And that, if he refuses to do so, the risk of military action against Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities would dramatically increase. “If they don’t make a deal,” Trump said, “there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”
Trump hinted at that threat again on April 7, saying, “You know, it’s not a complicated formula. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That’s all there is,” and that “I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger.”
Iran has been willing to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with the United States. Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected on a promise of direct negotiations with the United States, and Khamenei supported him.
But that hope exploded on February 4 when Trump signed a presidential memorandum endorsing maximum pressure sanctions on Iran. Pezeshkian reversed his policy, declaring that Iran “will not yield to foreign pressure.” A month later, Pezeshkian responded to U.S. threats, insisting that “the language of threats and coercion is absolutely unacceptable… It is unacceptable for someone to come along and say, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, or else.’ I won’t come to negotiate with you. Go do whatever the hell you want.”
Direct negotiations with the U.S. have been ruled out by Iran until “there is a change in the other side’s approach.” However, commenting on Iran’s response to Trump’s letter, Pezeshkian said that “Although in our response the topic of direct negotiation between the two sides has been rejected, it has been stated that the path to indirect talks is open.”
On April 7, Trump stunned everyone by announcing that the U.S. and Iran would meet for “direct talks” on April 12 and that the talks would be held at “almost the highest level.” It has now been reported that Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff will lead the U.S. delegation, and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi will lead Iran’s.
Though confirming the talks, Iran denies that they will be direct. Iranian officials say that officials from the U.S. and Washington will meet in Oman on April 12 for “indirect talks.” American and Iranian negotiators will be in separate rooms, and Omani diplomats will carry their messages back and forth. According to Iran, subsequent direct talks would be contingent upon the indirect talks going well. Though Araghchi maintains that “[f]or the time being, indirect is our preference. And we have no plan to alter it to direct.”
Iran’s reluctance to negotiate directly has two sources. The first is Pezeshkian refusal to “yield to foreign pressure” and negotiate under threats. The second is Khamenei’s attention to history. Khamenei has pointed to the U.S. illegally pulling out of the JCPOA nuclear agreement, saying, “One must not negotiate with a government like the US government. Negotiations with it is not wise, it is not intelligent, and is not honorable.” Later, Khamenei would further in a post that “[t]his same US president tore up the signed JCPOA agreement. How could we hold negotiations with US when we know they don’t fulfill their commitments?”
But the negotiations over the structure of the negotiations will be less challenging than the negotiations over what will be up for negotiations. Iran will be willing to negotiate verifiable limits on its nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief and an open door back to relations with the West because they continue to insist that they do not have a nuclear weapons program, an insistence with which the latest U.S. intelligence agrees. The just published 2025 Annual Threat Assessment states that the intelligence community “continue[s] to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
But, as a signatory to the the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has “the inalienable right to a civilian program that uses “nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.” Iran will not surrender this right. And that could be a problem because National Security Advisor Mike Waltz recently explained that the U.S. position is that Iran would have to dismantle its civilian nuclear program. He told CBS’s Face the Nation that the U.S. demands “full disarmament.” He says Iran “has to give up its program” and stop “enrichment,” seemingly meaning that Iran must cease enriching uranium even for civilian purposes. “The full program,” he said, “give it up or there will be consequences.”
The second obstacle would appear if the U.S. insists, as Waltz has suggested that they will, that Iran also has to give up its “strategic missile program.” Iran’s missile program is integral to its defense strategy, and its value has gone up with the recent degradation of its front-line proxy defense partnerships. Iran is unlikely to put its missiles on the negotiating table.
That the U.S. and Iran will open the door to talks this weekend is a very positive development. Though the media focus is on whether those talks will be direct or indirect, what will really determine their chance of success is not their format but their scope. If the talks remain tightly focused on verifiable limitations on Iran’s peaceful, civilian nuclear program, they have a real chance of succeeding; if they widen the focus to dismantling Iran’s legal civilian nuclear program, then the talks are likely dead before they even begin.
Source: AntiWar.com.
