WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE JCPOA

FAQs: All the Answers on the JCPOAQ:A:Is this a “bad deal”?No. This is a good deal — the JCPOA is strong, verifiable, and long-term.No other approach ensures the strict limits andYou don’t have to take our word for it — ask our allies in theunprecedented inspections we were able to negotiate. The United Kingdom, Germany, and France, who have been withJCPOA cuts off all of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon. us every step of the way at the negotiating table. Ask theAnd it ensures the vigorous inspections and transparency dozens of countries that have already come out in support ofnecessary to verify that Iran cannot cheat and pursue athis deal, the UN, and the Vatican. Ask the numerous formernuclear weapon without us knowing and having time to act. Israeli military, intelligence, and security officials, who are allIt ensures that sanctions can snap back into place if Iran saying that this deal makes Israel safer. The world supportsviolates the deal. And it is long-term, including significant this deal.elements that will be permanent.Q:A:Shouldn’t we have just walked away from the table and kept the interim deal in place?The final Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) goes leaps andbounds beyond the interim JPOA in terms of restrictions on Iran’s nuclearprogram and far-reaching transparency measures.It doesn’t just halt the progress and roll back key aspects ofIran’s program, as the JPOA did, it requires permanent stepsbe taken to verifiably ensure that Iran cannot get a nuclearweapon. The Arak heavy water reactor is just one example:Under the JPOA, Iran could not do further work on Arak;under the JCPOA, Iran has to physically remove the core, fillit with concrete, and fundamentally change the design so itwon’t be producing plutonium that could be used in a bomb.The critics were wrong once before. Many who opposed theinterim deal have now come around to acknowledging thatour negotiators got a good deal. We held out for a deal thatmet all of our key objectives, and we got it. The deal alsoincludes the most comprehensive verification regime evernegotiated, as well as a means to “snap back” multilateral anddomestic sanctions in the event Iran decides to cheat.Q:A:Did we just take whatever deal we could get, because we wanted this deal too much?If we wanted a bad deal, we could have had one a long time ago. But thePresident and our negotiators insisted on waiting until Iran made the toughdecisions that were needed to get the good deal that we got.Hundreds of dedicated professionals from the Departmentsof State, Energy (including our leading national labs),Treasury, the Intelligence Community, and other agenciesworked tirelessly over the past few years and more to testevery part of this deal and make sure that it did exactly whatthe President demanded — that it effectively cut off all Iran’spathways to enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.And we made clear to the Iranians — both publicly andprivately — that we would walk away if we could not get a dealthat met our objectives.