While Israel had applauded President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the accord in 2018, these former officials have concluded that his “maximum pressure” policy built primarily on sanctions has failed to prevent Iran from increasing the quantity and quality of its enriched uranium…

This approach enabled “Iran to accumulate a lot more material, work on advanced centrifuges, and maybe other things that we don’t know about, all which brought Iran closer than ever before” to acquiring a nuclear bomb, said Yoel Guzansky, former head of the Iran desk at Israel’s National Security Council and a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). “The nuclear deal was flawed, but at least it put a lid on Iran’s advancement, which we don’t have now.”…

“Today, it’s clear that maximum pressure did not yield its political objectives,” said Raz Zimmt, a former military adviser on Iran. He said the policy may actually have accelerated Iranian nuclear progress and that Iran now has the capability of producing enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb on four weeks’ notice.