5 years ago today, I was in Vienna with a great team led by @JohnKerry, @WendySherman & @ErnestMoniz at the signing of the JCPOA. [Thread]:

The deal was struck to keep Iran's nuclear program in check. If you can look at this graph from @NYTimes & argue we were better off before the JCPOA than after it or better off today than before Trump left it, you might not be serious about non-proliferation. 2/

Critics of the deal repeat same arguments: sunsets too short; scope too limited; too much given, too little received. 3/

To which the answer is: In 2+ years of max pressure how many of 12 US demands have been met? Not nuclear, which is worse. Not the regional, which is more unstable. Only progress made was on detainees - not coincidentally, the only issue on which US and Iran actually engaged. 4/

Pressure brings pain, undoubtedly - it hasn't brought results. Hence the constant doubling down, in hopes of a capitulation that is illusory and purports to speak for a people that it places under unilateral siege 5/

JCPOA wasn't perfect - not for U.S., not for Euros, not for Iran. No deal ever is. But it worked & cld have been built upon. Ask its detractors to propose something better and it's a wish list, not a proposal. 6/

The goal of the Trump administration from the outset has been & remains to destroy the JCPOA and do their best to prevent its revival under a different president.

Watch for snapback at the UN in the fall, which US will invoke even though it no longer should have standing 7/

Our last major @CrisisGroup report on the deal was entitled "Requiem?". I hope the next will not be an obituary

If it is, JCPOA's epitaph would say that it was a doomed success. All the more reason for P4+1 to keep it from unraveling & reviving a nuke crisis benefiting none. 8/8

Of course I meant to tag the one and only Wendy R. Sherman @wendyrsherman