The Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran has its many American supporters and detractors. But if there’s one thing on which everybody agrees, it is that Washington’s regional partners—namely, most Gulf Arab states and Israel—absolutely hate it, and for a good reason: It failed to address their regional security concerns, which went beyond Iran’s nuclear enrichment abilities.
Former President Barack Obama’s advisers didn’t think it was possible to reach a comprehensive agreement because they were concerned that, if they rammed Tehran’s missile arsenal and its regional proxy network into the nuclear talks, the Iranians would bail. Their intuition seems to have been correct.
