Trump’s New Iran Deal

Can Trump actually strike a deal with Iran? Quite possibly. But not because he’s a master negotiator.

The key to predicting Donald’s Trump’s national security decisions is to ask: What does Putin want?

From the betrayal of Ukraine to ending cyber defenses against Russian attacks, every decision Trump has made over the past 81 days has benefited Putin and weakened America. Iran policy may follow the same pattern.

Last month, Russia’s Vladimir Putin agreed to mediate talks between the U.S. and Iran. Those talks begin April 12, when Trump’s Envoy for Everything, Steve Witkoff, will travel to Oman to sit down with Iranian Foreign Minister Abas Araghchi. Talks are necessary because in his first term Trump walked out of the agreement negotiated in 2014 that had dramatically reduced Iran’s nuclear program, locked what remained under a strict inspections regime and blocked all possible paths to a nuclear bomb.

Trump blew up the accord in 2018, promised a “bigger, better deal,” but produced nothing. Since then, Iran has slowly built its program back up to the point where today the country has so much low- and medium-enriched uranium that is could likely turn its stockpile into enough highly-enriched uranium for six to seven bombs in a few weeks.

What is left of the deal is set to expire on October 18 of this year. The UN Security Council will either have to let it expire, leaving Iran free of any constraints on its program, or impose crippling sanctions, likely resulting in Iran leaving the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and starting to openly construct nuclear weapons.

Trump has three choices, says J Street Vice President Ilan Goldenberg: strike a deal; go to war with Iran; or try to muddle through. “Right now, I would put muddling through at 40% with each of the other two scenarios at 30%,” he says. He makes sound arguments for his choice, but Putin’s thumb on the scale tilts the likely outcome towards a new Iran deal.

This is the outcome most clearly in Putin’s interests. It would bring Iran out from under sanctions that have crippled its economy, lead to normalization of relations with Iran’s neighbors and possibly the United States and strengthen Russia’s influence in Iran and the broader Middle East.

What would such a deal look like? It will definitely not be what National Security Advisor Mike Waltz outlined this Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation: “Full dismantlement. Iran has to give up its program in a way that the entire world can see.” This has long been the fantasy of the right wing in the United States and Israel. There is no way that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will agree to this humiliation.

More likely is an “Iran Deal Lite,” an agreement very similar to the one President Barack Obama negotiated but probably with fewer Iranian concessions and weaker safeguards. Iran could agree to scale back its program, reduce its stockpile of uranium and allow more international inspections. Trump, in turn, would relax his “maximum pressure” sanctions and open up diplomatic channels to Iran. There may be some general language about Iran’s regional activities and perhaps some pledges to limit the range of its ballistic missiles. There may well be an interim agreement that buys time while the full deal is worked out, as there was with 2014 agreement

The results will fall far short of the “Grand Bargain” conservatives have sought where Iran surrenders everything, including its missiles and support for militant regional groups, in exchange for diplomatic rapprochement with the United States. Several factors work against a sweeping deal. First is the general incompetence of the Trump team. Unlike the nuclear and regional experts that lead Obama’s 2014 talks, Steve Witkoff knows nothing about Iran, the region or the complex technologies involved in building a nuclear bomb. He has failed to end the war in Gaza or the war in Ukraine - his other big assignments - and is already overstretched.

Normally, Witkoff would be backed up by seasoned career experts, but the DOGE firings have gutted the national security ranks. His novice team will go up against experienced Iranians and Russians who are considered some of the best negotiators in the world. With just months to get a deal done before the October deadline, it is likely to be a thin agreement that Trump will then claim is a world-historic breakthrough.

Additional factors in favor of a deal are that the Saudis, who once championed regime change in Iran and (with Israel) worked against Obama’s efforts, now seek regional stability to pursue their economic development. They no longer see Iran as a formidable threat.

Finally, Trump really wants a deal. He talks about it repeatedly. Though he brags about winning, he has few achievements in his first 100 days, beyond the efficient destruction of popular federal programs and departments. He needs a real win.

While Trump’s incompetence and ignorance may doom any negotiations, it will be one of the great ironies of history if that win is a deal with a nation he once promised to bomb into oblivion.