JCPOA is not perfect; no agreement can meet that standard. But, when assessed as a whole, it does impose tough, verifiable limits: that’s the verdict of many former American military officers and nuclear scientists, as well as arms control experts from the United States and elsewhere. And the deal is better and more feasible than other available options.

Zakaria supports it for these reasons—and he’s right.

Rajan Menon is Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the Colin Powell School of the City College of New York/City University of New York and a Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace at Columbia University. His most recent book (coauthored with Eugene B. Rumer) is Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (MIT Press, 2015); his next book, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2016.

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