Washington, June 14, 2026
Senior Trump administration officials on Sunday mounted a vigorous defence of the emerging US-Iran agreement, saying that it bears little resemblance to the nuclear accord negotiated under former President Barack Obama, even as Obama-era officials questioned whether the new arrangement would ultimately be much different.
The debate unfolded across multiple Sunday television interviews as the White House pushed toward a memorandum of understanding with Iran that President Donald Trump said could be signed as early as Sunday.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, said the proposed agreement would avoid what he described as major weaknesses in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“We are not going to have these massive loopholes,” Waltz said, adding that the earlier agreement lacked sufficient verification measures and allowed Iran too much flexibility over inspections.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered an even sharper critique.
“The JCPOA was a path to a bomb; what this deal will be, will be a wall to a bomb,” Hegseth said during an interview on CBS News.
US administration officials said the proposed agreement would require Iran to surrender highly enriched uranium, abandon enrichment capabilities and accept strict verification requirements before receiving any economic benefits.
“There will be no money released to Iran until they perform,” Hegseth said.
“There’s no trust here and we’re going to verify everything.”
Waltz similarly stressed that any sanctions relief would be tied to Iranian compliance.
“This is all about verification,” he said.
“No one on this team is just going to take the Iranians at their word.”
But the US administration’s characterisation of the deal was challenged by former President Barack Obama, whose administration spent years negotiating the original nuclear accord.
“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 us for a long stretch of time before we, the United States, pulled out of it,” Obama said in an interview aired by ABC News.
Obama also urged policymakers to remember the value of diplomacy.
“The notion that we can just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions may sometimes seem appealing,” he said, adding that leaders should “explore diplomacy and exhaust the possibilities of coming up with deals that don’t solve 100 per cent of the problem, but solve 80 per cent, 90 per cent of the problem”.
Wendy Sherman, who served as a Chief Negotiator for the Obama administration during the JCPOA talks, said the eventual agreement could prove “somewhat similar” despite the current political rhetoric.
Sherman noted that the present situation differs significantly from a decade ago because the conflict has already resulted in military strikes, civilian casualties and economic disruption.
“We didn’t have war,” she said, adding that the current conflict had left “the world’s economy a mess”.
The US administration insists the proposed agreement is being negotiated from a position of military strength.
Waltz said that diplomacy alone had failed to constrain Tehran’s behaviour and said Iran responded only after sustained military and economic pressure.
The 2015 JCPOA was negotiated by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran. It imposed limits on Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
Trump withdrew the United States from the accord in 2018, calling it one of the worst agreements ever negotiated.(Agency)
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