May 8, 2026
Dear editor;
I have been a long-term reader of the The Voice, and starting today, a first-time writer. I felt the urge to write after reading the Reader’s Commentary section: “Peace is possible, action was required by Trump in Iran,” in the April 23, 2026 issue of The Voice.
No, action was not required in Iran. There was a treaty in place, that went into effect in January of 2016, commonly called the Iran Nuclear Deal. Basically, about $100 billion belonging to Iran, had been frozen by many different countries (the U.S. had 1.7 billion of those dollars). The treaty allowed for those dollars to be released to Iran and sanctions to be lifted by the U.N., the European Union, the U.S., and other countries.
Iran’s part of the bargain was to stop its nuclear weapons program for 15 years and allow access by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to make sure Iran complied. According to the IAEA and many other accounts, Iran was living up to its end of the bargain.
Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the treaty in 2018, collapsing the deal. That was by far, the worst foreign policy mistake by the U.S. in more than 20 years. Because of Trump’s senseless action, we are at where we are today: We are at war, people are being killed, injured, and displaced. It is costing the U.S. military more than $2 billion a day to run this war, and consumer prices are going through the roof because the costs of goods sold, is tied very closely to the price of oil. None of this needed to happen if the Iran Nuclear Deal was kept in place.
Pat McNamara, Yorkville