Why a nuclear deal will be hard to achieve with the US and Iran sticking to their positions

A massive American military build-up in the Middle East, including the biggest air power deployment since its 2003 attack on Iraq, has potentially set the stage for yet another US-Iran face-off in one of the most volatile regions in the world.

President Donald Trump on Thursday said the situation will become clear "over the next probably 10 days,” in clear signs that Washington is still pursuing options other than military action to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. 

This week, the US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Iranian diplomats in Geneva to ease tensions between Tehran and Washington. 

According to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, both sides reached an agreement on "guiding principles" regarding what the US and Iran demand of each other, making “good progress” compared to the previous meeting. 

The Trump administration graded the latest meet-up as “a little bit of progress” while both sides are “still very far apart on some issues”. In a recent interview, US Vice President JD Vance did not sound hopeful about the future of the talks. 

“In some ways, it went well—they agreed to meet afterwards. But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through,” he told Fox News. 

The US is demanding that Iran abandon its uranium enrichment programme, but Tehran says it has the right to pursue its “peaceful” nuclear activities. 

The US and Israel also want Iran to reduce its ballistic missile capabilities, which Tehran firmly rejects on the grounds that the country needs to defend itself against adversaries. 

On the other hand, Tehran has also said it can “reduce” its nuclear activities in exchange for lifting Western sanctions on Iran. 

Experts say there is merit in Iran’s wish.

“Iran’s macroeconomic situation is so severe on virtually every front that, if the regime wishes to ensure its own survival without being perpetually confronted with cyclical waves of social unrest, it must urgently allow the economy to recover,” Theo Nencini, an expert on Iran, tells TRT World. 

The Iranian leadership also suggests that a third country - possibly Russia - can store its nuclear stockpile to show Tehran’s good faith that the country has no intention to produce nuclear weapons. 

Much uncertainty 

Experts, however, add that the US and Iran will require more time and regular meetings to overcome their differences and reach an agreement, as in the 2015 JCPOA signed by the Obama administration with Tehran. The US withdrew from the deal in 2018 during Trump’s first stint as president.

While US military buildup in the Middle East continues, both sides are still trying to define “the framework of the negotiation”, aiming to clarify what each side is actually prepared to place on the table, says Nencini.

Nencini sees no clear American message to reach a deal with Iran while Tehran shows “little indication” of any willingness to negotiate its nuclear programme in return for the lifting of American sanctions. 

“It is uncertain whether Donald Trump merely seeks to refine and harden the 2015 nuclear agreement, or whether he is instead pursuing the outright overthrow of the regime,” Nencini tells TRT World. 

While at this stage it is difficult to make firm predictions, both sides are preparing for a military confrontation, according to Nencini. 

“What does seem beyond dispute, however, is that both sides are flexing their muscles and preparing for escalation: the US by deploying increasingly substantial naval and military assets, and Iran by signalling its capacity to engage in open conflict at short notice,” he says. 

Other experts also sense an unclear path for nuclear talks while Iran is expected to provide a more detailed proposal to the US side in the next few weeks. 

“The concessions Iran is ready to offer are substantially less than what Trump wants. Reaching a win-win agreement is very difficult (at this moment),” says Mohammed Eslami, a political scientist at the European University Institute. 

“If Trump limits the US demands to the UN Charter and international treaties like NPT or JCPOA, a deal would be very possible, but at the moment, I don’t see it,” Eslami adds. 

The negotiators on both sides are also hamstrung by their lack of decision-making powers.

While Witkoff and Kushner have close ties with Trump, they are not allowed to offer the tiniest concessions to Iran, according to Eslami. 

“For every new idea that comes up, they contact White House and President Trump for consultation.” 

But this authority problem might also be valid for Iran under a supreme leadership. 

In Iran’s semi-theocratic system, almost every single important decision, including the current nuclear talks, has been made after consultation with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. 

Trumpets of war

Experts say that these problems – ranging from US ambiguity about what it really wants from Iran to the inconsistent time framework and the weak authority of delegates – signal that reaching a deal appears to be a far-fetched reality.  

“Having paid the price of suppressing the protests, I don’t think they’re going to sign onto a deal that would actually make their position even more precarious,” said Vali Nasr, a leading Iranian-American writer and professor of Middle East studies and international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, referring to the recent public protests and crackdown by Tehran that allegedly killed the lives of at least 7,000 people. 

Other experts say that the US, too, is unsure about how much damage it can inflict militarily on Iran.

While the US has unparalleled military capabilities, the Trump administration is “still struggling to assume the outcomes of a potential military operation against Iran,” claims Fatemeh Karimkhan, a Tehran-based Iranian journalist, referring to potential regional dimensions of an attack on Iran. 

This is the main reason the US is still negotiating with Iran, she adds. 

“I don't think a magic change is on its way, regardless of what is happening. Iran has long endured Western sanctions, and a limited military operation or any kind of other interventions will not be able to change that. Will Iran survive this? Well, the country has a long history of survival, but I cannot say at what cost this will be,” she tells TRT World. 

Analysts also feel that despite the sabre-rattling, the US is wary of the fallout of a full-fledged military attack on Iran, a country allied with Russia and China, and which has several regional Shia allies from Lebanon to Iraq and Yemen. 

Like Karimkhan, Eslami also feels that Washington is exploring whether “they can get what they want through negotiations rather than launching a regional war”. 

Eslami, though, can hear the trumpets of an approaching war. 

“I personally see the war very close. This war will affect Iran in different ways. I can even see high officials and the supreme leader assassinated in this war,” he says.  

But he feels that a war might not be able to “remove” the post-1979 Iranian system, which “would probably survive this conflict as well.”