Trump goes after new Iran deal as alternative to direct strikes

Experts say Iran is unlikely to concede to US demands despite its regional influence being significantly weakened

US President Donald Trump and Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. AP

US President Donald Trump is seeking a negotiated deal with Iran that curbs its ballistic missiles programme and ends its support to regional proxies without resorting to the direct strikes that are sought by Washington's hawks, according to a prominent expert on Iran’s foreign policy.

Mr Trump has expressed a will to engage with Iran, seven years after he pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” with aggressive sanctions and air strikes on the Islamic Republic to reach similar ends. A letter inviting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Pezeshkian to talks was rejected by Tehran on Monday, who described it as deceptive and bullying.

But recent regional developments including the Hamas war with Israel, Syria's regime change and US air strikes this week on Iran's proxy force the Houthis in Yemen, raise hope that it would be willing to engage in a new agreement that would end the 45-year US-led embargo on the country that has crippled its economy.

Professor Mohsen Milani, political scientist and author of Iran’s Rise and Rivalry with the US in the Middle East, said Mr Trump’s letter came with calculations in Washington that Iran's position had weakened.

The US-based expert views Mr Trump as being egged on by officials who believe it is time to “finish the job” in Iran and achieve regime change.

“The conventional wisdom in Washington and in London today is that Iran has become a weakened, wounded state and therefore the conclusion is that we need to finish the job, either (by) bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, plus its military infrastructure, or it could also mean regime change,” Prof Milani said.

“They want to go after Iranian missiles … drones. They want to put an end to Iranian support for their non-state actors,” he said at Chatham House in London on Monday.

Tehran was unlikely to concede on these measures in talks despite Mr Trump's overture, said Prof Milani, who is director of the Centre for Strategic and Diplomatic Studies at the University of South Florida. “If Iran agrees to all of this, then they might as well raise a white flag,” he said.

Mr Trump first made those demands in his previous term as US president, when he withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama.

The Obama deal had sought a temporary halt to Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, in exchange for a lifting of sanctions. But critics including Mr Trump said it had given Tehran the money and free rein to expand its network of violent regional proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

US President Donald Trump looks on as military strikes are launched against Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis over the group's attacks against Red Sea shipping. Reuters

There have been key changes since Mr Trump's last term which could change the game, Prof Milani said. “Its power has significantly diminished. The overthrow of the Assad regime was to Iran what the Iranian Revolution was to the United States in 1979 because Iran lost its most important state actor in the Middle East,” he said.

On the diplomatic front, one change since 2018 is that Iran now has tools that could encourage it to sit at the table. Among them is the new diplomatic openings Iran has made to Gulf neighbours, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which put it in a better negotiating position with the US.

Yet Mr Trump's “bluntness” raises fears that he may not succeed in striking a deal, according to John Sawers, a former British diplomat who also once headed the UK’s secret intelligence service.

“The exceptional negotiation skills of the Iranians up against the bluntness of President Trump is not an easy mix. It's not a good match,” Mr Sawers said, speaking at foreign affairs think tank Chatham House on Monday. “I think there'll be a lot of effort being put into these negotiations, but I wonder how far they will get.”

One common ground they could find is lowering oil prices – which could be done by lifting the US embargo on Iranian oil and reintroducing it to the global market.

“It's not that the Americans want the Iranians to export oil,” Mr Sawers said. “But part of the American strategy is to reduce the price of oil, and to do that having Iranian crude back on the global markets will have an impact there.”

But the real possibility of air strikes – which Mr Trump could resort to – has left Iran with limited choices.

“Trump is prepared to use violence against Iran. He may not think it through, but there is a binary choice for the Iranians,” Mr Sawers said.

Nuclear breakout

Iran could go down the “dangerous” route of seeking sanctions relief through a nuclear deal with Mr Trump, while pursuing its nuclear weapons programme at the same time, he warned.

“The dangerous approach is if the Iranians are too clever by half, they pursue both a negotiating route and a nuclear weaponisation route at the same time, and see which one advances further,” he said.

“If Iran does go down the route of weaponisation, [Israel's national intelligence agency] Mossad is sufficiently sophisticated and penetrative of the Iranian system that they will know about it, and then that would be the trigger for a military strike,” Mr Sawers said. “That is a dangerous route [for Iran] to go, and it's not impossible.”