The United States and Iran are engaged in a new round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. This is good for the United States. Settling the proliferation issue and reducing tensions with Iran in general is important to create the conditions necessary for the U.S. to make a long-overdue pivot from the Middle East to Asia, a top priority for Trump as it was for his predecessors.
The big issue now is whether the Trump administration can effectively pull it off. To that end, the main hurdle facing the administration might be itself.
There’s a battle inside the Trump administration between those with reasonable ideas about stopping Iranian proliferation through diplomacy and others pressing maximalist demands likely to kill a deal and increase hostility. President Trump needs to keep siding with the reasonable voices and follow his dealmaking instincts.
Conditions are ripe for a nuclear deal with Iran and pivot from the Middle East. U.S. interests in the Middle East have been reduced significantly thanks to U.S. energy independence and the 2019 defeat of the ISIS caliphate.
Additionally, Iran wants a deal. It has been seriously weakened by both the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and setbacks to its regional proxies. Iran’s economy is in shambles. For all these reasons, Iranian leaders now see a war with Israel and/or the U.S. over its nuclear program as an existential danger. A deal makes sense, then, to ensure regime survival.
These same concerns about regime survival help explain, however, why Tehran might also opt against a deal and proliferate if the Trump administration presses forward with the maximalist demands some advocate. In concert with Israel, some inside the administration are pushing the so-called “Libya option” in talks with Iran. Basically, they want not just a verifiable cessation of Iran’s nuclear bomb program but, like Libya in 2003, “full dismantlement” of Iran’s entire nuclear program, notably all enrichment and civilian-use capabilities for domestic energy use. They also want Iran to eliminate its ballistic missile program, end ties to its regional proxies, and agree to all this within two months “or else” (i.e., U.S. and Israeli bombs start flying).
There are two reasons—both related to regime survival—that maximalism will likely backfire. First, maximalists are not after negotiations. Instead, their demands amount to a surrender agreement that will leave Iran essentially defenseless. As a nuclear threshold state capable of producing a nuclear weapon in a matter of days or weeks, Iran will not concede to terms like that. Instead, as history shows with other states, like Japan in the run-up to Pearl Harbor, an Iranian regime forced into a no-win situation will take its chances, walk away from the negotiating table, and proliferate as Iranian leaders have recently warned.
Second, references by maximalists to the “Libya model” do not reassure Iranian leaders in the least, but instead raise deep concerns about the very thing they fear most: regime change. Why? Because less than a decade after Libyan President Moammar Gaddafi agreed to Washington’s terms for an end to Libya’s nuclear program, the United States helped overthrow his regime by force. Libya has been destabilized ever since. Iranian leaders fear that could happen to them too if they agree to Washington’s maximalist demands.
As scholarship shows, trust is a precious commodity in negotiations between states. Today, maximalism along with waffling by U.S. officials over negotiating terms—one set one day, another set the next—risks destroying Iranian trust in the United States, already damaged by the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018. Mistrust could push Iran to eventually dump negotiations and opt instead for the safe harbor of nuclear proliferation.
To avoid this, President Trump needs to step away from maximalism toward Iran in the same way he did recently when opting for negotiations over force against Iran. Trump’s flexibility and reasonableness shown elsewhere should be applied here too, with focus on getting a verifiable non-proliferation pledge from Iran, reduction in enrichment to levels necessary for domestic energy, and an Iranian pledge to cut ties to regional proxies.
Trump should also build trust with Iran by loosening the two-month timeframe for a deal and turning down the temperature on the threat of force. To do this, Trump could move the B-2 bombers out of Diego Garcia or an aircraft carrier out of the Red Sea area. Trump’s threat of force has proven credible, getting Iran to the table. Time now to draw back to help get a lasting deal.
If he takes these and other steps, like keeping Israel in check in ways his predecessor struggled to do, Trump has a great shot at sealing a legacy-defining agreement with Iran. Let’s hope he takes advantage of that.
William Walldorf is a professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest and a visiting fellow at Defense Priorities. He is currently writing a book, America’s Forever Wars: Why So Long, Why End Now, What Comes Next, focused on Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
