Former President Barack Obama said on Saturday that his nuclear agreement had kept Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons without military force, telling a rally in Cleveland that “I didn’t have to fire a missile to do it. I just had to engage in diplomacy.” He criticized President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the deal and starting a war with Iran, asking, “How’s that war going?”
Obama made the remarks at Cleveland’s Public Auditorium, where he appeared with Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, and former Senator Sherrod Brown, who is seeking his old seat, 10 days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. The speech was carried live on Obama’s X account and on C-SPAN’s event page.
Arguing that the administration’s actions were “directly responsible for rising costs,” Obama said Trump “decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for and nobody voted for.”
“This is something I know a little about,” Obama said. “The original rationale was we’re going to go in there and get them to give up their nuclear program, their nuclear weapons. Now, the thing was Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons because I had put a deal in place that everybody acknowledged kept them from getting nukes. And I didn’t have to fire a missile to do it. I just had to engage in diplomacy.”
“He pulled out of it, starts this war, seven months later, six months after they declared victory,” he said. “Because remember, they said, well, this is the best war ever. It’s going great. So seven months later, how’s that war going?”
Obama said U.S. allies and bases had been attacked, that “Americans have been killed” and “hundreds of Americans have been wounded,” and that the United States had “run down our stock of missiles.” He said Iran “now has veto power over the Strait of Hormuz where oil goes through to the world market,” adding that this was why oil, diesel and other prices had risen. “Nobody disputes that,” he said.
The nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was reached in July 2015 by the United States, Iran and other world powers. Obama said in a White House statement at the time that it was “a comprehensive, long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Trump ended U.S. participation on May 8, 2018. His presidential memorandum ending participation said the deal gave Iran sanctions relief “in exchange for its temporary commitments” to constrain uranium enrichment, and that “in 2016, Iran also twice violated the JCPOA’s heavy water stockpile limits.”
Trump ordered strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, nearly eight months before Obama’s speech, according to Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine. In an April 8 White House release announcing a ceasefire, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “This is a victory for the United States of America that the President and our incredible military made happen.”
U.S. strikes resumed on July 7 after Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump told Congress in a July 10 War Powers letter, in which he described the strikes as “limited, measured” and “defensive.” The Pentagon raised its official count of troops who died during operations against Iran to 21 earlier this month, The Washington Post reported.
Hours after Obama spoke, Trump defended his decision to leave the agreement at a rally in Perry, Georgia, that he had announced on Truth Social in support of Republicans Mike Collins and Rick Jackson.
“I terminated one of the worst deals ever made, Barack Hussein Obama’s JCPOA, or as some people call it, the Iran nuclear deal, which was a road to a nuclear weapon for Iran,” Trump said. He added that “we obliterated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity with Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury. We defeated them militarily, financially, and otherwise.” It was not clear whether he was responding directly to Obama’s remarks.
The assertion that “everybody acknowledged” the deal kept Iran from nuclear weapons is Obama’s, and the Trump administration has long argued that the accord’s limits were temporary and that Iran violated them. His description of Iran holding “veto power” over the strait is his characterization, and his “seven months” understates the time since the Feb. 28 strikes. The White House, the Pentagon and Trump had not responded to Obama’s remarks on their X accounts as of early Sunday.