He gives Iran's Nuclear Agreement an A and he is one to consult on the subject of nuclear proliferation so skeptics and certain Republican politicians can breathe a sigh of relief!
Jeffrey Lewis was so eager to read the Iran nuclear deal that he woke up at 3:30 am California time to pore through all 150-plus pages of the text. Lewis is a nukes super nerd: He's the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and also runs an excellent arms control blog network and arms control podcast and has a regular arms control column in Foreign Policy. He is the person to talk to on this.
When Lewis and I first spoke, in early 2015, he was skeptical, as a lot of arms control analysts were. He was skeptical that the US, world powers, and Iran would ever reach a nuclear deal. And he was skeptical that if they did reach a deal, it would be good enough. But when the negotiators released the "framework" in April, describing the broad strokes, Lewis came away impressed and happily surprised — but with some caveats and some unanswered questions.
I called up Lewis to see what he thought of the final deal. His assessment was very positive: Asked to grade the deal, he said,
"I would give it an A."