President Trump has dispatched Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and State Department director of policy planning Michael Anton to negotiate a deal scuttling Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. At last word from the White House, Witkoff has conveyed to the Iranian regime a “detailed and acceptable” proposal.
At the same time:
A “wide-ranging” IAEA report found that Iran conducted secret nuclear activities with material not declared to the IAEA at three locations that have long been suspect: Lavisan-Shian, Varamin and Turquzabad, Reuters reported over the weekend.
Although some of the findings related to activities going back decades, it also detailed recent Iranian activities relevant to producing nuclear weapons, the watchdog’s report read.
I infer from the long history of the Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons that it will never give it up. The regime may agree to do so, but it will never do it. The Trump administration is on a fool’s errand. As if to put an exclamation point on this observation, former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan — perhaps the worst since the creation of the office in 1953 — finds much to like about Trump’s approach.
Trump rightly prefers a peaceful resolution of his objection to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, but it’s not possible. He need not undertake an Iran’s nuclear facilities, but he shouldn’t bring back an illusory agreement and pretend all is well either.
Reading the tea leaves this morning, Elliott Abrams predicts an “interim agreement” that can be called a victory. However:
[T]here will never be a final deal. Iran’s goal in an interim arrangement would be to prevent a U.S. military strike and enlist the United States in preventing an Israeli strike because, the Trump administration would tell the Israelis, “we are still negotiating.” Iran will play out the clock, hoping for the administration to be weakened by a defeat in the 2026 congressional elections and then gone after the 2028 elections.
Second, under such a “interim” deal, Iran would keep its centrifuges and — as we have seen in the last few months — can start spinning them whenever it wants. It would thereby again create hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium in just a few months.
Third, Iran has always had a secret nuclear program and surely would continue to while this “interim deal” plays out. It would cheat. And who would stop it? The IAEA? But the IAEA just reports, while enforcement is up to the members of the IAEA Board of Governors and the U.N. Security Council. The history of arms control agreements shows that those who enter (and celebrate) them do not want to call out cheating — thereby admitting the failure of their “achievement.” As the late Angelo Codevilla wrote in “The Flaws of Arms Control,” arms control fails because “Western governments want arms control to get past present troubles — not to take on new ones; and [] the individuals who promote it know that to recognize that the advertised outcomes are not forthcoming is to indict themselves. Hence their personal interest coincides with that of the violators.”
Under the circumstances:
This is the moment of Iran’s greatest vulnerability, because of its loss of air defenses and powerful proxies. This is the moment to make Iran choose: a permanent agreement under which it completely ends enrichment, agrees to civil nuclear power with imported fuel only, fully opens its program to international inspection, and abandons its nuclear weapons ambitions — or alternatively understands that in rejecting such an agreement it is choosing a path whose consequences for the regime will be dire.
At the least, don’t come back with a fake “deal” that protects Iran’s pursuit and aggravates a terrible situation.
