The biggest thing Iran deal critics get wrong, in one paragraph

According to critics of the Iran deal, Obama got played. If he had just waited, they argue, painful economic sanctions would have forced the Iranians to cave completely. And when that happened, the United States could have taken down Iran's nuclear program entirely, instead of just limiting it.

This narrative sounds compelling. It's also a total fantasy. The way sanctions actually worked means that the longer the US waited to make a deal, the worse it would have been.