President Donald Trump is eager for a diplomatic breakthrough. He ought to prioritize seeking one with Iran to deliver on his (and his predecessors’) firm commitment to keep it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Success just might be possible. The trick is to identify principles that will make a deal both viable and desirable: acceptable to all parties and beneficial for U.S. and international interests over the long term.
Iran’s nuclear program must be a priority because the country is close to making a bomb and its current strategic vulnerability—following devastating blows to partners such as Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as Israeli strikes on its territory—makes it more tempting to do so. If Washington does not move quickly, it will also cede leverage: the mechanism that allows for the automatic snapback of UN sanctions on Iran expires this fall.
Negotiations with Iran are always fraught. They are bound to be even more challenging this time around because prioritizing a nuclear-centered deal will compete not only with a crisis-rich international agenda, but also with other strategic priorities on Iran, including curtailing Tehran’s assistance to Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, its destabilizing regional conduct, and brutal domestic repression. Other complicating factors include global anxiety about curbing Iranian oil exports, Russian diplomatic support to Iran, Chinese ambivalence about collaborating with a U.S.-led effort, and tensions between the United States and its European allies. Iranian distrust of Trump—who pulled the United States out of the previous nuclear deal during his first term, authorized the killing of the Revolutionary Guard’s iconic general Qassem Suleimani, and imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions—does not help. On Trump’s side, Iran-inspired plots to assassinate him clearly do not inspire confidence either.
Nevertheless, a Trump-led diplomatic effort is not just necessary but could be fruitful. The president’s mercurial style and political clout may even prove an asset here, allowing Trump to deliver on sanctions relief in ways his predecessors could not. More fundamentally, the odds for success rest with Trump’s inclination to break away from the policies of his predecessors and adopt a fresh approach toward negotiations. His willingness to impose maximum sanctions on Iran that the administration of former president Joe Biden was loath to leverage, coupled with his eagerness to trade them for a different nuclear bargain that is unencumbered by the legacy of the practically defunct 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that the Biden administration was so wedded to reviving mark a new direction. Diplomatic off-ramps might also appeal to an Iran beset by a faltering economy and weakened strategic hand following the fall of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the regime of former president Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as well as Israeli strikes that exposed its military vulnerability.
Ultimately, hope that diplomacy could now yield a deal stems from the risks associated with the alternative for both parties. If Iran moves to build nuclear weapons, the United States and Israel might go to war to try to stop it. This would be very costly to Iran, but it could also escalate to a wider regional conflict that would sap U.S. attention and resources, while offering no guarantee of preventing the reconstitution of the Iranian program or bringing about the downfall of its Islamic regime. Failing to stop Iranian nuclearization would not only empower the regime but would likely drive other countries in the region and beyond to seek their own nuclear weapons.
Given these strategic realities, the Trump administration ought to be laser focused on what it aims to get in a new deal and how it can pursue these goals. First and foremost, policymakers must prioritize settling the nuclear issue. Other concerns with Iran could be dealt with afterward. Relatedly, the United States should eschew protracted haggling over a broad and comprehensive arrangement like the JCPOA. Instead, it should opt for agreement on a set of principles of conduct, guided by the JCPOA’s far simpler predecessor, the 2013 Joint Plan of Action, which halted Iran’s nuclear progress, stabilized relations, and laid the groundwork for a more comprehensive future agreement.
Second, the United States should not fall into the trap of agreeing to another time-bound arrangement. Many of the JCPOA’s key provisions included sunset clauses, meaning that they would lapse after a few years. Iran’s commitments under any new deal should instead comprise an extension and elaboration of the open-ended obligations not to develop nuclear weapons that it took in acceding to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and accepting International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.
Third, desirable as it might otherwise be, the United States must dispense with the aim to roll back Iran’s nuclear program. This lofty goal is unattainable, given how far along Iran has come in indigenizing its program and the value it attaches to retaining it. Insisting on it is also bound to elicit steadfast Iranian resistance. Instead, Washington should insist on comprehensively capping all Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities and activities well beyond uranium enrichment, including those not effectively covered or implemented in previous agreements. These would include nuclear-capable missile production, nuclear weaponization, systems integration, and militarization of its nuclear program. It is in these areas that Iran still has real distance to travel to achieve a nuclear arsenal. They also provide the most credible and telltale signs of Iran’s real intentions.
Finally, the United States should insist on a different approach to monitoring Iranian compliance that deprives Tehran of leverage over IAEA inspections and other transparency requirements. Iran has a dubious track record of complying with IAEA safeguards, which it has aggravated by punitively withholding cooperation to retaliate for the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA and resolutions from the IAEA Board of Governors criticizing its conduct. In recent years, Tehran has stopped implementing the Additional Protocol (a more rigorous safeguards agreement that amplifies the IAEA’s ability to detect potential malfeasance), restricted access to key sites, unplugged IAEA cameras, and de-designated experienced IAEA inspectors.
Going forward, policymakers should bind sanctions relief to first and foremost to unilateral U.S. determination of Iranian compliance with its obligations under the deal, leveraging superior American monitoring and intelligence capabilities and Iranian leadership realization that there is little in this domain that they can conceal from them. Additionally, Iran would need to consistently implement key IAEA monitoring instruments, swiftly ratify the AP safeguards agreement, and cooperate with the IAEA toward a Broader Conclusion that all its nuclear activities are peaceful and accounted for. In this context, the United States ought to insist that on the IAEA’s right to inspect all suspect facilities, including military ones, as well as the right of its Board of Governors to invoke without Iran’s consent the most intrusive instrument in its tool kit, the so-called Special Inspection, if serious suspicions about Iranian compliance with its safeguards obligations arise.
Beyond these principles, the United States could improve the odds of reaching a worthwhile agreement with Iran by skillfully employing various tool to disincentivize Iranian nuclearization. Besides the instinctive resort to sanctions, Washington should employ, as appropriate, selective interdiction of Iranian arms imports and exports, renewed covert and military threats to the nuclear program, and in extremis, poignant threats to the regime’s survival. Equally, though, Washington will need to more credibly employ generous if conditional reassurances and sanctions relief, strive to bring China on board through a bilateral side deal, and soften Russian pushback by making headway on Ukraine.
In the short term, it appears unlikely that the Iranian supreme leader will authorize direct negotiations with the United States, let alone with the Trump administration. But this should not prove an insurmountable obstacle if Washington resorts once again to proximity talks facilitated by a trusted intermediary (such as Oman) and draws on the support of European allies when needed.
