The United States and Iran are reportedly inching toward an understanding that would trade billions in sanctions relief for limits on uranium enrichment and an end to the mutual blockades around the Strait of Hormuz. Such a deal would be a mistake.
If this happens, after the envisioned month of talks, it would be a reprisal of the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that Trump walked away from in 2018. It would give the despicable Iranian regime new life and more runway months after it is believed to have massacred tens of thousands of protesters – which was the ostensible reason for American action to begin with.
Let’s carefully unpack the situation.
Giving the regime oxygen would be infuriating and dispiriting, but not indefensible; the democratic world deals with plenty of oppressive governments, from Azerbaijan to Rwanda to China to North Korea.
The world even deals with (and perhaps especially with) horrible regimes that have finagled a nuclear weapon, like North Korea. We cannot police the world and school every tyrant.
But what cannot be accepted is regimes that not only oppress their own people but also endanger others as well. Iran falls under that category in two ways.
The first is arguable: the long-range ballistic missile program, which has emerged as far larger, more dispersed and more resilient than thought when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year declared it, together with the nuclear program, destroyed “for generations.” It has offensive capability stretching to Europe, yes, but Iran can claim it needs it as a defensive deterrent. That’s not crazy for a country that was just attacked, including an unprecedented head-of-state assassination. So: somewhat complicated.
The second reason, however, is indisputable: Iran’s longstanding support for proxy militias that have undermined the region. Hamas, which started a cataclysm with the October 7 massacre, is probably the main reason the Israeli-Palestinian peace process failed.
Hezbollah undermines Lebanon, sparked destructive wars with Israel, and prolonged the murderous Assad regime in Syria. The Houthis are responsible, by fighting and disease, for almost half a million deaths in Yemen.
Iraq’s Shi’ite militias are an affront to that country. Iran’s funding, arming, training and guiding of these terrorists is utterly intolerable.
The current iteration of the Islamic Republic, essentially now run by the most hardline wing of the Revolutionary Guards, will accept no limits on any of this. That comes from many reasons: built-in fanaticism; the climate of fear where no competing regime figure can afford to be seen as conciliatory; and the famous Persian acumen for deal-making. But mainly it comes from hubris at the success of the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz.
That strategy – which the United States either did not foresee, which would be incredible, or did not prepare adequately for – badly disrupted the global economy, effectively reframed the conflict as the “War of Hormuz,” and caused fissures between the United States and the rest of the West, indeed most of the world.
Sure, it also brought on an American blockade of all of Iran’s ports, which effectively shut down all exports, crushed Iran’s economy, and would bring a rational regime to a breaking point. But Iran is betting that it can outlast the West, and if the United States agrees to the framework that is being reported, and if the subsequent talks and deal are limited to the nuclear file, then that bet will turn out to have been correct.
This will ensure that Iran will reprise the tactic whenever threatened, and could spark imitators elsewhere, at other global choke-points for maritime trade.
So, even as many will understandably rejoice at a stabilizing of global markets and an end to kinetic warfare around the Persian Gulf, we are at a very dangerous juncture.
Anything said in public during a tense standoff amid secretive negotiations is suspect. But every sign available, especially the pressure on the Trump Administration from Republicans concerned about the war’s unpopularity ahead of the midterm elections, suggests momentum will grow for a deal that includes the following parameters, which we might call The Capitulation:
A return to the status quo ante bellum (how it was before the war) in the Strait of Hormuz, including an end to the US blockade.
Iran agrees not to enrich uranium beyond civilian levels and to massive verification and inspection. This would be in place for a certain number of years.
Significant unfreezing of assets and removal of sanctions.
This would be, in effect, a reprisal of the JCPOA. Trump will claim that the inspection regime is better, and this will be nonsense.
Now here’s what should happen instead, and might be called the Terms of Victory:
The US should insist on an ironclad promise to end all support for proxy militias.
The US should insist on a cap on the missile program.
The US should insist on compensation to those killed in the rioting, punishment for officials who were involved in the massacre, and a promise to never harm protesters again.
In theory, the US might be willing to offer civilian enrichment; this is theoretically Iran’s right as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, so the “no enrichment” demand was also on shaky ground.
Also, one might consider, through gritted teeth, amnesty to the criminals responsible for the massacres and the outrages and plunder of the Iranian people’s treasure (estimated by The New York Times at a trillion dollars sacrificed over the years for the quixotic nuclear ambition).
If Iran agrees to all these things, it is reasonable – but still problematic – to agree to the other parts. If Iran does not, then the US will have to live with no nuclear agreement either – as it has done since 2018.
The total blockade of Iran should continue, grinding its economy into dust, and the world will have to simply deal with the economic fallout.
Importance of the US's relationship with NATO allies
In such a scenario, Trump would be wise to make up with his NATO allies, and fast. He should walk back his pointless attacks, end support for far-right parties in Europe, and apologize for his outrageous threats to invade Denmark to seize Greenland.
Europe, in turn, needs to be part of an effort to throttle the regime, without a return, necessarily, to the bombing campaign that so offended them. Every possible support would be offered to opposition movements and potential turncoat regime insiders. Regime infighting and renewed protest will eventually deal the regime the coup de grace – its final blow.
My experience in international journalism, like any basic knowledge of history, says this: Despicable and despised regimes at first seem invulnerable, then don’t; they crumble slowly, and then, when you least expect it, collapse suddenly. They leave behind a smoldering heap, a period of chaos, and a cautionary tale.
The writer is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press, the former chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem, and the author of two books.