Tensions between Iran and the United States are likely to be one of the first major foreign policy challenges for the incoming Trump administration. Tehran’s recent moves have brought Iran closer to developing a nuclear weapon than any point in the country’s history, and the risk of war between Israel and Iran — with direct U.S. involvement — remains high.
Though serious distrust remains between Washington and Tehran, diplomacy is possible. President-elect Trump should reengage Iran and capitalize on the limited window that currently exists to both defuse Tehran’s nuclear program in a peaceful manner and deescalate tensions with the Islamic Republic. Missing this chance risks pushing the United States closer to another disastrous Middle East war, something he promised voters he would avoid.
The first Trump administration offers instructive lessons for the second one. Having scrapped the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran, Trump enacted a policy of “maximum pressure” with the objective of isolating the Islamic Republic both economically and diplomatically. Trump imposed the largest-scale U.S. sanctions against Iran to date and militarily increased pressure on Tehran, assassinating the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020.
Israel took action as well when it assassinated Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh near Tehran in 2020 and carried out a sabotage operation against Iran’s chief enrichment facility in Natanz in 2021. Shortly thereafter, Iran began enriching uranium to 60 percent — still short of the 90 percent needed for weaponization — but higher than ever before in the country’s history.
Trump’s policy of maximum pressure — largely continued by the Biden administration — ultimately failed to curtail Tehran’s nuclear program and to limit its malign behavior at home or abroad. It further helped empower hardliners inside Iran.
Iran has sharply increased its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium, sufficient to develop enough fuel for several nuclear bombs if Tehran were to move toward weaponization. Iran’s breakout time is estimated to be as small as a few weeks, though it would still likely take Tehran several months to a year to produce a usable nuclear weapon.
With Trump set to reenter the White House in January, there are mixed signals from Trump and his advisors. On the one hand, there are reports that the president-elect wishes to renew his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and is even considering airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. On the other, there are signals that the former president is entertaining the prospects of a deal with Tehran.
Trump cautioned against U.S. efforts at regime change in Tehran, and just days after the U.S. presidential election, Elon Musk, a close confidant of the president-elect, met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations to discuss reducing tensions between Tehran and Washington. Trump’s Middle East advisor, Massad Boulos, recently claimed Trump is ready for “serious negotiations” with Iran.
For its part, Tehran recently moved toward a more conciliatory — albeit cautious — tone under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who was elected on promises to address Iran’s economic crisis by engaging with the West. Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Abbas Araghchi told state television in November that Tehran is ready to resume negotiations over its nuclear program, but warned that the window for such talks is limited.
Ayatollah Khamenei — who maintains ultimate authority inside Iran and would need to sign off on any potential agreement — claimed in August that there is “no barrier” to negotiations with Washington, while also warning against trusting the United States. However, with traditional elements of Iran’s defense strategy degraded — namely, the blows against the so-called “axis of resistance” — Iran may view nuclearizing as its best chance at security.
This window for negotiations may not remain open for long. There are two chief obstacles to negotiations on the U.S. side.
First, decades of policy inertia is pushing Washington toward confrontation with Iran. This is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the threat posed by Iran to U.S. interests. This threat has been greatly inflated inside Washington.
Iran is a brutal dictatorship engaged in a slew of malign activities across the Middle East, yet its ability to threaten key interests of the United States is limited. Iran lacks the military and economic prowess to dominate the Middle East in the policy-relevant future. Its military is not equipped for conquest and its economy is dwarfed by those of its neighbors such as Saudi Arabia. Portraying Iran as capable of dominating the Middle East is tantamount to doing the Islamic Republic’s propaganda for it.
The second obstacle to negotiations stem both from objections from Israel and the continued escalation in the Middle East. In the 14 months since Hamas’s terror attack against Israel and Israel’s subsequent wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the Middle East has seen a wave of escalation spanning the region — including the first direct military exchanges between Iran and Israel. Any agreement between the United States and Iran is likely to face fierce opposition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long welcomed escalation with Tehran.
During the most recent episode in this ongoing tit-for-tat, Israel targeted Iranian air defenses, missile production sites, and a site connected to the country’s nuclear program in October. Iran has vowed to respond to Israel’s attack, but has thus far refrained from doing so, providing the United States with an opportunity to stop this cycle.
The likely alternative to diplomacy is war between the United States and Iran, which would be disastrous for regional stability and U.S. interests.
It will also have the opposite intended effect in Tehran. Preventive strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities — which would likely fail to eliminate the entirety of Iran’s nuclear program — risk further incentivizing Tehran to make a sprint for the bomb. Iran’s air defenses and ballistic missile capabilities would inflict considerable financial and human costs on the United States military.
American troops scattered across the Middle East would be sitting ducks for reprisal attacks from Iran or its regional partners. With no clear path to victory or vision of how such a protracted conflict would end, Washington would be throwing itself into the abyss.
When it comes to Iran, Trump’s best option is diplomacy. He should work to defuse tensions with Tehran, a necessary first step toward a much-needed U.S. disentanglement from the Middle East.
Jon Hoffman is a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute. His research interests include U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Middle East geopolitics, and political Islam.
