American Prestige Bonus - The Death of the Iran Deal w/ Esfandyar Batmanghelidj (Preview)
Oct 5, 2025
Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins, returns to discuss the unraveling of the Iran nuclear deal. He details the European Union's activation of the UN 'snapback' mechanism and its implications. The conversation dives into the consequences of sanctions without diplomacy and explores the impact of Trump's withdrawal and Biden's indecision. Batmanghelidj warns that the JCPOA’s collapse reflects a broader breakdown in international relations.
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How Snapback Was Supposed To Work
- Snapback was designed as a technical deterrent to prevent Iranian violations from being blocked by vetoes at the UN Security Council.
- The mechanism lets a single JCPOA participant reimpose previous UN sanctions without an affirmative Security Council vote.
Asymmetry Made The Deal Fragile
- Snapback was asymmetric because it punished only Iranian breaches while lacking a matching cost mechanism for other parties' noncompliance.
- That asymmetry left the deal vulnerable when a major party, like the U.S., exited and undermined the agreement's balance.
Sanctions Reset To Pre-Deal Landscape
- With snapback invoked, the JCPOA effectively died and the UN sanctions lifted in 2015 were reimposed.
- That returns the sanctions landscape close to the 2012 pre-deal situation but in a very different geopolitical context.