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Various media outlets have been saying 'just one more year of Maximum Pressure and the hated Iranian Regime will finally collapse!' for at least 10 years now. So if we considered them believable and wanted Iran to collapse, then maybe it was a bad idea. Then again, according to them Iran has been 6 months away from nuclear arms for the last 20 years or so.
Trying to lower tension in the Middle East is a good move. Iran has oil they want to sell, the West (perhaps not America these days) has money and wants oil. There's no good reason why we can't have cordial commercial relationships with these countries (and crack down on Islamism at home). China manages it. Islamic countries line up to say 'we don't care about Uyghurs, cuius regio, eius religio' because the Chinese don't go around invading Islamic countries, they just trade and give the right noises on Israel. China's happy to trade with Israel too, it all works out nicely for them. That's the kind of relationship we should be aiming for.
In as far as the JCPOA was a way to withdraw militarily from the Middle East, it was a good move.
And what have we gotten after the JCPOA? We've gotten more war, more conflict and Iran moving closer to Russia and China. How is that a good outcome? Nobody can prove that it would've been better if the JCPOA remains but it's certainly not good that shortly after removing it, things get worse.
We need to appreciate that regions have their own natural equilibriums. We may not like those equilibriums but they exist nonetheless and often we don't have the power to change them. If we do have the power to change them, let's make sure it's worth the cost and risk.
The equilibrium for Afghanistan is an Islamist warlordist/theocratic state. We shouldered a great burden like Atlas (or the Soviet Union before us) but our preferred equilibrium 'ostensibly democratic corruption/pedophilia/drug haven' was massively unstable and relied on vast infusions of cash and competent Western soldiers. It was a bad idea to keep forcing this, we should've left much sooner.
Why are we trying to prop up a democratic Iraq? Why are we trying to pressure Syria into changing? We got masses of instability and ISIS out of both, yet we still haven't learnt our lesson. Why are we trying to pressure Iran, a turnkey nuclear power? Let's pack up and go home, leave some Ozymandias-style monument to regime-change to waste away in the desert. If Iran tries invading Kuwait, that's a clear problem, we should show up and secure our oil suppliers with a quick defensive war. Otherwise, let's leave it alone.
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