In keeping with the long-standing trend of Trump taking credit for working to solve crises he himself started (such as stopping a potential war with Iran after he ordered IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani assassinated in 2020), Trump and his team are now heralding a potential “diplomatic solution” to the Iranian nuclear issue, seven years after he himself tore up that diplomatic solution. While foreign states may not have known quite how to deal with Trump in his first term, Trump’s second term has allowed governments to coalesce around a general strategy to get what they want: speaking in Trump-esque language, and constantly sucking up.
Albeit shameless, this strategy has paid off for Gulf Arab states, with Trump showering them in praise during his latest regional tour. It also paid off for Syria, whose new president and former al-Qaeda leader Ahmed al-Shara’a won relief from crippling sanctions after meeting with Trump personally. Iran, to a certain degree, has also adapted, showing its full willingness to cooperate with negotiations, and with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi even posting on X in ways that Trump and his associates would find familiar: simple statements with all caps and insulting nicknames galore.
Where this strategy runs into a roadblock however is where Iran’s aims meet with America’s aims, and more importantly, Israel’s aims. As we approach a potential sixth round of indirect negotiations in Oman, Iran and America’s teams remain at a critical impasse that shows no sign of actually, veritably abating: whether Iran should be allowed to have any uranium enrichment whatsoever. In previous rounds of negotiations with the Obama administration, there was an understanding that Iran could maintain enrichment at very low levels, consistent with a civilian program. In these rounds, there is no such understanding. Iran is being asked to give up its nuclear program in its entirety, despite being allowed to by the NPT.
When the original Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or JCPOA), was being negotiated in 2015, much was written in the American press and discussed by American politicians about how untrustworthy the Iranians were. Iran would still conduct nuclear activities in secret, our greatest ally Israel would be isolated, and nuclear “breakout time” entered the common parlance, with various organizations and officials calculating and recalculating how much time Iran would have to make a nuclear weapon should the agreement fall apart. Even an agreement that forced Iran to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67% for 15 years and eliminate almost all of its uranium stockpile was not enough. More, sometimes detailed in vague terms, sometimes explicitly stated as a military attack, needed to be done to extract concessions from the Iranians.
For Iran’s part, the Barjam (the Persian acronym for the JCPOA) was also controversial inside the nation, but for the exact opposite reason. Despite the approval given by Supreme Leader Khamenei and his support for what he termed “heroic flexibility” in diplomacy, many conservative politicians were distrustful of the United States and disapproved of handing over what they deemed as the sovereign right of Iran, to enrich uranium by its own directives and without American oversight. One MP, Mehdi Kouchakzadeh, attempted to shout down the approval of the agreement in parliament, and after the motion passed, publicly wept. Many Iranians around the country celebrated the deal and the lifting of many of the most crippling economic sanctions, welcoming then-foreign minister Javad Zarif as a hero upon his return to Tehran. Such celebration would be short-lived.
The failure of such an agreement, in the minds of Republicans, was such a given that, like many prophecies, it had to be initiated by the prophesiers themselves. In March 2015, 47 Republican senators wrote an extraordinary letter to Iran saying that any agreement with then-president Barack Obama was meaningless as “the next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen”. In 2018, only three years later, the president after Obama, Donald Trump, tore up the agreement.
In the end, those skeptical of America’s commitment to such a plan had their worst fears materialize. Iran was left for a time in the untenable position of holding to the terms of an agreement that America no longer participated in: still being heavily sanctioned by America yet still holding to limits on uranium enrichment that America had requested. As months of lopsided compliance turned into years, Iran began phasing up its uranium enrichment in protest, and in 2020, announced it no longer would abide by key restrictions imposed by the JCPOA. For the past four years, its nuclear enrichment has hovered around 60%, below the 90% needed to make a nuclear weapon but still well above what is necessary to run a civilian nuclear power plant.
If Iran were to change its long-standing, Supreme Leader-imposed nuclear doctrine of never developing nuclear weapons, starting from 60% enrichment instead of 3.67% would certainly be no small aid. Still, a nation attempting to build a nuclear weapon in secret would not have publicly announced its increasing enrichment at every stage, broadcast debates of the issue in parliament on national television, and made it the subject of daily political discussions everywhere in the country. This enrichment has been, more than anything else, a tactic to bring the United States back to the negotiating table. If there must be sanctions, then there will be increasing enrichment, the one thing you say you fear. Doesn’t take a genius to see a deal can easily be made.
Enter: an American president who, above seemingly everything else ideological, loves being the “deal-maker-in-chief.”
Despite having seen the workings of the Trump administration before, through the destruction of the original nuclear deal and the near-military concentrations that followed, Iranian negotiators are still in some ways catching up to the reality of how Trump in his second term is operating. When interviewed on Sky News, Araghchi said forthrightly that “[Iran] does not respond to the language of threats. […] But we do respond to the language of respect.” Araghchi and pro-diplomatic figures inside Iran have attempted to sell these negotiations to the public with similar language used during the JCPOA negotiations, saying that it is not “surrender” and that they will always reject “domination” from abroad. Nevertheless, Iranian diplomats have reportedly been bewildered by the state of the Trump negotiating team, coming in “eager for a durable deal” but finding American diplomats who were “dithering, divided, distracted by other conflicts, and incapable of holding to a consistent position.”
