Barack Obama appeared on Late Night with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday evening and decided it was a good time to rewrite history. And he did it with a smile and a room full of applauding liberals who were never going to challenge his lies.
Obama took veiled shots at President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, and dared to claim his diplomacy was a smashing success. “There’s no dispute that it worked, and we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz,” Obama said.
President Obama on Iran: “We pulled it off without firing a missile. We got 97% of their enriched uranium out. There’s no dispute that it worked and we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz” pic.twitter.com/ELRAVFwW7y
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 13, 2026
Actually, there is a dispute. Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran was a failure, and he knows it.
In fact, Operation Epic Fury wouldn’t have been necessary at all if the JCPOA had delivered what Obama promised. Instead of blocking Iran’s path to nuclear weapons, the deal functioned as an act of appeasement that empowered and enriched one of the world’s most dangerous regimes.
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Let’s go back to before the nuclear deal was even signed. It was such a bad deal that Obama couldn’t even get it ratified by the Senate. Even Chuck Schumer opposed it, noting that under Obama’s agreement, Iran “will be able to achieve its dual goals of eliminating sanctions while ultimately retaining its nuclear and non-nuclear power.”
Obama couldn’t even convince members of his party that the deal would prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, so he bypassed the ratification process entirely, treating it as an executive agreement. It was unconstitutional, but that was apparently a small price to pay for the foreign policy legacy he so desperately craved.
And that legacy obsession is key to understanding everything that followed.
Obama and his team marketed the JCPOA as a landmark diplomatic achievement. What they actually delivered was a massive financial gift to Tehran. Sanctions were lifted, granting the Iranian regime access to an estimated $150 billion in previously frozen assets. The U.S. also covertly sent the mullahs $1.7 billion in cash. Every major concession in the deal strengthened Iran, giving the regime money and breathing room to develop nuclear weapons, instead of constraining its behavior.
Iran wasted no time making clear it had no intention of honoring even the letter of the agreement, let alone its spirit. Within three months of signing, Tehran test-fired ballistic missiles in open defiance of UN resolutions. German intelligence later reported that Iran continued seeking technology for a military nuclear program after the deal was signed. The IAEA documented repeated violations of material limits.
But, here’s the thing… even Obama conceded that Iran was at least violating the “spirit” of the deal. Even outlets typically sympathetic to Obama couldn’t ignore the problems. In 2015, the New York Times reported that Iran had breached its enrichment limits before the deal was even finalized. Inspectors found that while the Obama White House insisted Iran’s nuclear program was “frozen,” the country’s nuclear stockpile actually grew by roughly 20%. Iran was supposed to convert certain nuclear materials for peaceful use; instead, it let its stockpile expand while U.S. officials looked the other way.
In short, Obama is lying about his nuclear deal — and of course Colbert didn’t challenge him on his lies.
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