Another negative development due to the assassination of Soleimani is that Iran now effectively has left the "Iran Nuclear Deal".
Now, in American media it often sounds like that was a deal between the Obama administration and Iran. That is wrong.
It was a deal between Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (ie China, Russia, France, Great Britain and the USA) plus Germany and the European Union. Eight signatories. It was also supported by the entire UN Security Council.
The general idea of the treaty was that Iran would abandon its plans of acquiring nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions imposed against them.
Among the concessiond from Iran was a reduction of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 97 percent, from 10,000 kg to 300 kg. This reduction should be maintained for fifteen years. For the same fifteen-year period, Iran agreed to be limited to enriching uranium to 3.67%, a percentage sufficient for civilian nuclear power and research, but not for building a nuclear weapon. Prior to the deal Iran had enriched uranium to near 20%.
Iran also agreed to place over two-thirds of its centrifuges in storage, from a stockpile of 19,000 centrifuges (of which 10,000 were operational) to no more than 6,104 operational centrifuges.
They also agreed to grant the IAEA full access to all their facilities, so that they could monitor compliance to the agreement.
Details can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Com ... _of_Action
All in all this was considered a huge success that truly deescalated tensions in the region, and there was hope to gradually bring Iran into the mainstream of nations. Before the deal, Iran was in a situation where they would be able to get nuclear arms capabilities within a few months. After the deal, they retreated to a position where it will take them more than a year to be able to have nuclear arms.
Then in 2018, the USA unilaterally revoked the agreement. All other signatories pledged to stick with the agreement, and the IAEA confirmed that Iran was fullfilling its part.
Pacta sunt servanda. Not that Trump would seem to be familiar with that concept.
It's probably Greek to him (pun intended).
The USA then threatened to impose sanctions on any foreign company that traded with Iran.
China and Russia can basically ignore this. China can easily create separate shell companies for trading with Iran and the US and can thus render the sanctions toothless. Russia already have heavy sanctions against them for their agression vs Ukraine. But for European companies this posed a real threat. The EU protested loudly and vehemently - the US can impose sanctions against other countries if it wants to, but has no right to dictate that its allies must impose similar sanctions - and quickly adopted blocking legislation that should protect their companies from American hostilities, but this has proven to be largely inefficient. To most European companies the US market is too important to be put at risk, and very few companies have been willing to deal with Iran. This is unfortunate, because if the other signatories can not or will not hold up its part of the deal, why should Iran?
And all signatories, except the USA under Trump, considered the agreement vital to creating lasting peace in the region.
Anyway, after the US walked away from the deal, Iran has increased hostilities toward the US to try to get them back to the negotiation table, but this has not worked. Instead there has been an escalation on both sides. And now, after the assassination of Soleimani, Iran says they no longer intend to follow the restrictions on enriching uranium, which basically means the deal is now dead. They will still allow the IAEA access to their facilities though, to facilitate the possibility of a future return to the deal, should the circumstances change.
So, to sum it up; thanks to Trump being obsessed with reversing everything Obama did, Iran may now pursue nuclear capability again.
) and warned against the further escalation of tensions.