John Haltiwanger & Rishi Iyengar
Foreign Policy / April 10, 2025
[via email]
The United States and Iran are set to hold high-level talks on Tehran’s nuclear program on Saturday, as U.S. President Donald Trump hints at possible military action if diplomacy fails.
“If the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger,” Trump said Monday.
Trump, who fancies himself a skilled dealmaker, is hoping to reach an agreement that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which has been a top goal of Washington and its allies for years. Meanwhile, Iran, which is suffering economically and strategically weakened, wants sanctions relief and to avoid a confrontation with a far greater military power.
Both countries feel a sense of urgency surrounding this issue for different reasons, and they also face their own set of constraints heading into such negotiations.
Here’s a breakdown of the situation, the risks for both sides, and how they reached this point.
What’s happening ? Trump on Monday announced that direct nuclear talks were underway—and that a “very big meeting” will take place on Saturday in Oman.
Iran insists that the talks are indirect and will be mediated by Oman’s foreign minister, contradicting Trump—which is indicative of the myriad disagreements between the two countries as they head into the high-stakes meeting.
“We will meet in Oman on Saturday for indirect negotiations. It is as much an opportunity as it is a test,” Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, who will represent Iran in the talks, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Tuesday.
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been the administration’s lead negotiator on issues from Ukraine to Gaza, is poised to represent the United States in the talks. Witkoff may not travel to Oman if Iran refuses a face-to-face meeting, according to a report in the Post.
The Trump administration has also offered mixed messages on the nature of Saturday’s talks. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters on Tuesday that what’s happening is a “meeting” and not a “negotiation.”
“It’s touching base,” Bruce said.
But both sides seem to genuinely want a deal.
A sense of urgency. “Trump wants to do this and then be done with it” so he can spend time on other issues in the regional file such as Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization and U.S. economic ties with the Gulf, Gregory Brew, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group and an expert on Iran, told SitRep.
“Putting Iran in a box containing its nuclear program, addressing that issue that’s been driving regional instability, and getting it done now frees them up for achieving other policy objectives later in the term,” Brew said, which helps explain why the Trump administration appears to be “in such a rush to get this done now.”
“Another source of urgency is the sense that Iran is very close to developing a weapon. It has a very large stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent,” Brew said.
An additional issue hanging over the process is the prospect of the reimposition—or “snapback”—of U.N. sanctions on Iran that were lifted in conjunction with the 2015 nuclear deal. The snapback mechanism expires in October, and the process to reinstitute them would have to begin in July. This is an “important source of leverage” for the United States, Brew said, and the time constraints surrounding it are one of many reasons Washington has to pursue a deal as soon as possible.
Israel, which views the prospect of a nuclear Iran as an existential threat, is pushing for Trump to pursue the Libya model—in reference to Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi reaching an agreement with the United States in 2003 to dismantle his country’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. That ultimately didn’t work out so well for Qaddafi, who was overthrown years later by U.S.-backed rebels, and Iran has rejected this approach.
“If it can be done diplomatically in a full way the way it was done in Libya, I think that would be a good thing,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the White House on Monday. “But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”
In late March, U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said the Trump administration is seeking the “full dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear program. But it’s possible that Trump could be open to a deal with less maximalist terms. “Trump is going to do what he wants,” Brew said while underscoring that “the Iranians will under no circumstances accept a Libya-style deal.”
What are the stakes ? Trump has warned Iran that it would face “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before” if a deal is not reached and reiterated this ultimatum on Wednesday.
“If it requires military, we’re going to have military,” Trump said. The president said Israel would spearhead such an operation but added, “No one leads us. We do what we want.”
Though Trump campaigned on “no new wars” and could face opposition from his base and isolationist Republicans in Washington if he greenlit strikes against Iran, the United States recently ramped up its military presence in the Middle East, and the president’s threats are seemingly being taken seriously by Tehran.
“Trump and Israel’s efforts to create a credible military threat against Iran have succeeded,” Brew said. “The Iranians are positioning themselves to be prepared for military escalation should diplomacy fail.”
Still, Iran would clearly like to avoid such an outcome. “To move forward today, we first need to agree that there can be no ‘military option,’ let alone a ‘military solution,’” Aragchi wrote in his Tuesday op-ed. “We cannot imagine President Trump wanting to become another U.S. president mired in a catastrophic war in the Middle East.”
This all comes at an extremely precarious moment in the Middle East. The war in Gaza has raised tensions and stoked conflict across the region. Beyond its war against Hamas in the coastal territory, Israel has also fought against Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah and traded direct attacks with Iran itself. Iran and its proxies have been badly bruised and battered in the process, raising concerns that Tehran could view pursuing a nuclear weapon as a strong means of reestablishing deterrence. Hard-liners in the Iranian government have openly flirted with weaponization in the past year.
From Israel’s perspective, there has almost never been a better time to go after Iran’s nuclear program. “The Israelis have been pushing very hard on using military force against Iran because from their point of view, Iran is weak. There is a window of opportunity for striking the program. That window will close once Iran is able to rebuild its air defenses,” Brew said.
But while the United States has overwhelming superiority over Iran in terms of conventional military capabilities, a military approach to taking out Iran’s nuclear program would likely only have limited success and could cause more problems in the long run, Brew said.
How did we get here ? In many ways, what’s happening right now all traces back to Trump’s first term and his decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran. That agreement, which was negotiated under the Obama administration, was designed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump was heavily critical of the deal, contending that it didn’t go far enough to address issues such as Iran’s ballistic missiles and proxy groups, and pulled the United States out in 2018.
In the time since, Iran has effectively abandoned the 2015 pact, which placed limits on uranium enrichment, and today is far closer to developing a nuclear weapon than it was when the agreement was still intact. Iran has enriched uranium up to 60 percent, putting it in range of weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. And it’s estimated that Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear weapon could be a matter of weeks.
Iran’s nuclear advancements have raised pressure for Washington and its allies, particularly Israel, to take action—even as the U.S. intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. Tehran also maintains that it has no desire for nuclear weapons, but Iranian uranium enrichment continues to make the United States and its allies nervous.
Along these lines, Trump sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last month calling for talks, giving Tehran a two-month deadline to reach a deal.
The Biden administration tried and failed to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, but Trump may be in a better negotiating position.
Iran’s leadership is “conscious of their weakness” at the moment and knows they’re on the backfoot, Brew said, pointing to widespread domestic discontent over the country’s ailing economy, among other problems.
“The leadership is rallying around the idea of negotiating a deal with Trump, even if it only brings a few years of sanctions relief, in order to create breathing space for them to address these sources of domestic instability,” Brew said. “They’re also probably conscious of the fact that Trump is in a unique position to deliver this deal and that a successor in 2029 would not have the same flexibility that Trump is able to illustrate now. So they may sense an opportunity to get a deal here, even if it comes at the cost of conceding a little bit more than they may be comfortable with.”
John Haltiwanger & Rishi Iyengar – Foreign Policy’s Situation Report