Despite media claims of a deal approaching and successful rounds of negotiations, eliminating what were apparently pushes to enact restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program as well, that central issue has not been resolved. While current American discussions center the idea that Iran cannot be trusted in these negotiations, and that all capacity for Iran to build a hypothetical nuclear weapon needs to be eliminated, these same discussions were had in 2015 as well. In the end, Iran did not destroy the agreement first. It was a unilateral decision by the Americans, a political one, driven by pre-planned political action rather than veritable accusations of non-compliance. Every action by the Trump administration, whether it be with Iran or elsewhere, indicates a fundamental truth when it comes to diplomacy: the Americans cannot be trusted.
There is no greater evidence of this than the negotiations still currently ongoing for another Gaza ceasefire, something increasingly out of reach. Steve Witkoff, the US Special Envoy for the Middle East, had earlier been portrayed as a dealmaker in Trump’s image (he is himself a former real estate investor) who was concerned with getting things done than petty politics. He brokered the first long-term Gaza ceasefire in January with little effort. The breaking of that ceasefire however was of little concern to Witkoff, and unilateral negotiations to free the American-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander from Gaza ended up being a horrifying exercise in deceit. Witkoff had promised Hamas that the blockade on Gaza would be lifted if Alexander was released, without Israel needing to be negotiated with as well. Alexander went home to New Jersey, and the crippling siege was not lifted. Hamas had given up arguably its most critical hostage for nothing in return.
In the Iran talks, we are seeing similar run-arounds happening in real time. When talk of dismantling Iranian nuclear capabilities is put on the table, President Trump speaks about the need for America to be able to “take whatever we want, […] blow up whatever we want. But nobody getting killed.” When talk of Iran’s sovereign right to enrichment comes up, Witkoff proposed recognizing Iran’s right to enrich uranium while simultaneously demanding its complete cessation. Even when it seemed like there was a breakthrough, when Witkoff finally agreed to allow a limited amount of nuclear enrichment, the caveats rendered it functionally moot.
The Iran-suggested nuclear enrichment consortium, wherein Iran, Saudi Arabia, and possibly the UAE would enrich uranium together, the United States still insisted that not only would nuclear enrichment be just allowed temporarily, with the expectation that Iran would stop enriching it, but any future building of centrifuges or even nuclear research would still be banned. Khamenei advisor Mohammad-Javad Larijani has said regarding the matter of halting nuclear enrichment altogether: "Right now, America says don’t enrich uranium. A bit later, they’ll say don’t even learn physics or math. From their perspective, we probably shouldn’t work in the field of science at all—we should focus on music, dance, and singing."
There is however no more of a clear act of deceit happening than the narrative emerging that Israel and the US are at loggerheads over what to do about Iran. Israel’s want to strike Iranian nuclear facilities has existed since the nuclear program began, and Israel has a history of unilateral strikes against the nascent nuclear programs of its adversaries, such as Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. Iran’s program however is highly advanced, its capabilities spread across the country, and its enrichment oftentimes done in facilities deep underground. Attempting to attack these facilities with any level of success would require American support of some kind, yet it has been portrayed that Israel’s desire to strike if talks fail or if a “bad deal” is reached (meaning if any enrichment is allowed) is somehow against America’s interests.
What is in fact being proposed is not two different scenarios but one, unified scenario: one in which Iran either dismantles its sovereignty from within, or Israel dismantles it from without. Either Iran agrees to have its nuclear capabilities destroyed without a fight, or have it be attacked by America’s closest ally. There is no guarantee that a “diplomatic solution” would even stave off a potential military strike by Israel or even give Iran anything in return.
Iran’s rejection of Witkoff’s current version of the consortium proposal points to the fact that no sanctions relief is even offered for eliminating its nuclear enrichment capabilities. In addition, a core ask is that Iran must immediately halt enrichment in its underground facilities, moving enrichment to overground facilities until those would eventually be halted as well. One might say that this is to ensure that Iran’s nuclear activities can be effectively monitored—another might say that this would be to move Iran’s uranium enrichment from facilities that the International Atomic Energy Agency chief says are difficult to destroy from the air, to places where Israel could be able to destroy them from the air.
Even as reports emerge about Trump’s hesitation about striking Iran, of warning Netanyahu off a military attack, this movie has been seen before, in the endless reporting (from even the same reporters and outlets) about the supposedly constant friction between Biden and Netanyahu about the war on Gaza. If Iran is facing a good cop/bad cop situation, then it bears reminding that those two cops are on the same force, working toward the same goal. This requires no analysis, no reaching assumptions, you only have to take it from the president himself, as he said after speaking with Netanyahu in April: “We are on the same side of every issue.”
Excellent analysis. Very proud of my son.