Dealing with Iran: Trump’s Negotiating Formula Risks Unwanted War (original) (raw)

US-Iran Tensions: Trump Seeks a Deal of His Own

The New Turkey , 2019

In the short and medium term, the interplay between Trump’s need for a deal on his own terms and Iran’s capacity to sustain the economic and political fallout from the U.S. maximum pressure campaign will determine the nature of the standoff.

Can Negotiations and Diplomacy Break the US–Iran Impasse?

Rome, IAI, April 2021, 6 p. (IAI Commentaries ; 21|23), 2021

As the Biden and Rouhani administrations’ position to renew diplomatic efforts on the Iranian nuclear file with European support, they face more challenges than their predecessors did in 2015, when the Iranian nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was originally signed. Today, domestic, regional and international confrontations have increased; hardliners and conservatives in Tehran and Washington, on the one hand, and in Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the other, are now more aligned and coordinated against a diplomatic success than they were in 2015.

U.S.-Iran Relations under Maximum Pressure: A Narrow Path to Negotiations

Middle East Brief, Brandeis University, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, 2020

In 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and began its "maximum pressure campaign" to compel Iran to renegotiate the nuclear deal. Almost two years later, sanctions on Iran continue, talks have not recommenced, and U.S.-Iranian relations remain at a stalemate. This has led to speculation that the campaign is regime change in disguise. In this Brief, Arash Davari unpacks the maximum pressure campaign's internal logic to identify the conditions under which it would induce the true power brokers in Iran to engage in negotiations. He concludes that the current U.S. policy appears to be a regime change one because the narrow set of preconditions under which negotiations would happen have not occurred. But this analysis also suggests that, under different circumstances, the maximum pressure campaign may yet lead to renewed talks between the U.S. and Iran.

President Trump's 'Maximum Pressure' Campaign and Iran's Endgame

Strategic Analysis, 2020

Iran-US relations are in a state of flux due to President Trump's draconian sanctions, what is dubbed the 'maximum pressure' campaign, to force Iran to renegotiate the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran's 'counter pressure' policy, in contrast, has sought to blunt the effects of sanctions and compel the Trump administration to return to the nuclear deal. This article examines the basic thrust, goals and shortcomings of Trump's anti-Iran campaign, and also explores Iran's policy choices and responses to face off Trump's campaign of 'maximum pressure'. While the Trump administration is heavily relying on the economic weapon of sanctions, Iran is running out of available non-military options. Lack of strong support from the European Union, China and Russia to block Trump's sanctions, the prospect of slow death under sanctions and recent changes in Iran's domestic power equation in favor of the hardliners is potentially paving the way for Iran for a war decision to permanently free itself from the suffocating shackles of US sanctions.

Iran – US Relations in the Light of the Nuclear Negotiations

The nuclear negotiations between Iran and EU3+3 have provided the grounds for establishing direct talks between Iran and the United States, subsequently creating a positive prospect for solving the Iranian nuclear standoff after a decade of negotiations. The effect of economic sanctions and political change in Iran have made it possible to bring an important foreign policy issue into domestic politics discourses. The fact that the nuclear negotiations put Iran in a position comparable to the other world powers strengthened a sense of movement towards a win-win situation among Iranian political forces. All of this created a relative political consensus among Iran’s ruling elites regarding the need to initiate direct talks with the United States in order to solve the Iranian nuclear standoff. The nuclear programme is also linked with the regional equation, the result of which has been the emergence of a new kind pragmatism in the conduct of Iranian regional policy in hope of revising Iran’s place in US Middle East policy.