Billions of dollars in frozen assets may be returned to Iran. Agreements to limit Tehran’s nuclear program could expire. And some of the same hardline leaders who suppressed nationwide protests in January could end up with more resources than before President Donald Trump launched devastating airstrikes more than seven weeks ago.
After a decade of ferocious attacks on an earlier deal with Iran, Trump, seeking a way out of the war he started, has authorized American negotiators to consider a deal that involves many of the same concessions faced by one of his predecessors.
Although the talks appear to be on hold for now after Trump’s decision Tuesday to extend the ceasefire indefinitely as Iran presents a “unified proposal”the president is likely to face the same challenges regardless of when negotiators finally sit down to meet.
With the conflict on hold, the fragile truce could be consolidated. However, maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has not recovered to its normal level due to the continued US blockade of Iranian ports and Iran’s claim to control sea routes. This has negatively affected global energy markets. Iran maintains control of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, something Trump has declared unacceptable.
The potential terms of a deal have prompted Trump to scramble to build support among hardliners, while Iran hardliners warn that the president should not rush too quickly to close a deal.
“Pallets of cash, but without the pallets,” Peter Doran, a senior research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote in
Trump and other Republicans who criticized the 2015 deal spent the last decade harshly criticizing it for giving “tons of money” to Iran, a reference to the $1.7 billion the Obama administration agreed to send to Tehran to resolve a decades-old trade dispute. Obama administration officials later acknowledged that they hoped that money would ensure that the Iranians held up their end of the deal. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2018.
Now, the Trump administration is considering the possibility of unfreezing US$20 billion, partly from the sale of Iranian oil that sanctions have blocked in banks around the world. This money would serve as a bargaining chip to secure Iran’s reserves of highly enriched uranium. However, other aspects of the agreement remain in question, including points that concern some of those who criticized the previous agreement.
“They run into the same fundamental obstacle that marked the long decade of negotiations that ultimately led to the JCPOA, which is that the Iranians are completely inflexible on the issue of enrichment” of nuclear fuel, said Suzanne Maloney, vice president of the Brookings Institution and an expert on Iran.
“The Iranians are inflexible on the issue of enrichment.”
Suzanne Maloney, vice president of the Brookings Institution
Iran has long denied seeking a nuclear weapon, but argues that it has the right under international law to enrich uranium or other nuclear materials to carry out a civil nuclear program.
The Iranians are “willing to accept certain concessions in terms of timing, level of enrichment and what will happen to the stockpile,” Maloney said. “But they absolutely refuse to give up enrichment. And that was one of the main criticisms of the 2015 agreement.”
Trump publicly insists that his agreement will not have the defects that he had denounced in his predecessor’s agreement.
The 2015 deal “was a guaranteed path to a nuclear weapon, which will not and cannot happen with the deal we are working on,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday, adding, “The deal we are making with Iran will be MUCH BETTER.”
“If an agreement is reached under Trump, it will ensure peace, security and tranquility, not only for Israel and the Middle East, but also for Europe, the United States and the rest of the world. It will be something the entire world will be proud of,” he wrote.
However, the political risks are significant, both for Trump and for Vice President JD Vance, who has taken a leading role in the negotiations as he contemplates his desire to win the presidency in 2028.
The vice president, a long-time advocate of maintaining a moderate stance on U.S. military action around the world, was among the most skeptical of the idea of going to war with Iran in the run-up to the February attacks by the United States and Israel. Now you have been tasked with putting an end to it, and possibly making whatever painful concessions are necessary.
The White House’s efforts to reach an agreement have put some of its supporters in a delicate situation, especially as money is considered as a bargaining chip.
“You fall down a slippery slope where you forget that money is fungible, and then you know, whether it’s $20 million, $10 billion or $6 billion at the end, if you’re dealing with a regime that hasn’t given you a concession on a key illicit activity, like sponsoring terrorism or producing something that poses a threat, there’s always going to be an argument of ‘Did you release X amount of money here to pay for this?’” said Richard Goldberg, who worked on Iran issues in the former. Trump administration and served on Trump’s National Energy Domain Council for part of last year.
“Then, that money remains available to pay for something else. And, therefore, there will always be the argument that illegal activities that have not ceased are being indirectly subsidized,” he stated.
But he said that if Trump manages to secure highly enriched uranium and dismantle an underground nuclear facility under construction at an Iranian site known as Peak Mountain, “that would radically change the situation. Basically, at least for now and for years to come, the nuclear threat posed by Iran would have been eliminated.”
In addition to the nuclear issue, Trump wants a new agreement that addresses issues that Obama’s negotiators left aside. The Obama-era deal was always limited to the Iranian nuclear program. It left intact Iran’s missile program and the regime’s support for like-minded regional groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, issues that Trump has said he wants the new deal to include.
The president has also expressed his desire to ban Iranian nuclear enrichment entirely. If Iran agreed to a temporary moratorium, it would be stricter than the 2015 deal, which allowed it to maintain its civilian enrichment program for use in power plants.
“Iran’s demands are going to be higher than in 2015, in part because the administration is trying to overreach,” said Wendy Sherman, who was the top U.S. negotiator with Iran during the Obama administration. “It’s not clear to me what Trump’s limits are. Is it an arsenal? Uranium enrichment? Missiles? Allies? The Strait of Hormuz?”
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“If you get a 10, 15, 20-year reprieve from the illicit enrichment program, we didn’t get a reprieve from your program, so that’s going to be more than what we got in that regard,” Sherman said. “But how will it be verified? It’s totally uncertain for me and for no one, probably even for him. And what will Trump have to offer in return?”
To complicate matters further, the world has changed in the 11 years since Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif emerged smiling from a posh Vienna hotel after reaching an agreement. After years of negotiations, Iran agreed in 2015 to impose strict limits on its nuclear enrichment program in exchange for gradual relief from economic sanctions.
At that time, Iran did not possess highly enriched uranium. In the years since Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, Iran has amassed a stockpile of about 440 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, a level slightly below what is needed to make nuclear weapons, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The current Iranian government is also more intransigent than the reformist leaders who struck a deal with Obama.
Tehran has been deeply weakened by aggressive military actions over the past year: first, the twelve-day war with Israel in June, marked by Trump’s attacks on nuclear facilities, and now the US war that Trump says has destroyed much of the Iranian military, along with its top commanders. Its regional allies, Hamas and Hezbollah, are much more weakened. Russia, one of its main allies, is distracted by the war in Ukraine.
That could pave the way for a deal. But Iran also has assets. The Iranian regime has demonstrated its resilience and deployed a powerful new capability to restrict shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, sending energy prices soaring around the world, including in the United States. Faced with relentless US attacks, some hardliners in Tehran may be inclined to pursue a nuclear weapon, increasing pressure on Washington to address its uranium stockpile.
There are also factors that may make Tehran less willing to reach a deal, said Richard Nephew, a former State Department official who helped craft the Iran sanctions regime during the Obama administration, which generated pressure for a deal.
“In a curious way, the war almost relieves some of the pressure on Iran,” said Nephew, who is now a senior fellow at Columbia University.
“They have shown that they can withstand the blows and respond appropriately,” rather than fearing what form American pressure on them might take, he said. And the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most intransigent sector of Iran’s ruling elite, is now firmly in the forefront, removing the tension with moderates that once created space for negotiations.
Nephew is a supporter of the 2015 deal. However, he said he was concerned about reaching a new agreement with the new group of Iranian leaders.
“I’m not so sure it’s a great idea that, after the January protests, we should consider significant sanctions relief for the Iranian government that killed all those people,” Nephew said.