President Donald Trump, in a significant and unexpected development, announced on Tuesday “direct talks” with Iran scheduled for Saturday. Notably, he made the announcement sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office. Netanyahu has long pushed for a U.S. war with Iran, Israel’s chief adversary in the region, and some observers discerned a look of dismay on the prime minister’s face as Trump spoke.
In some ways, the announcement shouldn’t have come as a big surprise, to Netanyahu or to anyone else. The president has been signaling for months a strong desire to engage diplomatically with Iran about its nuclear program. In March he sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterating his interest in securing a nuclear deal.
But Trump’s diplomatic overtures have been accompanied by harsh rhetoric, including threats of war. The likely goal is to pressure Tehran to make a deal, but some analysts worry the bellicose statements are unnecessary and could lead to a devastating conflict if Iran lashes out and Trump feels boxed in by his own bravado.
The news of diplomacy thus brings much relief, even as it has given rise to an odd ambiguity. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, confirmed that high-level talks with the U.S. will take place in Oman, but contrary to Trump’s statement, he said they would be “indirect.” Whether American and Iranian envoys meet face-to-face or communicate via mediators, what really matters is the start of dialogue between the Trump administration and Tehran. Considering the dangerous volatility of the status-quo, which Israel is exploiting to push the U.S. to strike Iranian nuclear sites, Trump’s announcement of negotiations is itself an important de-escalatory move, not least because it seemed intended, in part, as a power move vis-à-vis Netanyahu.
The substance of negotiations, however, introduces a much more tangled set of questions. What are the main parameters? Does the U.S. aim, as Trump and special envoy Steve Witkoff have said, to put Iran’s nuclear program in a box with a verification regime that guarantees Tehran doesn’t weaponize? If so, then negotiations have a chance to succeed. Or does the White House seek the “full dismantlement” of Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program? That’s what National Security Advisor Michael Waltz recently seemed to say and what Netanyahu is calling for with his talk of a “Libya model” for Iran. If so, as the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute Trita Parsi warns, then diplomacy will be dead on arrival, since Tehran is not about to give up its entire program.
Even assuming the former scenario, negotiating a deal will be a Herculean task. The only realistic framework strongly resembles the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, which Trump withdrew from in 2018. When that deal was implemented, Iran only had stocks of uranium enriched up to 3.67 percent. Now it possesses stocks of uranium enriched up to 60 percent, only a short leap away from weapons grade (90 percent). In the meantime, Iran has installed more advanced centrifuges and reduced its level of cooperation with the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog tasked with verification.
An Iran deal redux would involve caps on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting of sanctions, but Tehran is less trusting of the U.S. than it was in the Obama years and less willing to walk back its nuclear advances, which it sees as important leverage to hold onto amid U.S. and Israeli threats. Tehran would not agree to reduce enrichment absent firm guarantees of both meaningful sanctions relief and Washington’s lasting compliance with a new agreement.
Optimally, if an agreement is reached, the U.S. Senate would ratify it, blocking a future president from tearing it up with a stroke of the pen. Getting the deal through a Republican-controlled Senate would make it much more credible, assuming Democrats in the future won’t seek to out-hawk the Republicans on Iran.
But given the diplomatic and technical complexities of the issues at hand, getting a comprehensive deal might take years even in the best-case scenario. There is a risk that Trump, who typically expects quick deals, becomes increasingly frustrated with the lack of a diplomatic breakthrough and reverts to threats and escalating pressure or simply loses interest. In either case, the neoconservatives in his administration, such as Waltz, might take the lead on Iran policy.
For now, Witkoff is the White House official poised to lead negotiations with Iran. A non-ideological dealmaker and longtime friend of the president, Witkoff is a flexible negotiator whom Trump can trust. The fact that Trump selected him to get the ball rolling, rather than hawks like Waltz or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, indicates that the president genuinely does want a deal.
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However, Witkoff is also engaged on the Israel-Palestine and Russia-Ukraine tracks, and he even met recently with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However talented Witkoff may be, the Ukraine and Gaza wars and the nuclear standoff with Iran are all hellishly complex dossiers. Negotiating effectively requires extensive diplomatic experience and specialized knowledge, both of which Witkoff lacks. As with Russia, he’ll be facing a seasoned diplomatic team in Tehran, led by Majid Takht-Ravanchi, one of Iran’s most capable diplomats. Takht-Ravanchi served as ambassador to the United Nations in New York, was involved in negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal, and knows the nuclear file like the back of his hand.
Then there is the spoiler potential of Israel. Netanyahu’s “Libya model” is obviously a poison pill designed to doom negotiations. The Israeli premier does not actually want Washington and Tehran to make a deal. A joint U.S.-Israeli war with Iran aligns with Netanyahu’s political calculus, as it would hobble an adversary and allow Bibi to cling to power at the helm of his extremist coalition. Fortunately, Trump’s decision to announce Iran diplomacy in Netanyahu’s presence suggests that he won’t go along with whatever Israel demands. Washington should warn Jerusalem that not only would it be on its own in a war with Iran, but that any attempts to drag the U.S. into that war would have profoundly negative, perhaps irreversible, consequences for U.S.-Israeli relations. By sidelining Netanyahu, Trump would be able to focus on negotiating with Iran—a big enough challenge on its own.
One way to bridge Trump’s expectation of a quick deal with the likely need for long, protracted negotiations would be to first agree on an interim deal. Such a deal wouldn’t solve the complicated technical issues pertaining to Iran’s nuclear program, but it would trade limited sanctions relief for some freeze on Iran’s escalating enrichment, thus boosting mutual goodwill and buying time for continued negotiations. Some Iran watchers have been suggesting this path for both Washington and Tehran since Trump’s election victory last year. This week, it seems, the time has come.
