How Trump’s Hatred of Obama Brought Us to the Brink of War in the Middle East
It wasn't strategy. It wasn't national interest. It was spite.
Donald Trump didn’t just walk away from the Iran nuclear deal. He dismantled it, mocked it, and then used the rubble as kindling for a fire he had no intention of putting out. Not because the deal was failing. Not because Iran had cheated. But because it was Barack Obama’s. And for Trump, that was reason enough.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was never perfect. But it was working. Inspectors had access. Enrichment was capped. The stockpile was shrinking. The international community, even China and Russia, stood behind it. Trump, though, saw only one thing: Obama's signature on a global agreement. And so, like the Paris Accord, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, like anything that smelled of nuance or multilateralism, he pulled the pin and walked away.
That was 2018. Fast forward to now, and we are watching the price of that tantrum unfold in real time.
Israel has launched coordinated strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure. Iran has responded with missile volleys across the region. U.S. naval forces are massed in the Strait of Hormuz. The deal is dead, diplomacy is silent, and a war that nobody voted for is beginning to feel inevitable.
The thing is, this was preventable. That’s the part that stings.
Trump didn’t rip up the deal with a better one in hand. He didn’t call for stronger oversight or new inspections. He didn’t bring allies together to improve what was there. He just ended it. Because it made Obama look good. Because Fox News called it weak. Because he wanted a win, even if that win was setting a fuse to something he didn’t understand.
He called it "maximum pressure." But pressure without diplomacy is provocation. And Iran, boxed in, surrounded, sanctioned to the hilt, responded the only way a cornered state responds. They pushed back.
Enrichment resumed. Monitoring collapsed. Trust disappeared. The U.S. stood alone, our European allies furious, our credibility shattered. And Trump? He held rallies and tweeted insults. While the centrifuges spun again.
Let’s not rewrite history here. Iran’s regime is authoritarian, repressive, and brutal. But they were sticking to the terms. That’s not opinion, that’s the IAEA. The breakout time for a bomb-length enrichment program was over a year. Now, it’s measured in weeks.
And all of it, every inch of this escalation, can be traced back to a single decision, made not in the Situation Room, but in the ego of a man who never read the deal, never understood its function, and never cared to.
We need to stop pretending this was foreign policy. This was vandalism. The kind of petty destruction that only makes sense when viewed through the warped lens of Trumpism: if Obama did it, destroy it. If allies support it, undermine it. If peace requires humility, pick war instead.
This isn’t just about Iran. This is about how personal grudges have become geopolitical strategy. How the United States, once a leader in nuclear nonproliferation, now fans the flames of instability for no greater reason than the vanity of a former president.
The JCPOA gave us time. Trump traded that time for applause lines. Now the region is tilting toward chaos, and the people who will pay for it will not be the ones who broke it. They’ll be civilians, caught in crossfire. Soldiers sent to protect a position we no longer understand. Journalists, aid workers, families who never had a vote in this but will bear the scars.
This was not strategy. This was sabotage.
History will remember how we got here. And when it does, it will not tell a story of noble resistance or hard diplomacy. It will tell the story of a man so determined to destroy his predecessor’s legacy that he torched a working deal, mocked the warnings, and walked us into war.
Not with a plan. Not with a cause. But with a grudge and a pen.