Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who worked on the Iran nuclear deal with President Barack Obama in 2015, is sharing his opinion on the current Israel-Iran conflict and the U.S.’s involvement.
[Note: Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, a.k.a. the Iran deal), an international agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief, was finalized in 2015. During the first Trump administration, in 2018, the U.S. withdrew from the pact and imposed sanctions against Iran. In 2019, Iran announced that it had breached the limit on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium set by the scuttled Iran deal.]
Video of Trump backing out of the Iran Deal in 2018. The deal would have allowed inspections to ensure that Iran wouldn’t develop nuclear weapons. pic.twitter.com/nEcIuDt3Vy
— PatriotTakes
(@patriottakes) June 17, 2025
McFaul, who also worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and senior director of Russian and Eurasian affairs, wrote on social media today: “Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. The question of how to achieve that goal is the only policy question.”
He added: “The mullahs need to take Trump’s deal now.”
The mullahs need to take Trump’s deal now.
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) June 18, 2025
Trump announced on social media that he wants an “unconditional surrender” from Iran and warned Iran against targeting U.S. bases in the region: “We will come down so hard if they do anything to our people, it’d be gloves off. … I think they know not to touch our troops.”
McFaul’s comments are receiving mixed reactions on social media. One political pundit known on X as “DB Cooper” replied to McFaul: “40 years of diplomacy failed and it’s nearly impossible to trust the regime if they do make a deal. They would have to agree to foreign oversight which seems improbable.”
Another chimed in: “Too bad there wasn’t some sort of international agreement to put limits on Iran like the one Obama helped negotiate and Trump withdrew from only because it was signed by Obama.”
But the majority of comments asked questions about which deal the mullahs should take, since Trump himself has been coy — beyond asking for “surrender” — about what the deal terms are that would forestall U.S. military action against the Iran regime. And McFaul didn’t clarify what options the mullahs have been given.
Just after Israel launched its attack, President Trump said: “Iran should have listened to me when I said — you know, I gave them, I don’t know if you know but I gave them a 60-day warning and today is day 61.” He followed up by saying: “They should now come to the table to make a deal before it’s too late. It will be too late for them. You know, the people I was dealing with are dead, the hardliners.”
Suggesting that diplomacy remains a better alternative to missiles, McFaul also wrote: “You can be for democratic change in Iran and against bombing Iran at the same time. It’s a position I had 20 years ago. Don’t conflate being against bombing with being pro-theocracy.”