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Why Washington Must Accept the Limits of Diplomacy with Iran

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Hussein Aboubakr Mansour - The Trump administration has entered advanced negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, signaling a potential agreement that would see Tehran limit its uranium enrichment to below weapons-grade levels, permit enhanced IAEA inspections, and accept phased reductions of its enriched stockpile. In exchange, Washington is reportedly prepared to lift economic sanctions. These terms mirror the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that President Trump condemned as a strategic capitulation. However, the strategic reality is that no permanent nuclear deal with Iran is possible. The regime's core orientation remains structurally incompatible with long-term resolution. The Islamic Republic is a revolutionary regime, committed to ideological expansionism, proxy warfare, and the managed pursuit of nuclear latency. Agreements can be struck, but they cannot be sustained. They will be violated, reinterpreted, or collapsed. The notion that Iran could be induced to accept permanent limits on its nuclear capacity, or to forgo its regional proxy network in exchange for sanctions relief and international reintegration, reflects a fundamental misreading of Iran's behavior. The JCPOA allowed Iran to relieve economic pressure, deepen its regional footprint, and continue R&D on advanced centrifuges. The current Trump administration's attempt to reengineer a similar framework will face the same fate. The only viable posture is one that treats Iran's revolutionary character as enduring, and its negotiation behavior as inherently opportunistic rather than cooperative. Any effort to resolve the Iranian nuclear file through a permanent diplomatic arrangement fails not merely because of Iran's duplicity, but because such a framework misapprehends the nature of the threat. The writer is an Egyptian-American author and researcher at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in Washington.
2025-05-20 00:00:00
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