substantial improvement over the previous agreement,” and added that the earlier deal had proven effective for a long time before Washington abandoned it.

Obama said he hoped the fighting in the region would end and urged decision makers to prioritize diplomacy over military action. “I hope the bombings stop, and that civilians stop suffering because of the war,” he said, adding that many complex international crises cannot be solved by pressure or force alone and that negotiation remains preferable to war. “We should have learned that lesson by now, but it seems we have to learn it again from time to time,” he said.