Why a US-Iran deal no longer matters

After two wars, a month and a half of negotiations, a political reputation staked on attacking his predecessor’s nuclear deal, tiresome leaks trumpeting progress undermined by frantic calls for war, United States President Donald Trump signaled on Saturday that he was finally willing to strike a deal with Iran.  “Final aspects and details of the deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. That imminence was quickly undermined — which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone at this point — for shortly after the original post, Trump went on a posting storm on Truth Social: AI-generated images of US planes bombing Iranian ships, lashing out at political opponents and an update on talks.   The meaningful update was a change in the timeline. “I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal in that time is on our side,” Trump wrote.  But the post was also filled with the kind of braggadocio that mixes the kind of bravado that feeds his base but also betrays his own real interests.  “One of the worst deals ever made by our country was the Iran Nuclear Deal, put forth and signed into existence by Barack Hussein Obama and the rank amateurs of the Obama Administration. It was a direct path to Iran developing a nuclear weapon. Not so with the transaction currently being negotiated with Iran by the Trump Administration – THE EXACT OPPOSITE, in fact! The negotiations are proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner,” the president wrote.  The deal, which has steadily been leaked to the public since Saturday, does not rise above the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, widely known as the Iran nuclear deal. According to a Pakistani mediator who spoke to Mada Masr, the deal under discussion makes way for the following: the extension of the ceasefire for 60 days, beginning the process of unfreezing all Iranian assets, the prompt opening and free operation of the Strait of Hormuz, an agreement to negotiate the “custody” of the enriched uranium in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and assurances that the Iranian nuclear program remains peaceful and under the strict supervision of the IAEA.  The word “custody” has proven to be a sticking point, the mediator says. “Custody means the enriched uranium can either be in or outside of Iran. And it is a big word that is deliberately chosen for this declaration of principles,” he said.  It is clear that the deal is almost entirely concerned with undoing the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which about 25 percent of the world’s oil and gas is shipped and which Iran has impeded traffic in since the war. While the opening of the strait will be a welcome development for Gulf countries, whose supply lines have come under strain and ability to export oil and gas has been disrupted, as well as for global markets that so depend on fossil fuels, it does little to address the core issues unleashed by the war or the supposed US policy goals that started the conflict. Today, sources informed of the negotiations — including members of the core Pakistani negotiating team, Arab and Western diplomats briefed on the talks and a source in US diplomacy quarters — say that a durable ceasefire is at hand “with or without a more elaborate deal.” Whether a framework agreement is reached in the coming days and a more binding nuclear agreement in the coming months matters much less given that de-escalation is already underway and that the US and Arab states want peace.  In the past month and a half, Mada Masr spoke to a range of sources to understand how we have reached a point where the pace of rapid wins secured by the US and Israel to transform the region has run into a sizable roadblock.  *** Trump has spent much of his two terms in office railing against an acronym: the JCPOA.  The JCPOA is an agreement signed between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and the US — alongside Germany, after 20 months of negotiations. Finalized in 2015, it put in place restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program guaranteed by intrusive IAEA monitoring of its fuel cycle-related activities.  In his attacks on the JCPOA, Trump has replaced the penchant for alphabet soup that characterizes much of traditional bureaucrat speak with his own verbal callbacks. In his language, “the Iran Nuclear Deal” inked by “Barack Hussein Obama” is the source of the “worst” danger ever posed to the US and the world. And in 2018, he pulled out of the deal, prompting Iran to blow past the restrictions imposed by the JCPOA. When former President Joe Biden was elected, he set about trying to restore the agreement, but he was met with a much more intransigent Iran who viewed the US as the one who had violated the agreement and was therefore unwilling to agree to the same concessions.  While Trump was engaged in negotiations before the February war, he was met with what he viewed as the “Iranians playing games,” saying things to buy time and not sticking to terms, a source in US diplomacy quarters in the Gulf says.  “The Americans were not willing to negotiate in the real sense of negotiations. They were making a proposal in a take it or leave it manner and the Iranians were not willing to bow to this,” the diplomat adds. And when Iran didn’t bow, the US decided to try to reach its maximalist demands through the war.  However, when that failed, they returned to negotiations in early April and Trump would have yet another chance to replace the JCPOA. But in the final days of April, after weeks of negotiations, when Iran’s nuclear program was still very much part of the core negotiations, the differences with the JCPOA couldn’t have been more stark, according to an Arab diplomat who had seen a version of the deal at the time.  “When you look at the JCPOA, you find a 100-plus-page document that is highly technical and highly precise and it took more than 10 years for this document to be put together. This is not the kind of thing that the Trump administration will work to get. And even if there is a framework agreement, it would be very general,” the Arab diplomat says. “So, for instance, there is this line about the US commitment to remove sanctions — economic sanctions and then the rest — in return for Iran’s compliance with a verification process. The trouble there is that there are no details. So it becomes very ambiguous. And when it comes to implementation, it becomes very unclear who is going to do what first and who is going to get what.” And the vagueness wasn’t just a formulation problem. Trump’s concern over his own anti-JCPOA legacy had undermined his position to negotiate specifics from the beginning.  An Arab diplomat in Washington who holds talks with US and Iranian officials tells Mada Masr that when Trump decided on the composition of the negotiating delegation that went to Islamabad he deliberately excluded all those who worked on the JCPOA, even though most of the key architects have largely left public service.  “There was not a single diplomat on the team who had previous negotiating experience with Iran on the nuclear file. And none of the members of the delegation spoke three words of Farsi,” the diplomat says. “On the other hand, the Iranian delegation was stuffed with experts on every single element of the negotiations, including matters that just might be raised. I met an Iranian diplomat who was in these negotiations in Islamabad. And he was telling us, ‘my friends you would not believe, no member of the American delegation knew what they were talking about. They really have no idea of what they are talking about.’” Another source who served as a leading mediator sent to Islamabad as part of the Quad delegation, which includes Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, agrees.  “The big problem with the Americans today, as opposed to the time of Biden or Obama, is that they don’t know how to negotiate with the Iranians, because they do not see the element of pride or the element of resilience that the Iranians have,” the source says. “And this is why I think Trump is very surprised by the steadfastness that Iran has demonstrated so far in this war. Iran did not lose this war. Iran won the war, in fact.” The source, who spoke in late April, expressed doubt that a deal would come to pass due to a lack of “confidence on the side of the Iranians” and of “knowledge on the side of the Americans.” A source close to the lead negotiator, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir, agrees with this assessment. To illustrate his point, he highlights how the focus on the enriched uranium in Iran doesn’t make sense.  “Even if the Iranians gave him all the enriched uranium, they still have the centrifuge and the enrichment plant. They can simply introduce fresh uranium and have it enriched. And Mr. Trump is not demanding that Iran give up the facilities, the centrifuge or the plant, so I really don’t understand.” To fill the significant chasm between the facts of the complex issue and the American team’s talking points, the Arab diplomat says that Pakistan has had to be the one to actually work on drafting a possible ceasefire declaration and an announcement of parameters of the future of the talks. By late April, however, it was clear that the parties weren’t going to make headway on the nuclear issue. To overcome this impasse, Iran proposed in early May to separate the negotiating tracks, a Pakistani mediator told Mada Masr. One proposal would deal with the nuclear issue and the other would be centered on the Strait of Hormuz. While Trump formally rejected the proposal — telling reporters, “they’re asking for things that I can’t agree to” — the split in the negotiating track continues to be the key feature of the current talks.  This led to a further paring down of the proposed framework from an initially planned two to three pages to one and a half, according to the Pakistani mediator.  Two to three pages, the mediator says, “was too detailed to be general [enough for the parties to agree]. What we need is a general line of principles whereby both countries will agree that they will refrain from attacking one another, that the allies of each will refrain from any hostilities, and that Iran will commit to not pursuing a nuclear armament program and that it will do whatever it takes for its program to remain peaceful, in cooperation with the IAEA.” The deal under discussion this week is one to two pages, full of “pledges,” the source in US foreign policy quarters in the Gulf and an Egyptian official briefed on the talks confirm.  *** Why has the US president shown a willingness to move on from the nuclear issue?  According to the source close to Munir, the answer lies in the fact that the US president is no longer prioritizing policy. The talks, the source says, have become about so much else for the president.  “I don’t think for Mr. Trump the issue today is about Iran’s nuclear program,” the source says. “It is about the midterm elections that are coming closer everyday. It is about his squabbles with the US military that failed to get him what he wanted, namely the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program. Mr. Trump has fired numerous generals and his army chief of staff not just because he had disagreements with them, but because he is frustrated, very frustrated that the world’s strongest military power failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear program after such a long war.” The source in US foreign policy quarters in the Gulf reiterates the same logic.  “The reality is Trump has come under a lot of pressure within his own administration, so he wanted to find an end to this process. There was no forecast, if he restarted the war, where things would go,” the source says.  When asked if this meant that Trump never cared about the nuclear issue and was merely being influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the source dismissed such claims.  “Trump was not taken for a ride by Netanyahu. He wanted this war as yet another step in destroying the legacy of the JCPOA. And now he knows that he is not getting what he wants,” the source says.  Prioritizing his own political interests at their expense was the worst case scenario for Gulf countries before the war.  An Arab diplomat in New York in discussion with Saudi officials said the kingdom’s foreign minister warned US officials against starting an open-ended war. “He told them if you are not sure you’re going to be able to remove the regime, then don’t start the war. Because if the regime is humiliated, it will become much more aggressive, and it will be much more dangerous for all of us,” the diplomat previously told Mada Masr. Today, however, the Gulf wants Trump to exit the scene.  “All of the Gulf diplomats I speak to believe that Trump needs to get out of the war for his own purposes,” the Arab diplomat in DC says. “He doesn’t care about the region or stability.” While Trump has tried to suggest that his unwillingness to resume the war was in acquiescence to the Gulf, the Arab diplomat says that senior Gulf officials have denied any requests to that effect in closed-door meetings.  Israel and the United Arab Emirates are still keen on a more hardline stance, even if a deal is to be reached, multiple sources agree.  A source at a UAE research center focused on Emirati foreign policy says that Saudi Arabia has tried to coordinate a united Gulf Cooperation Council position on the framework agreement, which is why Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman called UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed twice in one week.  “We are now talking about coordinating a GCC position on the deal that will allow for the end of the war on Iran. The Emiratis along with, to an extent, the Bahrainis have been taking a very radical position. Now they too want the war to come to an end because they realize there is no overthrowing the supreme leader or the Iranian regime, but they are much more radical regarding the terms of the framework agreement than the rest of the Gulf, whereas the Saudi position is let us just get an official end to the war and then we will deal with Iran,” the source says.  The Pakistani mediator, the Arab diplomat in DC and the source in US foreign policy quarters in the Gulf all agree that the UAE is not on board with the current deal on the table “despite what they say in the media.”  As for Israel, the source in US foreign policy quarters and a regional diplomat who holds talks with the Americans and the Israelis say that Netanyahu is actively trying to undermine the deal.  “You should not think that Netanyahu has accepted the agreement at face value. He will still be trying to lobby to get Trump to change his mind at the last moment,” the source in US foreign policy quarters says.  The regional diplomat says that Lebanon, where Israel continues to conduct ground operations and threaten large swaths of the population, is “definitely part of the deal,” to the chagrin of Netanyahu.  The Lebanese government, the diplomat tells Mada Masr, has been in touch with the Americans to pressure Netanyahu to halt the attacks on Hezbollah once an agreement is reached in order to “give them time to regain momentum on disarming Hezbollah.”  A former Arab diplomat to Lebanon agrees that the Lebanese government is pushing for a halt in Israel’s military operations in conversations with the Americans in order to “strip Hezbollah of any excuse to use its arms” and to allow a long enough time for the resumption of talks on the “state of Hezbollah’s arms.”  “They told the Americans that this has to be a long, slow and cautious process to spare Lebanon the risk of a civil war,” the regional diplomat says.  *** For the source close to Munir, there may still be too many hurdles to reach a conclusive deal or even a framework agreement, a familiar refrain among the numerous sources that Mada Masr has spoken to over the last month and a half. But today, that doesn’t really matter, the source contends.  “I am telling you, even if there is no deal, there will be an extension of a ceasefire and this in and of itself is very important,” the source says. “What Mr. Munir successfully did with his talks with the Iranians over the past few days, including the visit, is that he convinced the Iranians that they should take advantage of this very important moment while Trump wants out of the war. The Arab world wants an end to the war. And a durable ceasefire is at hand with or without a more elaborate deal.”  The source argues that a military de-esclation is already happening, despite sporadic strikes that continued as recently as Tuesday morning. He points to the return of the USS Gerald Ford and several other US warships to US naval bases.  “One third of the US defensive missile capacity has been removed. And this is a very reassuring message for the Iranians,” the source says. “The bottom line is that the message to US generals and military people is that the war is over.” The Arab diplomat in DC agrees: today, a framework deal is of little importance.  The diplomat says it is “very likely” that a ceasefire extension will be announced either before the weekend or early next week. “This is also where there might be a one-page declaration of parameters to set up a negotiations process. But that would be the end of it,” the diplomat adds. When asked what he meant by the “end of it,” the source replied: “It will be an open-ended exercise that will not go anywhere.”  What is clear is that the US’s ability to dictate terms seems to have been significantly degraded by its failures.  In yet another distraction move, Trump urged several regional countries to join the Abraham Accords with Israel in a Monday night post on Truth Social. “After all the work done by the United States to try and pull this very complex puzzle together, it should be mandatory that all of these countries, at a minimum, simultaneously sign onto the Abraham Accords,” Trump wrote.  When asked about the demand, an Egyptian official shrugged off the post.  “We already have a peace treaty,” the official said. “If Trump is offering a new regional order that is based on the full integration of Israel with no answer to the Palestinian question,he should not expect leading Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to join.” The post Why a US-Iran deal no longer matters first appeared on Mada Masr.