The Price of Peace With Iran |
Over the last three weeks, talks between Iran and the United States have stalled. The two countries have managed to preserve their shaky cease-fire. But despite days of both indirect and direct negotiations, including a dramatic, 21-hour high-level summit in Islamabad, a lasting deal remains far away.
Part of this failure has to do with Washington’s misplaced expectations. U.S. President Donald Trump believes that the United States holds all the cards and can force Tehran into buckling, regardless of months of evidence to the contrary. But part of the problem is mutual mistrust. The roots of this mistrust date back to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis. This deep wariness has not just persisted; it has deepened. Washington has now spurned Tehran repeatedly in negotiations. It forged a nuclear deal in 2015, only to abandon it three years later. It entered new talks with Iran in 2025, and then bombed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. And when talks picked up again at the beginning of this year, the United States launched its latest military campaign. As a result, most Iranians have little faith that the current negotiations will work or that the cease-fire will hold. Hard-line factions in Iran, historically skeptical of diplomacy, have been emboldened, whereas pragmatists who support engagement have been marginalized.
To overcome this mistrust, the United States will need to prove that the current negotiations are fundamentally different from past ones—which is to say that they will result in a viable and durable agreement. That can begin by Washington finally accepting that Iran has fundamental rights as a sovereign state, including to enrich uranium for civilian, peaceful purposes. The United States will also need to help Iran reconstruct by letting states along the Persian Gulf, Iran included, impose surcharges for certain petroleum-related goods that depart from ports in the Persian Gulf and transit south through the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has proven it can choke off. The resulting funds can help finance the region’s reconstruction in accordance with needs, and Iran, obviously, requires the broadest support. Finally, the United States needs to ensure that Israel will refrain from attacking Iran and help the two countries forge stable, if still unfriendly, relations. Tehran, in turn, will have to agree to new limits and severe oversight of its nuclear program so that Washington can be sure it will never build a nuclear weapon. Iran will also need to accept that it cannot extract funds for the very passage of ships through the strait, in contravention of international law.
Such a comprehensive deal would provide both Tehran and Washington with what diplomats call a “golden bridge”—or an arrangement that allows adversaries to retreat from maximalist positions while still claiming victory. It would inevitably disappoint the United States’ many Iran hawks, who are averse to letting Tehran notch any kind of win. But the reality is that coercive diplomacy is not effective. It hardens resistance, constrains room for compromise, and increases the risk that disputes repeatedly escalate into more violent conflicts. It is thus time for U.S. and Iranian officials to shift their language and strategy away from maximalism and embrace compromise instead.
The road to U.S.-Iranian peace begins with some on-the-ground basics—such as a pledge to maintain the present cease-fire and to not attack critical infrastructure, particularly in the Gulf. That means the two countries must agree to a carefully defined extension of the cease-fire, one that explicitly prohibits such strikes.
Next, the two sides will need to resolve some of their deeper disputes—particularly over Iran’s nuclear program. That clearly remains a central challenge for Americans and many others who want the Iranians to give up any technology that could enable the development of a nuclear weapon. U.S. officials are especially concerned about the nearly 1,000 pounds of highly enriched uranium in Iran’s possession, and they fear that Tehran might still have several thousand efficient centrifuges. These two specific concerns are addressable. Iran could blend down enriched uranium to below 3.67 percent of U-235 and place strict limits on the introduction and the number of more........