In US-Iran nuclear talks, a hesitant step out of a high-stakes impasse
| London
This weekend’s negotiations in Oman between the United States and Iran about the future of the Iranian nuclear program followed a familiar but unorthodox format. At Iran’s behest, the parties didn’t speak face to face. Instead, Tehran’s representatives sat in one room, Washington’s in another, while Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi zipped back and forth with messages.
In part, that set-up reflects years of mutual threats and toxic rhetoric by these perennial foes, and Tehran’s particular distrust toward the Trump administration. But its willingness to talk – even if through a wall – also signals a joint readiness to push for diplomacy instead of war. It renews the possibility that Iran may accept limiting its nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions that have ravaged its economy.
In Iran, there is a feeling that “This man [Trump] can deliver. No Republican or Democratic president can do what he is able to do,” says Nasser Hadian, a retired political science professor at the University of Tehran. “He is not a man of details, but he is in a hurry.”
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onThe United States and Iran have spent the better part of a decade clashing over Tehran’s nuclear program. A new round of talks signals a possible path out of the impasse.
The stakes for both sides could hardly be higher. President Donald Trump has said repeatedly that failure to swiftly reach an agreement will lead to war, with the U.S. “leading the pack” militarily. For its part, Iran wants to avoid such a war – and the destruction of its nuclear facilities – while also resurrecting an economy crippled by years of Western sanctions.
A history of distrust
Mr. Trump says he aims to prevent Iran from ever being capable of producing a nuclear weapon – an aspiration Iran says it rejects. This weekend’s meeting marked the third round of indirect talks about limiting Iran’s nuclear program, a diplomatic thawing that was unthinkable only months before.
As recently as February, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected the idea of talks with Washington, saying that negotiating with the Trump administration would “not be smart, nor honorable.”
Iran’s skepticism comes in part from what happened in the aftermath of the last major nuclear deal it signed with the U.S. and other world powers in 2015. Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal was meant to give Iran sanctions relief as long as it adhered to strict, verified limits on its nuclear program.
Although Iran kept its side, it received little sanctions relief. Then Mr. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement entirely in 2018, calling it the “worst deal in history,” and reimposed U.S. sanctions.
After waiting a year to see whether other signatories to the JCPOA could provide its promised benefits, Iran began ramping up its nuclear program. It broke the limit of uranium enrichment to 3.67% purity, such that today it enriches to 60% purity – a close technical step away from levels required to make a weapon.
Further fraying the relationship between the two sides, in early 2020, Mr. Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Iran’s revered Revolutionary Guard Qods Force commander, Brig. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad.
Those actions left Tehran deeply distrustful of Washington’s intentions, says Mr. Hadian. Now “the issue is how can we guarantee that President Trump, and the next president, are going to be loyal” to any agreement they make, he explains. Also critical will be Iran feeling the benefits of sanctions relief.
A shifting stance
Washington’s most recent overtures began in March, when Mr. Trump sent a personal letter to Ayatollah Khamenei demanding a nuclear deal within two months.
The American outreach came at a time of dramatic change across the Middle East, which, among other things, has weakened several of Iran’s regional allies.
Notably, conflict with Israel has severely damaged key members of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” alliance, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Meanwhile, the regime of Iran’s Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad collapsed last December. Israel claims that a round of airstrikes and missile attacks on Iran last year destroyed the country’s air defense systems.
In light of these vulnerabilities, and faced with an economy hobbled by sanctions, Iran’s stance began to shift. Iran’s chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, indicated Iran’s willingness to abide by strict verification of a curtailed nuclear program.
Mr. Araghchi has also honed Iran’s pitch to Mr. Trump’s well-known desire for deals by stating in a text posted online last week by the Iran mission to the United Nations that the Islamic Republic’s economy is a “trillion dollar opportunity” open to future American investment. He described plans to build 19 nuclear power reactors, in which “tens of billions of dollars in potential contracts are up for grabs.”
The current round of talks began in Oman in early April.
Strong cards
Iran’s vulnerabilities, however, do not mean that Tehran has no leverage in the current talks, says Hassan Ahmadian, an assistant professor of Middle East and North Africa studies at the University of Tehran.
He notes that after Mr. Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in 2018, Iran doubled down on strengthening its defensive capabilities, including its ballistic missile and drone programs. “Iran’s nuclear program is [also] incomparable and enhanced,” he says. As a result, “the cards Iran holds in its hands ... are way stronger” than when it was negotiating the JCPOA in 2015.
Indeed, Revolutionary Guard Brig. Gen. Rasoul Sanaee-Rad, a close aide of Mr. Khamenei, signaled approval of talks by Iran’s security structure. He said last week that “the battlefield backs diplomacy ... and the nuclear negotiators are the political soldiers and assets of the Islamic Republic.”
That widespread support was underscored by Mr. Khamenei Thursday, when he quoted a seventh-century Shiite Imam about the need to sometimes broker peace that felt distasteful.
“It is temporary,” Mr. Khamenei quoted Imam Hassan saying. “This dominance of the disbelievers and the hypocrites is not meant to be permanent.”
