June 19, 2025.

Just a week ago, the Trump administration was preparing for a sixth round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program,

scheduled to be held in Oman on June 15th.

In 2018, President Donald J. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,

or JCPOA, negotiated in 2015 by President Barack Obama, under which the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom

lifted economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits to Iran's nuclear program.

With the U.S. withdrawal, the agreement fell apart.

Trump launched a maximum pressure campaign of stronger

sanctions to pressure Iran to renegotiate the JCPOA, which lasted through his first term.

Back in office, Trump relaunched that campaign in February 2025. Then, in March 2025, Director of National Intelligence

Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that the assessment of the intelligence community was that Iran

was not building a nuclear weapon. In the same month, Trump said on the Fox News Channel

that he had written a letter to Iran's supreme

leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamani, urging the Iranians to negotiate, because if we have to go in militarily,

it's going to be a terrible thing for them. Iran's foreign minister, Abbasaragchi, said Iran would not

enter into any direct negotiations with

the U.S. so long as they continue their maximum pressure policy and their threats. But Iran's

allied militant actors, Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have been badly hurt by Israeli strikes

since Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7,

2023, and Iran's major ally in the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, fell in December

2024. Discussions began in April of this year, and negotiators met for five rounds by the end of May.

Israel was not included in the negotiations and on Thursday, June 12th, it launched strikes

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