Why Trump’s Iran Diplomacy May Work

11 Apr 2025, 13:35 by Trita Parsi · TIME

Top diplomats from the U.S. and Iran look set to meet on Saturday in Oman. It would mark a significant diplomatic win for President Donald Trump, and one that eluded his predecessor Joe Biden. And though Trump’s overall foreign policy approach leaves much to be desired, he may prove uniquely positioned to revive a diplomatic accord with Iran.

For weeks, the U.S. and Iran had been trading private letters and public threats. Trump had ordered a major military buildup in the region, while Tehran warned it would target U.S. bases if attacked. Even more troubling, U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz was echoing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s hardline demand for the total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program—a non-starter widely seen as designed to sabotage diplomacy and clear the path for military action.

In short, the atmosphere was ripe for escalation, not diplomacy.

Yet Trump’s all-purpose envoy, Steve Witkoff, is set to be joined by Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, to explore the parameters of a potential negotiation. Whether the talks are indirect, as the Iranians insist, or direct, as Trump claims, is beside the point. What matters is that they’re talking.

Several factors suggest Trump’s diplomatic push could succeed. First, both sides have strong incentives to reach a deal. Despite his aggressive talk and military posturing, Trump cannot afford another major war in the Middle East. He has long been a candidate who promises to bring U.S. troops home—not entangle them in a new war. Influential MAGA figures like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and others have also come out strongly against a military strike on Iran.

For its part, Iran’s struggling economy urgently needs sanctions relief. European powers are likely to re-impose U.N. Security Council “snapback” sanctions before October under the 2015 nuclear deal, increasing Iran’s economic woes. Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, was elected on a platform of negotiating with the U.S. to lift sanctions and revive the economy. His presidency hinges on his ability to deliver on this promise.

Second, Trump does not appear to be following Israel’s lead on Iran. Since the early 1990s, Israeli leaders have strongly opposed engagement with Iran, urging the U.S. to bomb the country instead. Many argue that the fall of Assad in Syria and Israel’s blows to Hezbollah have significantly weakened Iran, making it ripe for military strikes.

Netanyahu said this week in a Hebrew video address that a deal can only work if Iran’s nuclear facilities are physically blown up, “under American supervision with American execution.” He also called for a “Libya-style agreement,” a reference to the George W. Bush Administration’s approach in 2003 to Muammar Gaddafi’s nuclear program.

Trump appears unconvinced—as events this week showed. Netanyahu had been invited to the White House on Monday expecting the meeting to revolve around tariffs. But after arriving in Washington he was told about U.S.-Iran talks and given no assurances that a deal would meet his demands, Israel’s Channel 12 reported. The Israeli delegation was unhappy with the meetings, CNN reported. But Trump’s willingness to act independently of Israel on Iran may prove a key reason why Saturday’s talks have a chance of success.

Instead of the Libya-style dismantlement, Witkoff has advocated for a verification-based approach—the foundation of former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. This type of agreement emphasizes limiting and inspecting Iran’s nuclear program rather than eliminating it entirely. Iran has accepted such a framework before and has signaled its willingness to do so again.

Third—and perhaps most importantly—Tehran seems convinced that Trump genuinely wants a deal and is both willing and able to offer meaningful sanctions relief to achieve it. In contrast, Iranian officials saw Biden as lacking the urgency and political will to do the same. “To Biden,” one Iranian official told me at the time, “offering us sanctions relief was as painful as peeling off his own skin.”

A deal with Trump offers Iran a distinctly different upside. For the first time, Iranian officials are openly signaling that they want more than just sanctions relief to resume trade with Europe and Asia—they want to do business directly with the U.S. Just a few years ago, this was a red line for Iran’s hardliners. They feared that U.S. economic influence would empower Iranian moderates and erode conservative control.

Today, however, Iran’s foreign minister is openly courting American business. Writing in the Washington Post this week, he argued that it is U.S. sanctions—not Iranian resistance—that have kept American companies from a “trillion-dollar opportunity” in Iran’s economy. “To say that the scope for trade and investment in Iran is unparalleled is an understatement,” he added.

By dangling this business opportunity, Tehran is not only speaking Trump’s language but also acknowledging a critical lesson: secondary sanctions relief—lifting restrictions on foreign companies trading with Iran—is unstable without accompanying primary sanctions relief that allows U.S. companies to engage directly. Obama’s nuclear deal offered only the former, making it easier for Trump to abandon it, as the U.S. business community had little stake in preserving the agreement.

Given how far Iran has advanced its production of near weapons-grade uranium, primary sanctions relief may be the key leverage Trump needs to secure a stronger deal than Obama’s.

Reaching an agreement will still be difficult. Deep mistrust remains, and Tehran will struggle to negotiate with the man who ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and unilaterally exited the last deal in 2018. Yet, despite the risks and narrow path forward, the prospects for diplomacy haven’t looked this promising in years.