“[My time at ACA] prepared me very well for the position that I took following that with the State Department, where I then implemented and helped to implement many of the policies that we tried to promote.”
Trump’s $100 Billion Iran War Mistake
July/August 2026
By Daryl G. Kimball
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has proven to be a disaster that has failed to advance U.S. strategic goals, including nonproliferation objectives, and inflicted widespread humanitarian consequences on untold millions of people in Iran, its region, and beyond.
This expensive war of choice has already likely incurred more than $100 billion in direct military costs. U.S. President Donald Trump has just put forward an $88 billion supplemental war spending request to Congress in addition to his record $1 trillion military budget request, while claiming there are not enough federal dollars to fund basic needs of ordinary Americans.
The June 17 Islamabad memorandum of understanding (MOU) to halt the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz is a flawed but welcome development. Importantly, it creates a pathway for resuming negotiations to verifiably curb Iran’s nuclear program, which continues to pose a medium-term proliferation risk.
The MOU calls for significant sanctions relief and sets a 60-day timeline for negotiating limits on Iran’s sensitive nuclear activities as part of a broader agreement. These talks will not be easy, but if both sides are serious and pragmatic, and if Trump can refrain from gratuitous threats, a meaningful nuclear nonproliferation deal is possible. The U.S. negotiating team needs to be backstopped by nonproliferation experts to avoid the egregious mistakes of Trump and his negotiators in past rounds of talks.
To verifiably neutralize the proliferation risk posed by Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), particularly the 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235, a near-weapons-grade level, the parties should agree to excavate the HEU under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision, down blending the material in Iran to less than 5-percent levels of U-235, then ship the material for supervised storage in Kazakhstan or Russia.
To address the risks posed by a resumption of uranium enrichment in Iran, the two sides should agree to detailed verifiable, terms including: a 10-15-year suspension of uranium enrichment; verifiable limits on centrifuge research and production; strict limits on low-enriched uranium stockpiles, and possible limits on uranium mining and milling activities. Iran currently does not have industrial-scale enrichment capacity or a practical need to do so for nuclear energy requirements, but it does have the know-how and the capacity to reconstitute its centrifuge manufacturing and operations.
Such steps, combined with meaningful compliance incentives, would provide significant confidence that Tehran could not dash for a bomb if it so decided in the future.
Before resuming enrichment, Iran would have to demonstrate a practical need for domestic fuel production for nuclear energy purposes, and if it does, Iran must agree to cap enrichment at reactor-grade levels and continue the highest forms of IAEA monitoring.
An essential element of any effective agreement must be the swift return of IAEA inspectors to Iran and an intrusive, agency-led monitoring regime to verify compliance with the terms of any new deal. It is in both sides’ interests to allow IAEA inspectors to access all nuclear sites in Iran without unwarranted restrictions. This is vital to establish a new baseline regarding Iran’s nuclear program and verify compliance with the terms of any new nuclear agreement.
To prevent future compliance problems, Iran should, as it did under the jettisoned 2015 nuclear deal, agree to more intrusive IAEA safeguards standards under the terms of the IAEA additional protocol and Code 3.1, a provision in the IAEA’s comprehensive safeguards agreements requiring states to submit preliminary design information for new nuclear facilities to the IAEA as soon as the decision to construct is made. This will provide greater assurance that Iran is meeting its nuclear obligations and not engaging in covert nuclear weapons-related activities.
If Iran and the United States reach a new nuclear deal in the coming months, it should be measured against what is necessary and technically feasible to block Iran’s pathways to nuclear weapons, including whether it includes the necessary IAEA monitoring and verification measures to ensure compliance and detect any prohibited nuclear activities.
Comparisons with the 2015 nuclear deal are understandable but are not useful. What was necessary and possible to secure a strong nonproliferation agreement in 2015 is not the same as what is necessary for an effective nonproliferation agreement in 2026.
Trump’s first-term decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was nonproliferation malpractice. It opened the door for Iran to reconstitute its nuclear program and severely curtail IAEA access.
Trump’s effort to end his disastrous 2026 war with Iran and resume negotiations on new nuclear deal are a tacit admission that his “maximum pressure” policies and military misadventures did not and cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity, nor its determination to pursue what it sees as its right to engage in dual-use nuclear activities.
In the coming weeks, Trump cannot afford to squander—for a third time—this diplomatic opportunity to reach an effective, verifiable, and durable deal to block Iran’s nuclear weapons potential, prevent the renewal of large-scale war, and reduce the dangers of onward proliferation in the Middle East.