Trump Tore Up the Iran Deal — Now We’re Living in His Fallout

Brain Trust? VP Vance (2 years experience), Trump (convicted felon), Secretary of State Rubio (Trump called Little Marco), and Secretary of Defense Hegseth (noted drinker and womanizer with no war experience) announce Iran bombing.

June 22, 2025

By Brian Hews

Let’s not pretend this came out of nowhere. Let’s not act shocked. The bombs that fell on Iran? The chaos choking the Middle East? That didn’t begin with this week’s airstrikes—it began the day Donald Trump walked into the White House Situation Room and tore up a functioning nuclear agreement just because Barack Obama signed it.

In 2015, the United States—along with China, Russia, the UK, France, Germany, and the European Union—signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal. The agreement was strict The result? Iran’s pathway to a nuclear weapon was effectively blocked for over a decade.

But Trump didn’t care about facts, inspections, or allies. In 2018, over the objections of the international community and his own intelligence agencies, he tore up the deal, slapped Iran with so-called “maximum pressure” sanctions, and strutted in front of cameras claiming the U.S. would get a “better deal.”

He got nothing. No new deal. No diplomacy. Just decades of hard-won progress torched in one Fox-friendly press conference.

Iran, predictably, responded. Not immediately—but gradually and deliberately. First, they waited to see if Europe could salvage the agreement. When it became clear the Europeans were too timid to stand up to U.S. sanctions, Iran started pushing back.

So here we are, in 2025, watching the inevitable unfold. The U.S.—under a newly empowered Trump—just launched coordinated airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The administration claims “mission accomplished,” but that’s laughable. You don’t bomb your way back into diplomatic credibility and you don’t “stabilize” the region by confirming every hardliner’s suspicion that the U.S. can’t be trusted.

The fallout isn’t just radioactive—it’s geopolitical. Iran has vowed retaliation. Oil prices are spiking. Civilian air traffic is being rerouted. All of this was preventable. All of this was avoidable. All of this was warned.

And let’s not forget who helped get us here. Republicans in Congress cheered Trump’s move back in 2018, mocking the JCPOA as “appeasement.”

But they’ve gone eerily quiet now that we’re inches away from a regional war. Where are they now? Where are the budget hawks while we burn billions on another conflict of choice?

Meanwhile, Iran hasn’t collapsed. It hasn’t surrendered. Trump’s withdrawal didn’t break Iran—it unshackled it. And now the U.S. is forced to use bombs instead of diplomacy to clean up the mess he made.

Let’s stop pretending this is foreign policy. This is ego. This is Trump setting fire to the house and calling himself a hero for holding a fire extinguisher.

It didn’t have to be this way. We had a deal. We had inspections. We had a lid on the program. Now, we have craters.

Trump tore up the Iran deal—and now we’re living in his fallout.

Contact Brian Hews at [email protected] or follow @cerritosnews.bsky.social