Have the United States and Iran for adversaries for over 45 years, at the dawn of the struck of a new nuclear agreement?
After two cycles of indirect diplomacy between the senior officials of the two powers, it is still too early to answer this question with confidence. What is very clear is that Washington and Tehran try at least to determine If there is a mutually accessible agreement, the one who will resolve the legitimate concerns of the two parties and will avoid a potential military conflict that neither President Trump nor the Iranian Head of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants.
The latter observation may seem surprising. Trump, after all, threatened to bomb Iran several times in recent weeks, more recently on April 17, when he told journalists from the oval office that it would be “very bad for Iran” if that had not concluded an agreement. You don't need a diploma in international relations to receive Trump's message.
However, Trump is also the man who I chose to give diplomacy a chance Rather than the plans of Israel in the green light to destroy the nuclear program of Tehran militarily. The president collapses and brandishes a big stick, but he is often reluctant to use it, partly because the start of wars is much easier than finishing them. The last thing Trump wants is to dive the United States into another full-fledged conflict in the Middle East, especially when he has eviscerated America's past wars in the region like expensive and stupid. If he thought that the war in Iraq was a mistake – and it was – then launching a war against a country with more than double Iraqi population, and with a stronger government today than that of Saddam Hussein in 2003, it would be a raw error in judgment.
This is why he rolls the dice on diplomacy. So far, the process has worked as well as anyone. The American envoy Steve Witkoff and the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi pronounce the same notes on progress, And they agreed to meet A third time this Saturday. But today's progress can easily turn into a failure of tomorrow. There is no guarantee that the current diplomatic process will succeed.
The road to a nuclear agreement is long and difficult made even more arduous by three key factors.
First, the Trump administration seems divided as to the end of the appropriate part of these negotiations. In Trump's mind, the objective is clear: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. But he often changes his mind according to who he spoke for the last time. A few days after having tabled the relatively limited “weapon” goal, Trump said“Iran must get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon”, which implies that the teheran enrichment factories should be sealed once and for all.
Witkoff has thought About the institution of a strict verification and monitoring program to guarantee that Tehran cannot armed his nuclear knowledge. Ironically, it looks exactly like the agreement that Trump could have inherited If he hadn't withdrew from the Obama's complete full -joint action plan in 2018.
Meanwhile, the national security advisor Mike Waltz and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio speak As if Iran should abandon everything, as the late Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi did it when he gave his weapons of mass destruction to American inspectors in 2003 and 2004.
In short, there are competing factions within the Trump administration which stand out for Iranian policy, and this debate must be settled before any substance is really discussed with the Iranians. If Waltz and Rubio prevail, the talks have no leg to stand up.
Diplomacy will succeed or fail according to the flexible parties at the negotiating table. American requests must be reasonable, not maximalist. The same goes for Iran. According to press accounts, Iranian officials I want Trump to guarantee That he or a future American president will not withdraw from any agreement which is negotiated. Given the recent history of Washington, withdrawing from the JCPOA three years after its signature, then re -imposing sanctions against Iran, you cannot blame Khamenei for having asked for him.
The problem is that no American president can make this promise. The Trump administration will give Iran the same answer as the Biden administration gave when it carried out its own interviews with Iran in 2021 and 2022: no president can legally link the choices of a future American administration. Even a ratified treaty in the Senate, the most sustainable international relations agreement that the United States may have, does not guarantee lasting implementation.
The presidents have withdrawn from the treaties in the past – Trump retired from the Treaty of Nuclear Forces of the Intermediate range And the open -air treaty During his first mandate – and the presidents will undoubtedly do so in the future. If Iran does not move on this question or if the two parties do not carry out another arrangement which would at least promote responsibility during the implementation phase, diplomacy runs the risk of failure.
One thing is certain: the more the United States and Iran go to a nuclear agreement, the stronger the criticisms of a diplomatic solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who convinced Trump to leave the full joint action plan during his first mandate, publicly affirms that he will support only an agreement that strips Tehran from his capacity for enrichment. But if the Iranians did not accept this in 2004, when their nuclear program was much more rudimentary than it is now, it is illogical to expect them to do it now. Netanyahu deliberately presents the conditions that Iran will reject purely and simple, hoping that it will persuade Trump to abandon diplomacy for the military force. Trump must be prepared for this scenario and, unlike his first mandate, willing to resist bad advice.
Although Trump will never admit it publicly, his negotiations with Iran are now an attempt to clean a mess he has created, and one that the Biden administration did nothing to repair, when he scuttled the JCPOA. Time will say if he can really do it.
Daniel R. Depetris is a member of defense priorities
