Barack Obama says US is ‘worse off’ than before war with Iran

Barack Obama has said that after 15 weeks of war with Iran , the US is now “worse off” than before the conflict started in February. “We’ve now fought a war, spent billions and billions of dollars, you know, put enormous strain on our military. A lot of people have died. And it feels like we’re back where we were before we started the war, except maybe a little bit worse off,” the former US president told NBC News in an interview that aired on Friday. Obama, who spoke to the outlet before the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago today, offered remarks on the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran signed by Donald Trump in Paris earlier this week. “I am very happy to see a ceasefire,” Obama said. “And I’m hopeful that it holds.” Obama has been critical of the rationale for the conflict and questioned the first Trump administration’s decision to tear up the 2015 agreement with Iran that was negotiated by the Obama administration. Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, that deal restricted Iran from obtaining or developing a nuclear weapon in exchange for lifting international economic sanctions. Obama said that under the JCPOA, “Iran had agreed not to develop nuclear weapons”, but noted that Trump then “pulled out of it, which caused then Iran to develop more nuclear capacity”. …