Whether in the Oval Office conducting foreign policy or at Trump Tower overseeing his real estate empire, President Donald Trump prizes the “art of the deal” as the way to get things done. But while international attention is focused on Trump’s effort to secure peace between Russia and Ukraine, Trump has his eye on another prize: the negotiation of a new nuclear agreement with Iran.
Trump’s first-term policy toward Iran involved a “maximum pressure” campaign of crippling sanctions targeting Iran’s oil and gas export economy. Withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord negotiated by the Obama administration, Russia, China, and the European Union, Trump sought to use new sanctions to push Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, back to the negotiating table. It didn’t work out.
Tentative efforts to pursue talks were scuttled by Iranian terrorism and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s demand that Iran end its support for terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, as part of any agreement. While Trump’s sanctions regime imposed significant pressure on Iran’s finances and economy, forcing its reduced support for terrorist groups, Khamenei still refused to come to the table due to his insistence that Iran would not negotiate on non-nuclear matters. Iran subsequently and substantially increased its stockpile of nuclear material enriched to near weapons-grade purities.
Then came the January 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani. That put the prospect of any first-term detente to death. But today, Iran’s threat of “breaking out” toward a full nuclear weapons capability has never been greater.
So, can Trump get a deal the second time around?
The president is optimistic. While a more measured version of “maximum pressure” sanctions has been reintroduced on Iran, Trump has taken pains to show his continued desire to reach an accord. Signing an executive order to reintroduce sanctions last month, Trump again explained, “Hopefully, we’re not going to have to use [the sanctions] very much,” adding, “I’m unhappy to do it.” He then said the U.S. and Iran “should start working on [a diplomatic agreement] immediately.” He concluded, “I want Iran to be a great and successful country, but one that cannot have a Nuclear Weapon.” Bloomberg reported this week that Trump asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to help facilitate negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.
Following media suggestions that the U.S. and Israel were finalizing plans to attack Iran’s nuclear program, Trump pushed back. He said reports that America was preparing to “blow Iran into smithereens ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED.” Some Republicans and conservative commentators seem to think that Trump is far more inclined to use force against Iran’s nuclear program.
Take Trump’s nomination of Elbridge Colby to a top Pentagon policy position, for example. While Colby has supported providing Israel with the munitions it deems necessary to defend itself and expressed concern about Iran’s nuclear threat at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he has also suggested the U.S. could live with an Iranian nuclear weapon. This has sparked opposition to Colby’s nomination from some Republicans and conservative commentators. In a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee expressing concern about Colby’s nomination, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations heavily suggested that Trump favored using force against Iran. Mark Levin claimed Colby should be rejected because “it is the unequivocal position of President Trump and every sane person that Iran must not get nukes.” Lee Smith observed that Colby’s consideration of the Iranian nuclear threat is “not how Trump sees it.”
But is Trump really a hawk hiding in more dovish clothes?
While Trump has not ruled out using force against Iran, a close assessment of the president’s first- and second-term records suggests he would be reluctant to use force against Iran’s nuclear program and risk another Middle East war.
While Soleimani’s killing was a significant act, it did not threaten direct military escalation risks of the kind that an American attack on Iran’s nuclear program would entail. The Iranian regime would view such an attack as a direct threat to its viability. Nor, of course, did Trump use force to end North Korea’s nuclear ballistic missile program, even though Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un could target much of the continental United States. Trump has also shown a willingness to tolerate significant Iranian provocations. In June 2019, Iran shot down a U.S. drone that cost tens of millions of dollars. While Trump nearly responded militarily, he decided not to because the ensuing Iranian casualties would “not [be] proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”
Put simply, Trump seems far more interested in compromise with Iran than in making maximalist demands at the trigger of a gun.
While Trump’s mix of economic pressure and conciliatory rhetoric seems designed to cajole Iran into entering talks, it’s unclear whether Iran will bite. Khamenei recently declared it was “not smart, wise, or honorable” to engage in talks with Washington. And Khamenei has a veto over Iranian foreign and security policy. The supreme leader also sets the contours for how President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are allowed to engage with the U.S.
To emphasize the point, Khamenei is the key here. The supreme leader detests the U.S. for its support of Israel, alliance with Saudi Arabia (Iran’s enduring Islamic nemesis), and consolidation of regional interests that run counter to Iran’s expansionist theological project. But Khamenei particularly detests Trump for killing Soleimani. While Soleimani had the blood of many hundreds of American soldiers on his hands, victims of his explosively formed penetrator insurgent attack cells in Iraq, Khamenei sees the late general as an archon of regime strength and moral purpose. His abundant tears at Soleimani’s funeral were not for show. Indeed, Khamenei’s emotive fury at Soleimani’s demise was matched only by his strategic fear that tolerating such a brazen U.S. killing of such a senior Iranian official would greatly undermine Iran’s security and its credibility in the Middle East. This Iranian credibility concern is even more pronounced in light of the devastation Israel has imposed on Iran’s allies and its own capabilities in recent months.
That intersection of anger and fear explains why Khamenei then authorized the Quds Force and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security to pursue wide-ranging assassination plots against Trump-era political and military officials. These serious threats led Trump and former President Joe Biden to assign full-time protective details to Pompeo, former Iran policy czar Brian Hook, former national security advisers John Bolton and Robert O’Brien, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, and others. As first reported by the Washington Examiner, the Biden administration, fearing disclosure might complicate its budding diplomacy, temporarily sat on indictments against Guard officers plotting to kill Bolton.
These assassination plots reflect a sustained determination by Khamenei to exact vengeance for Soleimani and, as he sees it, draw a new red line for Washington. It’s crucial to note that these assassination plots aren’t purely the product of security policy. They take root in the Islamic Republic’s theological fixation with martyrdom. Khamenei sees Soleimani as an heir to the fallen hero and most sacred martyr of Shiite Islam, Husayn Ibn Ali. Executed after his followers were vastly outnumbered at the seventh-century Battle of Karbala, Husayn is revered by Khamenei and Shiite Muslims everywhere as the paragon of their faith’s highest values. The aging, legacy-minded Khamenei isn’t going to let Soleimani’s killing go.
At the United Nations in September 2023, Iran’s late president Ebrahim Raisi emphasized this. He promised Iran would bring “all tools and capacities in order to bring to justice the perpetrators and all those who had a hand in [Soleimani’s killing].” Iran would “not rest until that is done,” he said, adding that “the blood of the oppressed will not be forgotten, and the ropes of the guilty will bring them to justice.” That “blood of the oppressed” line is a clear reference to the Husayn connotation with which Iran now regards Soleimani.
The problem for Trump, then, is that Iran’s continued desire to assassinate U.S. officials will act as a very public and very serious complication to any effort at detente. But Trump has also undermined his ability to create space for some kind of detente in the hope that Iran would fail in any assassination plot.
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After all, shortly after reentering office, Trump canceled the security details for Pompeo, Hook, and Milley in revenge for their criticisms of him. The president risks Iran believing it has a more functional opportunity to conduct an assassination and, because it is targeting the president’s perceived enemies, even more likelihood of avoiding Trump’s wrath if it succeeds in doing so. But if Iran does kill an American or Americans, we’ll see huge bipartisan pressure on Trump to respond forcefully.
The top line is Trump may want diplomacy so much that he even tolerates escalating Iranian nuclear threats to get to the table. But Khamenei doesn’t seem keen on giving up on his dual dreams of what he sees as the ultimate regime insurance policy and delivering vengeance for a dear friend.
