Former President Barack Obama is weighing in on President Donald Trump’s newly announced agreement with Iran — and he’s making a striking prediction.
According to Obama, any deal Trump ultimately secures with Tehran is unlikely to be much different from the nuclear agreement that Trump scrapped during his first term.
“It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place, and had worked for a long stretch of time before we, the United States, pulled out of it,” Obama said during an interview with ABC News that was recorded before Trump announced a breakthrough agreement on Sunday.
Obama was referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by his administration. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2018, arguing that it failed to permanently stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions and would eventually pave the way for the regime to obtain nuclear weapons.
Obama also suggested that military force is not the answer to long-running conflicts in the Middle East.
“In retrospect, it’s a reminder that on a lot of difficult foreign policy problems the notion that we can just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions may sometimes seem appealing,” Obama said. “You’d think we would have learned that lesson by now, but it seems like every so often we have to relearn that lesson again.”
The former president added that he hopes the latest negotiations lead to an end to hostilities.
“So I’m hopeful that bombing stops and ordinary people are no longer suffering as a consequence of the war,” he said.
Trump has sharply rejected Obama’s assessment of the original Iran deal and defended his own agreement as fundamentally different.
In a Truth Social post over the weekend, Trump argued that Obama’s deal “was an easy, beautiful, smooth road to a Nuclear Weapon.”
“My Agreement with Iran is the exact opposite, A WALL TO NO NUCLEAR WEAPON!” Trump wrote. “In fact, they no longer want a Nuclear Weapon, nor will they have one, either through purchase, development, or any other form of procurement.”
While the full text of the agreement has not yet been released publicly, Trump announced Sunday that the deal was “complete” and said it would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global shipping lane through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes.
The agreement is also expected to lift the U.S. naval blockade and unlock between $12 billion and $24 billion in previously frozen Iranian assets, according to multiple reports.
Trump hailed the breakthrough as a historic achievement.
“This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region,” the president wrote. “Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me.”
The agreement is expected to be formally signed in Geneva later this week. Vice President JD Vance and presidential adviser Jared Kushner are expected to attend the signing ceremony, though Trump told reporters Monday at the G7 summit in France that he has not yet decided whether he will personally attend.
“It depends,” Trump said. “JD’s coming in for it. He was originally going to do it. I may be involved, I may not.”
The emerging deal has already sparked debate over whether Trump’s diplomatic breakthrough represents a dramatic departure from Obama’s approach to Iran — or, as Obama suggested, a return to a framework that Washington abandoned years ago.
