Was diplomacy with Iran really doomed to fail?
Trump’s negotiators seemed to misunderstand Iranian positions, but acknowledge they probably could have gotten “Obama plus” deal.
As the Trump administration has struggled to explain its sudden decision to go to war against Iran, it has vilified the Iranian regime as having rejected reasonable offers for peace at recent nuclear talks. But the accounts given by its own negotiators show that is not fully accurate, and that misunderstandings by Trump’s negotiators, lack of expert support, and an artificial time pressure contributed to President Trump abandoning diplomacy before it was exhausted in favor of war.
In the days since Trump abruptly announced that the United States and Israel had launched a war against Iran on Saturday, the White House has sought to portray its recent efforts to get a nuclear deal with Iran as hopeless, doomed by Iran’s refusal to negotiate in good faith.
“Iran has pursued this path of war and violence despite Pres. Trump dispatching two of his top and most trusted negotiators to engage in exhaustive, good faith negotiations to try and reach a deal,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said at the press briefing today, referring to Trump peace envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. “The regime did what they have always done. They lied, they delayed, they tried to string the United States along.
“Iran rejected the path of peace because the terrorists in charge of this regime wanted to build nuclear weapons to use against Americans and our allies,” she said.
But senior Trump administration officials, in briefings with reporters since Saturday, have offered a more mixed picture, acknowledging they told Trump they could possibly get a stronger Iran nuclear deal than the one reached in 2016 by the Obama administration and six world powers that Trump quit in 2017, but it would take time.
They also revealed numerous seeming misunderstandings of Iranian positions and nuclear issues, apparently did not bring U.S. government nuclear or Iran experts who could have helped advise them in recent talks; and were nearly simultaneously negotiating on Ukraine/Russia while holding high stakes, war or peace nuclear negotiations with the Iranians, under an artificial time pressure apparently driven by Trump to quickly determine if a nuclear deal could be reached or the effort should be abandoned in favor of supporting Israel’s timetable for going to war against Iran.
“If you want us to make…a deal, … we could probably get one done”
“So basically, we came back to the President. We said, Look, if you want us to make…a deal, like an Obama kind of deal, maybe it would be an Obama plus deal, we could probably get one done,” a senior Trump administration official told journalists in a White House call yesterday, about what they told Trump after returning from US/Iran talks held in Geneva last Thursday (Feb. 26). “It would take months. These guys definitely were not looking to make a quick deal.
“And if you’re asking us, at the end of the day, if we’re going to look at you and say we’ve actually solved the issue, … it’s going to take a lot for us to get there, because they’re basically playing games with us all over the place, and it’s just very, very slippery,” the official said. “So we said, look, if you decide that you want to do diplomacy, we’ll go… as hard as possible. We’ll get in a room. We’ll fight for every point that we can.”
“But these guys,” he continued, referring to the Iranians, “just really were showing that … they weren’t willing to make the type of deal that Pres. Trump would have been satisfied with,” he said.
After days of Trump administration recriminations as well as five days of massive American and Israeli bombing, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, today criticized his US counterparts as treating complex nuclear talks like a real estate transaction, and their expectations as unrealistic.
“When complex nuclear negotiations are treated like a real estate transaction, and when big lies cloud realities, unrealistic expectations can never be met,” Araghchi wrote on Twitter. “The outcome? Bombing the negotiation table out of spite.”
“Mr. Trump betrayed diplomacy and Americans who elected him,” he wrote.
“Perry Mason”
A second Trump negotiator described his suspicions about an Iranian research reactor used to make medical isotopes, that was originally provided to Iran by the United States in the 1960s. But an arms control expert says there is no enrichment or reprocessing at the site.
“It was very, very clear to us….almost Perry Mason, when we discovered what they were really doing at Tehran Research Reactor,” the second senior Trump negotiator said in a call with journalists yesterday. “Telling the world the story that for the good of the Iranian people, they were developing isotopes for medicinal purposes, and all the while, not using any of it for medicinal purposes. In fact, stockpiling it for some other use. And the only other use it could be, would be to bring it towards weapons grade.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has had regular access to the Tehran Research Reactor and it is not considered a proliferation risk, Kelsey Davenport said.
“It is a research reactor designed to produce medical isotopes, and the IAEA has had regular access to the Tehran Research Reactor,” Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, told me, adding she found the negotiator’s suspicion about it perplexing. “I have never heard or seen any indication that the Tehran Research Reactor was not being used as intended.”
“There is no enrichment or reprocessing at the TRR,” she said. “That’s the other thing that seems bizarre to me. …I’m confused if he completely misunderstood something.”
The Trump negotiator also described being surprised to learn that Iran could produce its own centrifuges, which it has done since the 1980s. He also inaccurately described the IR-6 as the most advanced centrifuge on earth. “Which is laughable,” Davenport noted.
‘They wanted a yes or no answer’
Iran in its proposal presented at Geneva last week said it was willing to pause enrichment for five years, according to a source. They were willing to not accumulate enriched uranium gas, Oman’s foreign minister explained in an interview with CBS.
After a five year suspension of enrichment, the Iranians wanted to resume enrichment using IR-6 centrifuges, and to be eventually allowed to run 30 cascades of IR-6 centrifuges.
“The scope of the enrichment was too large to be politically acceptable for the United States, but it probably wasn’t [Iran’s] bottom line,” Davenport said. “I would assume then that the scope of the enrichment program would have been negotiable. But it doesn’t seem to me like there was any attempt to test that.”
Other observers expressed skepticism if Trump’s negotiators ever were serious about trying to reach a deal with Iran.
“I doubt they were trying to understand,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, told me.
“They wanted a simple yes or no answer,” he said, “which is not how diplomacy works.”
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Other diplomats say Trump’ negotiators have misunderstood or mischaracterized other Iranian positions.
A Persian Gulf diplomat directly involved in the recent U.S. Iranian negotiators said Steve Witkoff mischaracterized what his Iranian counterpart told him at indirect talks in Oman last month, MS Now reported.
Witkoff said that Iranian negotiators, at a meeting held Feb. 6 in Oman, “said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60%” enriched uranium, he told Fox’s Sean Hannity on Monday (March 3). “And they’re aware that they could make 11 nuclear bombs and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance.”
“I can categorically state that this is inaccurate,” the Persian Gulf diplomat told MS Now. The Iranian foreign minister “was explaining that all of this material can all go away should we have a deal and Iran can be relieved from sanctions.”
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Trump administration officials also acknowledged in recent briefings that they agreed with the Iranians that they would try to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, and would delegate the issues of Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for proxies for Iran to negotiate with regional countries. But they then expressed surprise that Iran and the region had not met to solve those complex issues within three weeks in February.
“Jared [Kushner] and I decided from the beginning of the negotiations, in consultation with all of the countries in the region, that we would deal directly with nuclear, enrichment [issues]…and we would allow the region to talk about proxies, and also to talk about ballistic missiles,” the Trump administration official said. “Because it’s a regional issue.”
At “the third session, we reminded the Iranians that proxies and ballistic missiles had not been addressed in the region,” he said. “While we agreed in good faith to allow the region to take on these two issues, the Iranians made no attempt whatsoever to convene the region and talk about them. So that was a big tell.”
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