Iran nuclear agreement is essential

Bret Stephens cautions us against restoring the Iran nuclear agreement, formally known as the Join Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, which President Donald Trump walked away from in 2018 though Iran was found to be in compliance and continued to be so for one year after Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from it. It was then Iran began to become non-compliant (“Bret Stephens: Will anyone punish Iran for its murderous campaign?” Aug. 29).

Since then, Iran, which had kept uranium enrichment under 4% as the JCPOA required and allowed inspections from the international agency responsible for monitoring compliance, has now enriched uranium to 60% (compared to the 90% required to make a nuclear weapon). Why in the world would Mr. Stephens warn us not to get back into compliance with the agreement as President Joe Biden had promised?

His reason is that since Iran has been a bad actor on the world stage, to negotiate with it would show “weakness.” We must not show “weakness” — as if this were a tennis match. These are nuclear weapons we are risking yet another nation acquiring. Better advice would be to remind us of the wise warning President John F. Kennedy gave the world over 60 years ago: “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

President Biden should restore the JCPOA before it is too late and keep his wise campaign promise.

— Gwen L. DuBois, Baltimore

The writer is president of Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility.