who made a strong original case for war at the White House<\/a>, will persuade Mr. Trump to abandon diplomacy.<\/p>\nDespite it all, both Mr. Trump and Iran appear willing to give diplomacy a try. They would hardly be the first enemies to overcome deceit and betrayal and reach a successful agreement. During his first term, Mr. Trump himself struck a deal with the Afghan Taliban \u2014 Islamist radicals who had fought the United States for 20 years \u2014 to withdraw American troops from the country.<\/p>\n
Even if the two sides can overcome their expectations of treachery, the distrust complicates negotiations that Mr. Trump says can be concluded quickly. That is a blithe hope, according to veteran diplomats and Iran experts.<\/p>\n
Designing a deal will require calibrating its step-by-step implementation to minimize the opportunities for one side to obtain an advantage and walk away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat too is complicated because most of the concessions required of Iran are concrete and irreversible, such as turning over or downblending its highly enriched uranium,\u201d said Robert Malley, a lead negotiator with Iran during the Obama and Biden administrations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn contrast, most of the expected U.S. concessions are notional and reversible, such as lifting sanctions or providing access to frozen assets,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
As a result, Mr. Malley said, Iran will insist \u201con a slow, incremental, step-by-step approach\u201d to implementing any agreement, as a way to test Mr. Trump\u2019s compliance.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Trump, hardly known for his patience, may balk at that approach.<\/p>\n
Looming over it all will be Iran\u2019s memory of Mr. Trump\u2019s abrogation of the Obama nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, under which Iran agreed to 15 years of limits on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.<\/p>\n
The agreement took some 20 months to negotiate, with Russia, China, Britain, Germany, France and the European Union joining the United States and Iran in countless rounds of talks. All agreed that Iran was in compliance with the agreement \u2014 until Mr. Trump arrived at the White House.<\/p>\n
Calling the deal \u201ca disaster,\u201d Mr. Trump withdrew from it in 2018 and hammered Iran with new sanctions. In response, Tehran blew through the caps it had agreed to place on its nuclear program, enriching enough uranium to near-military grade levels to come within weeks of bomb-making capability. (Experts say it could still take Iran many months to build a nuclear bomb once it has refined enough uranium for the task.)<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump cited that nuclear progress as grounds for striking its nuclear facilities last June. The strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer, came as the U.S. and Iran were negotiating through Omani mediators.<\/p>\n
When Mr. Malley led indirect U.S. talks with Iran during the Biden administration, seeking to revive the Obama nuclear agreement, Iranian officials insisted on guarantees that the United States could not once again unilaterally withdraw from the deal. Mr. Malley insisted just as firmly that such a guarantee was not possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the depth of mistrust, as well as the sensitivity of the issues being negotiated, it\u2019s very unlikely a deal of this magnitude can be negotiated over a few weeks,\u201d Mr. Sadjadpour said. \u201cMore commonly it has taken many months, if not years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump and Iran\u2019s leaders have wide differences on many issues, from nuclear technology to the Strait of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1452,77882,14670,9,11,10,16764,160,1069,1554],"class_list":{"0":"post-205998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-donald-j","9":"tag-embargoes-and-sanctions","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-nuclear-weapons","15":"tag-peace-process","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-united-states-international-relations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}