Obama’s Billion-Dollar Gift to Iran: Missiles Now Falling on Israel
The missiles raining down on Israel were not built in secret — they were built in the open, with cash and cover from the Obama administration.
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June 2025 will be remembered as the month Iranian missiles armed with cluster munitions rained down on Israeli civilians. But this moment was not born in a vacuum. It was enabled by a specific set of decisions – made a decade earlier in Washington.
A Deal That Looked the Other Way
In 2015, President Barack Obama and his administration heralded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as a diplomatic breakthrough. The goal: to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief. But there was a critical omission – one that even the deal’s defenders cannot credibly deny. The JCPOA deliberately excluded any binding restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program.
This was not an oversight. It was a choice.
U.N. Resolution 2231, which accompanied the deal, replaced the prior legal prohibitions on Iran’s missile development with a vague suggestion: it merely “called upon” Iran not to pursue nuclear-capable missiles. Not required. Not monitored. Just "called upon." That language weakened the international consensus and gave Tehran room to maneuver. The arms and missile embargoes were set to expire – and did.
Within months, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard began testing medium-range missiles marked with slogans like “Israel must be wiped out.” By then, the money had already started flowing.
Follow the Money
The JCPOA did more than remove constraints. It unleashed resources. Upwards of \$100 billion in sanctions relief and unfrozen assets entered Iran’s economy, much of it under little or no oversight. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the arm of the regime responsible for both foreign terrorism and missile development – was the primary beneficiary.
Iran’s military budget ballooned. IRGC funding surged. And regional proxies – from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen – began receiving longer-range, more advanced rockets, many of them based on Iranian designs. In Gaza, Hamas’s October 7 massacre of 2023 was, in large part, made possible by weapons and financing funneled in the JCPOA era.
This wasn’t just predicted. It was explicitly warned about
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.S. Congress in 2015: “Iran’s regime will be rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars… This cash bonanza will fuel Iran’s terrorism worldwide, its aggression in the region, and its efforts to destroy Israel.” His prediction has aged with painful accuracy.
A Missile Program Unleashed
By 2020, U.S. intelligence concluded that Iran possessed the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East. The years following the JCPOA saw explosive growth in range, precision, and volume. New solid-fuel models like the Fateh-313 and Zolfaghar gave Iran the ability to strike Israel from within its own borders. More alarmingly, Iran began adapting its missiles to carry cluster munitions – warheads designed to maximize casualties over wide areas.
And that brings us to today.
On June 19, 2025, the Israeli military reported the first confirmed use of a cluster-armed Iranian ballistic missile fired directly at a civilian area. Submunitions scattered over miles. Apartment buildings were struck. A hospital was hit. Brigadier General Effie Defrin described it bluntly: “This was not a strike against infrastructure. This was an attempt to massacre civilians.”
The Cost of Wishful Thinking
The Obama administration insisted that focusing only on nuclear issues was the price of getting a deal. But the consequences of ignoring Iran’s missile program are now impossible to deny. Missiles – not centrifuges – are what threaten Tel Aviv today. Iran’s ability to terrorize Israeli cities, fund regional militias, and build a hardened military infrastructure is directly tied to the resources and legitimacy it gained from the JCPOA.
Was this inevitable? No. But it was foreseeable.
The assumption underlying the 2015 agreement – that a richer, more integrated Iran would moderate – has failed catastrophically. Tehran did not reform. It rearmed. And now, with its economic engine refueled and missile arsenal matured, it feels emboldened to strike beyond its borders with impunity.
Accountability Is Not a Political Weapon
This is not about left vs. right. It’s about cause and effect. Barack Obama made a policy bet. That bet failed. The price of that failure is now being paid in Israeli blood.
No serious analyst denies Iran’s agency. But to pretend that U.S. policy decisions had no impact on the regime’s ability to kill and maim is willful blindness. The JCPOA was not simply a flawed deal. It was a flawed strategic worldview: that empowering Tehran would tame it.
Instead, it armed it.
Final Verdict
Iran’s missiles are not the byproduct of sanctions relief alone. They are the result of a Western decision to ignore one of the most dangerous elements of Iran’s military. They were built while international attention was diverted. They were paid for by oil revenues and assets unfrozen by the JCPOA. And they are now being used – in full daylight – against Israel’s civilians.
Obama did not press the launch button. But he gave Tehran the space, the money, and the time to build the arsenal now being used. That is not speculation. It is history.
And history, if it is honest, will hold him to account.