As the two-week ceasefire between Iran and the United States draws to a close, both countries have made conflicting and contradictory statements about peace negotiations. US President Donald Trump told journalists that Vice President JD Vance wouldn’t be travelling to Pakistan even as Energy Secretary Chris Wright and ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz were confirming Vance’s participation. Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said he had no intention of going to Pakistan to conduct negotiations “under the shadow of threats,” claiming Iran had “new cards” to play on the battlefield.
Statements such as these, along with naval blockades and vessel seizures in the Strait of Hormuz, are best understood as manoeuvres by both sides within the negotiations to demonstrate their resolve, not as acts intended to derail the negotiations. Iran’s negotiators need less than three hours to fly to Pakistan, meaning they could leave as soon as the US team set off on its 13-hour flight.
Both sides want a deal, each for their own reasons. For Iran, the bottom line is long-term sanctions relief so that it can resume its lucrative energy exports. It needs the money to rebuild its economy and its military defences, which were degraded by US and Israeli strikes. The United States is driven by a blend of the president’s personality and hard strategic calculations. The personal drivers are obvious. Trump is a deeply insecure man who wants to gloat about having gotten a better deal than president Barack Obama.
Under the Obama-era 2015 agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran committed to not enrich uranium above 3.67 per cent for 15 years. The United States lifted economic sanctions against lran’s oil and banking sector. The agreement wasn’t a formal international treaty but a record of the participants’ mutual political commitments. It used words such as “participants” rather than “parties”, “commitments” not obligations, and “performance” not compliance. Trump withdrew from the agreement in his first term, and Joe Biden did not attempt to restart it.
Trump will not seek an agreement similar to 2015 because he wants to boast to his adoring Republican base that he got a better deal. Therefore, although he pushes for a permanent end to Iran’s enrichment program, he also says he can accept a suspension of the program for 20 years.
The strategic calculations flow from Trump’s first-term decision to withdraw from the Obama-era agreement. Iran responded by enriching uranium one step at a time, until it had enriched some uranium to 60 per cent, approaching weapons-grade (90 per cent). With a single cascade of 175 centrifuges, which it almost certainly possesses, it can now produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make one nuclear bomb every 25 days, for a total of about 10 bombs. US policy planners want to stop that ability.
Therefore, the two sides are likely to agree on a memorandum of understanding in the first instance that sets up a framework for a final peace deal to be negotiated over the next few weeks or months. If there is enough trust – and that is a very big if – then the outlines of an agreement are in sight.
Iran doesn’t need to produce low-enriched uranium for peaceful purposes. Indeed, a small, domestic enrichment program by a single country like Iran is not economical. It can buy what it needs from one of the four big suppliers: Russia, China, France and Urenco, a firm jointly owned by the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK. The United States has bought enrichment services from these suppliers since 2013. Russia has been a long-term supplier of low-enriched uranium fuel for Iran’s commercial nuclear power reactor. Russia is the largest foreign supplier of low-enriched uranium to the US itself, receiving exemptions from the sanctions regime for this purpose.
If Iran were to insist on continuing to enrich its own uranium, however, it could place its program under multinational control rather than relocate it to a neutral country. Iran has previously indicated its willingness to do this. It appears from media reporting that both sides are willing to show some flexibility, with one proposal suggesting Iran suspend enrichment for 10 years, followed by producing a modest amount of low-enriched uranium for the next 10 years.
Iran will not agree to give up its medium-range ballistic missiles, nor its ability to control the Strait of Hormuz. It knows that both factors deter further Israeli-US attacks. Its negotiators will not be able to sell such a deal to its national security personnel in the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Nor will those figures agree to forsake their allies in Lebanon. Iranian military commanders regard them as comrades in arms, and abandoning them would be seen as dishonourable.
Trump’s team is aware of these factors, and will probably conduct negotiations with them in mind. The wildcard remains the president himself, as usual. If Trump’s desire for the optics of victory overtakes the practical benefits of an agreement, he may yet sabotage the talks, and seize defeat from the jaws of victory.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW. His latest book is Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
Professor Clinton Fernandes is part of University of NSW’s Future Operations Research Group which analyses the threats, risks and opportunities that military forces will face in the future. He is a former intelligence officer in the Australian Army.