Two weeks ago President Trump wrote a personal letter to Iran’s supreme leader in the hope of starting talks over Tehran’s fast-advancing nuclear program. He followed that gesture by publicly warning Tehran of possible military action if a deal couldn’t be reached.
Next came a new round of economic sanctions on Iran’s oil industry. Finally, this past weekend he authorized airstrikes against targets in Yemen that are allegedly controlled by the Houthis, an Iranian-backed militia.
Mr. Trump’s unpredictable strategy to contain Iran’s missile and nuclear technology has set Washington and Tehran on a collision course that carries the potential for a wider Middle Eastern crisis. If he is serious about brokering a deal to rein in Iran’s nuclear program, his administration needs to back away from the current escalation.
It’s clear the coercive element of the campaign is not working. Tehran is now further from the negotiating table and Iranian leadership is increasingly defiant about engagement, describing the White House’s framework for talks as capitulation or else.
Mr. Trump’s letter was publicly rejected by both President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. “The insistence of some bullying governments on negotiations is not to resolve issues,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to Iranian state media. “Talks for them is a pathway to have new demands, it is not only about Iran’s nuclear issue.”
They may have spurned Mr. Trump’s overture, but Iran’s foreign ministry said this week that it would issue a response.
Indeed, there’s geopolitical momentum propelling Iran toward a deal. The war in Gaza has been devastating to Iran’s network of proxy forces in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. U.S.-Israeli air defenses rendered its ballistic missile arsenal, once widely feared, ineffectual during two major Iranian attacks on Israel.
Perhaps foremost among Iran’s concerns is its faltering economy. The value of its currency, the rial, has dropped to record lows. Inflation has averaged around 40 percent annually for the past few years, resulting in soaring prices for average Iranians. The situation is so dire that Iran’s Parliament this month removed the country’s finance minister from office.
A declining economy, and the domestic unrest that came with it, helped lead Iran to negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal. The landmark agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, offered Iran sweeping relief from Western economic sanctions in exchange for strict limits on its nuclear program.
Under the terms of the deal, Iran limited uranium enrichment, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, gained unfettered access to its known nuclear facilities. That all changed when Mr. Trump abandoned the deal in 2018 during his first term as president, even though it was widely accepted that Iran was abiding by the agreement; almost every major ally lobbied Mr. Trump to stay in.
Mr. Trump then put in place some 1,500 sanctions against companies and individuals doing business with Iran. He hoped that would pressure the country into an agreement with additional limits on its missile program and its financial support for Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups across the Middle East. It didn’t work. A series of tit-for-tat military escalations involving proxies ensued, bringing Iran and the United States closer to conflict, and Iran pushed its nuclear program to new heights. Now we’re back to the beginning.
Tehran insists it is pursuing peaceful technology, but it is enriching uranium to 60 percent purity (compared to the original deal’s 3.67 percent), which is unjustified for civilian use. It is just one technical step away from 90 percent bomb fuel. An International Atomic Energy Agency report last month said Iran’s stocks of uranium enriched to 60 percent grew substantially over the last quarter, to 275 kilograms — or enough material, if enriched further, to build about six weapons.
A nuclear Iran is nightmarish, considering it has sponsored terrorism against the United States and its allies across the region for more than 40 years.
“All options are on the table,” Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, said Sunday on the ABC News program “This Week.” When asked what Iran needed to give up, he said “the missiles, the weaponization, the enrichment” of the nuclear program. It demonstrated how far apart the two sides are. The Iranians have shown no interest in negotiating away their missile program, so it makes little sense to gamble on an all-or-nothing deal.
The Trump administration faces no good military options in Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has tried to pressure Mr. Trump to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities in a joint air operation. It’s an optimal time, he suggests, because Israeli airstrikes destroyed radar stations and air defenses during a bombing run in October.
But a military strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, much of which is buried deep underground, is unlikely to inflict irreversible damage. Then there’s the added danger of starting a wider war.
Iranian officials have a conundrum of their own. Weaponizing their nuclear program would run afoul of commitments made under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which in a half-century has only ever been violated by North Korea. It could force adversaries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey to consider developing bomb programs of their own. It could also provoke an attack by Israel, the United States, or both, despite past American forbearance.
Iran getting a bomb or Iran getting bombed are both bad options. So how can they be forced to restrain the program?
Iran has not held direct negotiations with American officials since the United States abrogated the agreement. But there are now more moderate voices in Iran, including that of President Pezeshkian, who have spoken favorably about the possibility of negotiations, as long as the administration halts its “maximum pressure” campaign. The two sides may not be able to turn back the clock 10 years to the original nuclear deal. But a new agreement could and should center on the same simple tenets: Iran pulling back its nuclear program from producing weapons-grade fissile material in exchange for relief from U.S. sanctions.
Iran should return to its enrichment caps, allow inspectors back into its facilities and offer to eliminate its growing stockpile of uranium enriched to at least 60 percent. In return, the United States should ease its pressure campaign and clear the way for investments in Iran from corporations that don’t want to risk U.S. Treasury Department sanctions.
Iran has in the past ignored or defied U.N. resolutions intended to restrain its nuclear and missile programs. It was, however, considered to be compliant with the 2015 nuclear deal until Mr. Trump walked away three years later. The other signatories that helped negotiate that deal — Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China — still have an important role to play.
The nations have until Oct. 18 to reimpose U.N. sanctions on Iran, which had been lifted, if they find “significant nonperformance” of commitments. The so-called “snapback” mechanism, which was established under the deal, presents a natural timeline for Iran to address concerns about its uranium enrichment before its flagging economy is squeezed further: make concessions seven months before the deadline.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have not been this high since 2020, when missiles fired by Iranian military forces downed a Ukrainian jetliner carrying 176 people, apparently because they mistook the plane for an American cruise missile. There’s a recognition on all sides — at least for now — that a regional conflict is in no one’s interest. Securing a deal is the best way to avoid it.
W.J. Hennigan writes about national security issues for Opinion from Washington, D.C. He has reported from more than two dozen countries, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of U.S. service members.
Source photographs by ambassador806 and blackred/Getty Images
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