Inside the plan to undo the Iran nuclear deal

For Barack Obama, July 14, 2015 marked the greatest diplomatic triumph of his presidency: Amid flags and flashbulbs in Vienna, his secretary of State, John Kerry, announced a historic, UN-backed nuclear accord to defuse the global security threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

For Mark Dubowitz, the day was a bitter setback. He and his hawkish policy shop, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, had been fighting what they feared would be a bad deal since negotiations were announced. To blunt the sting, Dubowitz and his staff passed around a bottle of Laphroaig scotch. As they clinked glasses and discussed the next phase of their fight, Dubowitz’s eye landed on a souvenir collected by a colleague on a 1979 trip to Tehran: a commemorative plate bearing the face of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, first supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was a spine-stiffening reminder, Dubowitz recalled this week, of “how long Iran has been a sworn enemy of the United States.”

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