Can Trump Secure a New Iran Deal Before Israel and the Neocons Start a New War?
There's an opportunity for a ‘better deal’ with Iran. The
alternative is the collapse of talks and a drift toward a catastrophic
war.
Trita Parsi
June 8, 2025
Zeteo
https://zeteo.com/p/can-trump-secure-new-iran-deal-war-zero-enrichment
President Donald Trump wrote on TruthSocial
on Wednesday that he asked Russia’s Vladimir Putin to help secure a
nuclear deal with Iran, while also accusing Tehran of “slow-walking” the
negotiations. In reality, the diplomatic impasse is not due to Iranian
delay tactics but to Trump’s renewed embrace of Mike Pompeo and John
Bolton’s zero-enrichment demand. While enlisting Russia could be helpful
– Moscow played a constructive role in brokering the original Iran
deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – no
country can overcome the deadlock created by the zero-enrichment
fantasy. Only abandoning that demand can break the stalemate.
Trump has been down this road before. During his first term, he sought a
new deal with Iran but, following the advice of Bolton, his
then-national security adviser, and Pompeo, his secretary of state, he
withdrew from the JCPOA instead of negotiating from within it. He
imposed sweeping “maximum pressure” sanctions, aiming to achieve two
goals at once: dismantle President Barack Obama’s legacy and coerce Iran
into begging for a new agreement. Neither objective was achieved.
As many predicted, the opposite of what Bolton and Pompeo promised came
to pass: Iran expanded its nuclear program, scaled back compliance with
the JCPOA, increased enrichment levels, and restricted access to its
nuclear sites. Far from paving the way for new negotiations, their
approach brought the US and Iran to the brink of war – twice – during
Trump’s first term. But that was no miscalculation. Bolton and Pompeo
weren’t seeking a new deal; their goal was war with Iran.
Trump appeared to have learned from that failure. Throughout his 2024
campaign, he avoided talk of zero enrichment and instead drew a single
red line: Iran must not obtain nuclear weapons. He repeatedly emphasized
his desire for Iran to become a “successful and prosperous nation” – a
message Tehran took as a signal he was willing to offer deeper sanctions
relief than Obama or Joe Biden. This helped persuade Iran to engage
directly with Trump, despite deep anger over his withdrawal from the
JCPOA, the maximum pressure campaign, and the U.S. assassination of
Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military figure.
In recent weeks, the ghosts of Pompeo and Bolton have returned to haunt
Trump’s Iran policy. Accusations from allies of Israel in Washington
that he is merely reviving “Obama’s deal” appear to have struck a nerve.
Suddenly, the zero-enrichment fantasy is back in Trump’s rhetoric –
with predictable consequences: talks are stalling, and valuable time is
slipping away.
To their credit, Trump’s advisers have explored more creative options.
One proposal – a regional consortium to oversee Iran’s nuclear program –
has real potential. But in the US version, the end goal remains the
same: zero enrichment on Iranian soil, with enrichment activities
relocated abroad. Tehran will never accept that. Iran’s Supreme Leader
made that abundantly clear this week, tweeting: “Why are you interfering and trying to say whether Iran should have uranium enrichment or not? That’s none of your business.”
However, Iran might agree to a model in which key elements of the
program are internationalized while enrichment remains within Iran under
strict oversight.
What’s most bewildering about the Trump team’s return to the
Pompeo-Bolton playbook is not just its proven track record as a
deal-killer, but the fact that zero enrichment isn’t necessary to
prevent an Iranian bomb. Nor will it win Trump the approval of Israel or
its allies in Washington. As I detail in Losing an Enemy,
Israel’s primary concern has never been enrichment per se, but the
prospect of a U.S.-Iran rapprochement. Such a thaw could facilitate an
American military withdrawal from the region – shifting the balance of
power in a way that threatens Israel’s reliance on US military,
political, and diplomatic support. The past two years have only
reinforced just how dependent Israel remains on that backing.
There is no realistic deal that would truly satisfy Israel. Trump should
stop trying to appease the Netanyahu government and instead anchor his
Iran policy in US national interests.
Here, Trump has a unique opportunity to strike “a better deal” by
offering far more ambitious sanctions relief than Obama or Biden ever
contemplated – opening the door for American companies to enter the
Iranian market. In return, he could extract deeper nuclear concessions
from Tehran, strengthening the agreement’s nonproliferation elements
without reviving the unworkable zero-enrichment demand.
In a new brief by my think tank, the Quincy Institute,
economist Hadi Kahalzadeh calculates that by “providing targeted
economic advantages to specific sectors inside Iran instead of
penalizing ordinary people with blanket sanctions,” Trump can “generate
economic opportunities for American companies that would create an
estimated 200,000 American jobs annually” and secure $25 billion in
annual US exports, primarily in air transportation, agriculture, and
automobiles. This would, Kahalzadeh argues, also make a new agreement
more durable by strengthening its political bases of support in both the
US and Iran.
The alternative is the collapse of talks and a drift toward a
catastrophic war. Trump surely understands how the George W. Bush
presidency was destroyed by the disastrous and illegal invasion of Iraq.
That war alienated much of the Republican base from the neoconservatives
and America’s interventionist, hegemonic foreign policy. Trump
opportunistically seized on that shift, distinguishing himself as one of
the few politicians willing to channel and amplify the GOP’s growing
anti-war sentiment – helping him take control of the party.
These voters now form the core of Trump’s base, and a botched Iran negotiation that leads to war would, in Tucker Carlson’s words, “amount to a profound betrayal of his supporters” and “end his presidency.”
All for the meaningless pursuit of Bolton and Pompeo’s zero-enrichment fantasy.
Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute and author of Losing an Enemy - Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy.