{"id":2884,"date":"2025-04-06T06:03:01","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T06:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=2884"},"modified":"2025-04-06T06:03:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T06:03:01","slug":"trump-iran-and-the-nuclear-brink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=2884","title":{"rendered":"Trump, Iran and the nuclear brink"},"content":{"rendered":"
Former US president Barack Obama took a tongue-in-cheek jab at his successor and incumbent President Donald Trump this week. \u201cImagine if I had done any of this,\u201d he said during a rare public appearance at Hamilton College in New York on Thursday, prompting laughter from his audience.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s remark was aimed mainly at the Trump administration\u2019s domestic actions, particularly the targeting of protesting students and their universities, critical journalists, and law firms perceived as aligned with political opponents.<\/p>\n

But he may as well have been talking about Trump\u2019s foreign policy approach, particularly the president\u2019s threat to Iran last weekend.<\/p>\n

“If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” Trump told NBC News last Sunday, referring to Iran and its nuclear programme. He also threatened to impose secondary tariffs \u2014 \u201clike I did four years ago\u201d \u2014 if Tehran failed to reach an agreement with Washington on the issue.<\/p>\n

The irony, of course, is that Washington already had a deal with Iran, negotiated by none other than Obama, which Trump scrapped in 2018, a year after taking office the first time. In its place, Trump reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran, part of his \u2018maximum pressure\u2019 policy, which perhaps he felt better aligned with the image he sought to project.<\/p>\n

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), sealed between Tehran and world powers, had required Iran to limit its nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief. However, Washington\u2019s withdrawal and the reimposition of sanctions did not have the intended effect of dissuading Iran from its nuclear programme. Instead, it had the opposite outcome in the years since.<\/p>\n

Writing for The Conversation, Middle East expert Amin Saikal pointed out that Tehran has substantially expanded its nuclear programme, much to the dismay of the other signatories to the deal \u2014 namely the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China. “It has installed more advanced centrifuges and accelerated uranium enrichment to 60 per cent, just below weapons-grade level. The country is now at a nuclear weapons threshold. It is believed to be capable of assembling an atomic bomb within months, if not weeks,” Saikal wrote.<\/p>\n

Before the comments he made on Sunday, Trump revealed that he had written to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for nuclear negotiations and warning of potential military action if Tehran refused. While Tehran rejected the idea of direct talks with Washington, officials confirmed that it had signalled openness to indirect diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Yet speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump struck a surprisingly optimistic tone about the prospect of direct diplomacy with Tehran. \u201cI think it\u2019s better if we have direct talks,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it goes faster, and you understand the other side a lot better than if you go through intermediaries. They wanted to use intermediaries. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessarily true anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re concerned, I think they feel vulnerable. I don\u2019t want them to feel that way,\u201d he added. \u201cI think they want to meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s insistence on face-to-face talks is likely driven by his image-obsessed brand of politics. Writing for Foreign Policy after last month\u2019s embarrassing episode with Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky, former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel Daniel C. Kurtzer observed: \u201cMost of what he says and does is subordinated and tethered to his vanities, designed to buck up his image, boost his political and financial interests, or cultivate his pet projects, peeves, and festering grievances.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem, as seen in the case of the JCPOA and more recently in his disputes with neighbours Mexico and Canada, as well as allies Denmark and Ukraine, is that playing the \u2018bad cop\u2019 so overtly on the geopolitical stage can all too easily lead to \u2018two steps back\u2019.<\/p>\n

Esmail Baghaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, responded to Trump\u2019s threat by saying: \u201cThe explicit threat of bombing Iran by the head of a country is a clear contradiction to the essence of international peace and security\u2026 Violence brings violence, and peace creates peace. America can choose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supreme Leader Khamenei, while \u201cnot overly concerned\u201d by Trump\u2019s remarks, warned: \u201cIf any malicious act does occur, it will certainly be met with a firm and decisive response.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Friday, Iran\u2019s missile chief Brig Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh and senior Revolutionary Guards commander Alireza Sabahifard visited the country’s southeast Air Defence Zone in Bandar Abbas for “an operational assessment of Iran’s combat and defence preparedness,” according to the hardline Tasnim News Agency.<\/p>\n

The base inspected by the two commanders is Iran\u2019s closest known military installation to the tiny Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, where the US military has been amassing equipment in an unprecedented build-up, foreshadowing a possible strike on Iran. Most notably, the US has deployed several B-2 bombers, capable of carrying the 2,000-pound \u2018mother of all bombs\u2019, believed to be able to penetrate underground Iranian nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n

Iran has warned that its missiles could target Diego Garcia, with some commanders reportedly pushing for a pre-emptive strike to demonstrate Iran\u2019s military strength. Brig Gen Hajizadeh offered an ominous warning: \u201cSomeone in glass houses does not throw stones at anyone\u2026 The Americans have at least 10 bases with 50,000 troops in the region, meaning they are sitting in a glass house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iranian authorities and commanders have repeatedly pointed to their missile salvos on Israel as a successful demonstration of their capabilities, emphasising that American interests in the region \u2014 being much closer \u2014 would be even easier targets. In 2020, a barrage of Iranian missiles struck the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq, which hosts US forces, in retaliation for the US assassination of Iran\u2019s most powerful commander, Qasem Soleimani. Although the attack was carefully calibrated to avoid fatalities, it drew significant attention for the accuracy of the strikes and the extensive physical damage inflicted on the base\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Despite the strong rhetoric, there are signs that Tehran is seeking to avoid a direct military confrontation with the United States. Iran\u2019s President Masoud Pezeshkian was reported to have held back-to-back calls with the leadership of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Tunisia to secure assurances that their land and airspace would not be used to facilitate US strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n

Despite longstanding mistrust in Tehran, several Arab states are cautious regarding escalating US-Iran tensions. Energy market volatility remains a major concern for Persian Gulf producers. As Al-Monitor reported, the economic shock from a conflict affecting the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 a chokepoint for roughly a fifth of global oil supplies \u2014 could be devastating.<\/p>\n

The growing threat of war has also prompted Iran to scale back its regional activities. An anonymous Iranian official told The Daily Telegraph that Tehran has begun withdrawing forces from Yemen in a bid “to avoid direct confrontation with the US.”<\/p>\n

Subtle shifts in tone are beginning to emerge from Tehran as well. Ali Larijani, a senior aide to Supreme Leader Khamenei who recently warned that Iran could pursue nuclear weapons if attacked, described Trump as “a talented individual, which explains his success in business ventures,” in a post on X.<\/p>\n

Mahmoud Mohammad Araghi, a senior hardline cleric and member of the Assembly of Experts, also hinted at a more flexible approach, framing potential engagement with Washington as “acts of heroic flexibility from a position of strength” during a speech on Thursday.<\/p>\n

But while Iran may be taking care to project itself as a rational actor in the equation, the risk of escalation remains high with Trump in power, where the threat of an errant, bombastic remark triggering an unintended chain reaction is ever-present.<\/p>\n

In a phone conversation with UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy last month, Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stressed that direct negotiations would be futile under Washington\u2019s policy of \u2018maximum pressure\u2019 and \u2018military threats\u2019.<\/p>\n

Even if Iran caved in to Trump\u2019s whims and agreed to face-to-face talks, the Zelensky episode has demonstrated how the US president could publicly undermine or embarrass negotiating partners for domestic political gain.<\/p>\n

In his write-up, Middle East expert Saikal noted that both sides remain far apart in their respective demands for a possible deal. “Washington, at a minimum, would want Tehran to indefinitely limit its uranium enrichment to 3.7 per cent \u2014 the level agreed to under the 2015 nuclear deal,” Saikal wrote. “It would also demand close oversight by both the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency.”<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Tehran\u2019s minimum demands would include the unfreezing of Iranian assets, the lifting of all US sanctions, and a binding guarantee that any new nuclear agreement would not be overturned by future American administrations, he added.<\/p>\n

Neither side is likely to meet these demands without first engaging in substantive confidence-building measures. As Saikal pointed out, since Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, the onus is now on Washington to take the first step toward restarting the diplomatic process.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former US president Barack Obama took a tongue-in-cheek jab at his successor and incumbent President Donald Trump this week. \u201cImagine if I had done any of this,\u201d he said during a rare public appearance at Hamilton College in New York on Thursday, prompting laughter from his audience. Obama\u2019s remark was aimed mainly at the Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}