The 2016 Iran nuclear agreement imposed strict, independently verified limits on Iran’s nuclear program. Its existence raises fundamental questions about the legality of the Trump administration’s 2026 attack on Iran.
The details of the 2016 agreement that the Obama Administration and European allies made with Iran show why President Donald Trump should be indicted for the war crime of waging an aggressive war.
That agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the nuclear-armed US, UK, France, China, and Russia, and Germany and Iran, which Iran abided by for two years until Trump tore it up, made it impossible for Iran to make a nuclear bomb.
Last week, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent denied that the Obama-era agreement ever happened.
“This administration, President Trump, has done something that no other administration was able to do,” he said. “We have gotten the Iranians to talk about their nuclear program and perhaps commit to not having one. That has never happened before. It had been off the table.”
This is utterly untrue. Obama not only got Iranians to talk about their nuclear program but to agree to detailed restrictions on uranium and plutonium enrichment with verifiable inspections that would make construction of a bomb impossible.
In January 2016, under the headline, ‘The historic deal that will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon’, the White House stated: “On January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has completed the necessary steps under the Iran deal that will ensure Iran’s nuclear program is and remains exclusively peaceful.”
This is the verification of the International Atomic Energy Agency – the independent international body that has been doing nuclear verification since 1957.
Trump and his Cabinet toadies are in complete denial that it ever happened.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “Only one president was willing to lay it out on the line and ensure after 47 years that Iran is not capable of having a nuclear weapon.”
Again, not true.
There are a couple of reasons for the denial. One, they work on the basis that anything Obama did must be bad or if good, deny it happened. And, secondly, that if in the past the US had the security of a nuclear-bomb-incapable Iran it would not be possible to argue that Trump’s 2026 attack on Iran was justified as self-defence.
There are only two legally valid reasons to go to war: self-defence and UN authorisation. Trump’s attack on Iran met neither of the criteria. It was the criminal waging of an aggressive war, and he is responsible for all the death and destruction that followed. The International Criminal Court should start an investigation into Trump.
This does not excuse the violence, aggression, and human-rights breaches by the Iranian regime. But they in turn do not excuse illegal Trump’s and the US conduct either.
Iranian scepticism of US bona fides is, however, justified, given US engineering of the 1953 coup against a democratic Iranian Government; the US arming and empowerment of the Shah of Iran’s 26-year brutal repression, torture and murder; the US’s unapologetic 1988 shooting down of Iran Flight 655 killing 290 innocent people; and the US’s reneging on the 2016 nuclear agreement after Iran had verifiably abided by it for two years.
Yes, international law is difficult or near impossible to enforce, but if both sides in any international conflict resort to right-is-might the consequence is always unnecessary death and destruction. More importantly, if a great number of nations adhere to international law, it isolates and pressures those countries and their leaders who do not. With economic and physical consequences.
At least, European and other democratic allies realised Trump’s Iran illegality and refused to take part. Once burned by US President George W Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, twice shy. At least Bush tried to get UN sanction for his invasion. Not Trump.
With Iran, Trump has made Americans and others pay dearly. He has proven to be a not stable genius but an unstable fool.
The only consistency about Trump’s action has been that he has acted at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has always seen the Iranian regime and its proxy Hamas as existential threats and therefore excusing the application of whatever disproportionate excessive military force he wants against them.
The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity over his actions in starving, persecuting and murdering Palestinians.
And still he unapologetically continues. Last week he ordered the military to take control of 70 per cent of the Gaza Strip. It already controls 60 per cent. What is this? A quest for lebensraum? (Google it)
The one hope is that even though neither Israel nor the US can any longer be described as fully rule-of-law democracies, they still hold elections. Even if flawed, they are not hopelessly skewed.
It means a real test for democracy looms later this year in both countries. Elections are due in Israeli before October and the US in November. Surely, enough decent Israelis and Americans will see the catastrophe into which Netanyahu and Trump have led them and neuter their power to the fullest extent possible.
Opinion polls are giving hope, with a Jerusalem Post poll saying 55 per cent of Israelis do not want Netanyahu to stand for election and Gallup putting Trump’s disapproval rating at 58 per cent.
The other two strongmen whose breaches of international law have made the world demonstrably much more awful, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and China’s Xi Jinping, do not have to worry about opinion polls, only revolutions.
And the lessons for Australia? Stick to the rule of law and keep an appropriate distance from the US. And the lessons for Australian voters, who on current polls seem set to give One Nation more votes than any other party? Pay attention. Look at history.
Look at Hanson cosying up to Trump and their similarities – joining forces with billionaires; accepting gifts of aircraft in questionable circumstances; and more.
British voters surely wouldn’t vote to leave the EU and trash their economy? US voters surely would not vote for Trump – twice – likely handing over world economic and political leadership to China?
Australians surely would not vote to put One Nation’s Pauline Hanson in the Prime Minister’s Lodge with who knows what consequence?
Republished from Crispin Hull. This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 2 June 2026.
Crispin Hull
Crispin Hull has written for The Canberra Times for 30 years on a huge range of topics, but mainly legal and constitutional. He was Editor for seven years. He taught journalism at the University of Canberra, and is the author of ‘The High Court of Australia 1903-2003’ and ‘Canberra – Australia’s National Capital’. He is also a marine rescue skipper on the Great Barrier Reef with Marine Rescue Queensland.