Washington has more options right now than Tehran does.
“We’re not going to get in the Biden trap,” U.S. Deputy Special Envoy to the Middle East Morgan Ortagus recently told Al Arabiya. She clarified that “indirect talks” with the Iranians that last for years, and throughout which Tehran is “just stringing us along,” are not the goal of this administration.
“If we’re going to have talks, they need to be quick,” Ortagus continued, and Iran must demonstrate that it is “serious about dismantling their nuclear weapons program.” Trump is a “deal guy,” she said, implying that Trump would like nothing more than to ink an agreement with the Islamic Republic. “But the deal has to not be where we’re getting played, and we think under the Obama administration, during the JCPOA, and under the Biden administration,” Ortagus observed, “they got nowhere.”
The administration’s resolve to avoid being “extorted” by the Iranian regime is laudable, but indirect talks with the Iranians (not “direct” negotiations, to which the president said he had committed the country on Monday) invite the risk of our being convinced to make concessions up front. And yet, the Trump administration has a variety of advantages that it can make the most of as it embarks on one last attempt to resolve the Iranian nuclear threat peacefully.
The Iranian regime is weaker than at any point in decades, and the regime itself probably knows it. That appreciation for its circumstances is rare in a millenarian outfit with a loose attachment to reality, and it is an exploitable condition. Indeed, the intimidating American force posture in the Middle East probably crystallizes the regime’s current precarity for the benefit of its decision-makers.
The Iranians themselves sent some signals that they were willing to engage in something like productive talks on the future of their nuclear weapons program. The Iranian newspaper Javan, which serves as a platform for the regime, bristled indignantly at the suggestion that it would negotiate away its ballistic missile program. “This is where the negotiations can end,” the missive warned, “and perhaps America included it in the discussions for this very purpose, which is to make the negotiations fruitless!” The paper did not assent to a “Libya-style” dismantlement of its nuclear arms program, but it did envision a framework that would limit its nuclear enrichment levels, subject to verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency and contingent on the “complete removal of sanctions.”
All this is to say that the Iranian regime would be happy to restore the JCPOA status quo. If Ortagus speaks for the Trump administration, we can assume that the White House would balk at such an arrangement, as it should. Still, the editorial signals Iran’s willingness to talk, if only to see what it can extract from the administration. Trump’s counteroffer is not yet known, but Tehran has two carrier groups’ worth of reasons to budge off its maximalist position. It has every reason to assume that the Trump administration is not bluffing.
Iran is likely to seek a limited agreement that stops short of disarmament and the dismantlement of its nuclear program in ways that would be hard to reverse. That is precisely the outcome Ortagus insists the administration hopes to avoid, and we should hope she is right.
If there is real potential for an outcome that compels Iran to commit to a denuclearization regime monitored and verified by U.S.-backed outfits with more credibility than the United Nations, the administration should explore it. The temptation for the president to assent to a bad deal is something that those who understand the Iranian threat should remain vigilant against. And if negotiations prove unproductive, Trump can say that he tried to take the diplomatic route, but he didn’t have a faithful partner in his Iranian counterparts. One thing is certain: The president has more options right now than the Iranians do.