Suzanne Maloney

If [President Trump is] convinced the restrictions imposed were insufficient, or the monitoring of the [Iranian] regime was insufficient, how does the absence of these measures and restrictions provide greater security for the U.S.?...I would interpret [withdrawing from the JCPOA] as an ego move. It played to his own sense of identification as sort of the master of the deal, even at the risk of a global calamity.

The [Iran nuclear] deal isn't a treaty. It's an international political agreement. That means the U.S. voluntarily bought into it, and it doesn't necessarily mean the whole thing falls apart. One of the peculiarities of the agreement [is that it] does not include mechanisms for withdrawal.

There was nothing new in Netanyahu's presentation [about Iran's nuclear program].

“[Netanyahu] knows how to influence the president: He watches television. This was broadcast live, he had the props, it seemed very Fox News like in the sense of its production values. This was not so much to tell president [Trump] something he didn’t know; it’s to give the president a sense that he recognizes it’s important because he’s seen it on TV.”

It was clear over the course of [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's] address that it really wasn’t intended to make any new charges. The point was to underscore the lack of veracity on the part of the Iranian leadership, and that was done very effectively.