Having once described Donald Trump as Israel’s “greatest friend ever,” Benjamin Netanyahu must be watching with some consternation as the American president enthusiastically pursues a nuclear deal with Iran.
After all, the Israeli prime minister made every effort to stop the Obama administration’s Iran deal in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018, perhaps partially at Netanyahu’s urging. And now Trump is pursuing a deal of his own—his administration has even dropped a number of Iran hawks from its ranks, in what one pro-Israel D.C. outlet described as a “purge.”
But Israel’s leaders shouldn’t fear the coming Iran deal. They may even find reasons to welcome it: Among a host of bad options for curbing Iran’s nuclear program and pacifying a volatile region, a nuclear agreement between Trump and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be the least bad option for Israel too.
No such deal has happened yet—and none will until the two sides can reach an accord about whether Iran should maintain a capacity to enrich uranium on its own soil. The U.S., together with Israel, has strongly objected to any such prospect. “WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on June 2. The Iranians insist on it—and, for their part, are playing a game of reverse psychology: “This Guy Has No Will for a Deal,” read a headline in the semiofficial Tehran Times on June 7, referencing Trump. But both sides have compelling reasons to want these talks to come to something. The Trump administration, stymied in Ukraine and Gaza, could use a foreign-policy win, and the Iranian regime, having lost its regional proxy power, would prefer to avoid military strikes on its nuclear facilities and to see some sanctions lifted.
Steven Witkoff, the Trump administration’s top negotiator, has proffered a plan that reportedly suggests outsourcing Iran’s uranium enrichment to a regional consortium. The enrichment would be for civilian purposes, and the consortium would include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and possibly Qatar and Turkey. The idea is to remove the technical capacity from Iranian hands and internationalize the process. Whether this consortium would do its work on Iranian soil or elsewhere, however, is not clear. And as Richard Nephew, an American diplomat who helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal, told me, this is the nub of the issue—“centrifuges in Iran”—in relation to which “a consortium is window-dressing.”
Mostafa Najafi, a Tehran-based expert close to Iran’s security establishment, told me that Iran has “seriously studied” Washington’s consortium proposal and could accept it only if at least some enrichment were to be done on Iranian soil. One option might be to use Iran’s islands in the Persian Gulf for this purpose, he added. These are part of Iran but geographically close to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and therefore easier to monitor than the mainland.
For Israel, the matter of where the enrichment happens is nonnegotiable. “Israel would be willing to accept the consortium solution only if it is located outside of Iran, a condition that Iran, of course, will not accept,” Raz Zimmt, the head of the Iran program at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, told me. “This is Israel’s official stance, and it enjoys near-unanimous support across the Israeli political spectrum.” The reasons for this are understandable: Iran’s leaders, unlike many of their counterparts in the region, have never embraced a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and instead continue to clamor for the destruction of Israel. Just last month, Khamenei called Israel “a cancerous, dangerous, and deadly tumor that must be removed from the region and it will be.” Israeli leaders are worried that a deal with Iran will not go far enough in disabling it from acting on its animus against Israel.
In fact, hard-line Israelis cannot envision a solution to the Iranian nuclear problem that doesn’t involve the total dismantlement of its centrifuges and expatriation of its uranium. That’s because the means to weaponize are already there. Even those, including Nephew, who advocate for a new deal caution that Iran’s enrichment capacity has increased in the seven years since Trump left the 2015 agreement. Iran now has enough enriched uranium that if it sought to weaponize, it could build as many as 10 atomic weapons. Even if it shipped that stockpile elsewhere, the country would still have its advanced centrifuges. With these, experts say, Iran could hold on to just 5 percent of its current stockpile and still be able to enrich enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb inside of a month, and four bombs’ worth in two months.
Given this reality, according to Zimmt, the Israeli government believes that it is running out of time to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And to this end, he told me, “Israel clearly prefers no deal over a bad deal,” because without a deal, military strikes become thinkable. Many in Israel see such a confrontation as the best option—even though Iran’s nuclear facilities are spread across its territory, and some are buried deep underground, making any military campaign likely to be drawn-out, complicated, and hazardous.
The analysts I spoke with did not see much lasting good coming of such an assault. Nephew noted that the setback to Iran’s nuclear program would likely be temporary and said that Israel would be “infinitely better off with a good deal.” Gregory Brew, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, pointed out that Iran’s regional proxies have been so weakened that Israel is in a particularly strong position at the moment. A negotiated settlement to the nuclear question could allow Israel to build on its advantage by pursuing closer ties to Arab states. This “would be a win for Israeli security and the region as a whole,” Brew said.
Back in 2015, the Arab states of the Gulf region were leery of a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal. They had poor relations with Iran and worried that an agreement might exclude their interests. Now those relations have softened, and most of the Gulf states are eager for an arrangement that could cool the region’s tempers. Their support for diplomacy should be good news for Israel, which already has diplomatic, trade, and military ties with two Gulf countries (the UAE and Bahrain). The Saudis have conditioned normalization on Israel’s allowing for a Palestinian state, but their language is pragmatic—Riyadh’s overwhelming interest appears to be in economic development, which regional conflict only undermines.
A nuclear deal that draws in the Gulf states would undoubtedly serve to better integrate Iran into the region’s economy. Some in Israel may balk at this idea, preferring to see Iran isolated. But there is a case to be made that giving Iran a stake in regional peace and stability would do more to de-radicalize its foreign policy than caging it has done.
Some in Israel remain skeptical. “I don’t believe that Saudi or Emirati participation in the deal carries any real significance,” Zimmt said. “It’s not something that would reassure Israel, certainly not before normalization with Saudi Arabia, and not even necessarily afterward.” Other Israeli critics of Trump and Witkoff chastise them for mistaking the ideologically driven actors of the Middle East for transactional pragmatists like themselves.
But leaders and peoples—in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Damascus, Beirut—have grown tired of wars around religion and ideology, and many are ready to pursue development instead. This explains why Syria’s new leaders have embraced Trump and promised not to fight Israel. Iran is not immune to this new regional mood.
Iranian elites have reason to fear that the failure of talks will bring about devastating military strikes. But they also have reason to hope that the lifting of sanctions, and even a partial opening for the country’s beleaguered economy, will be a boon to some of the moneyed interests close to the regime. Najafi told me that Iran already has a shared interest with Arabs in trying to avoid a confrontation between Israel and Iran: “Arabs know that any military action by Israel against Iran could destroy their grand developmental projects in the region,” he said. I’ve talked with Iranian elites for years. Most of them have no interest in Islamism or any other ideology. They send their sons and daughters to study in American and Swiss universities, not to Shiite seminaries in Iraq or Lebanon. Khamenei’s zealotry is very unlikely to outlive him in Iran’s highest echelons of power.
A diplomatic deal, however flawed, will not only curtail Iran’s nuclear program but also put the country on a path defined by its economic and pragmatic interests. A more regionally integrated Iran is likely to be much less belligerent, as it will have relations with the Saudis and Emiratis to maintain. The regime will likely be forced to drop many of its revolutionary pretensions, as it already has toward Saudi Arabia: Iran once considered the kingdom illegitimate, but it now goes out of its way to maintain good ties with Riyadh. Although this might sound unthinkable today, ultimately the regime will have to drop its obsession with Israel as well, for the same pragmatic reason that Arab countries have done in the past.
The alternative to a deal is an extensive military campaign—most likely, a direct war between Iran and Israel—with unpredictable consequences. The notion that such a confrontation would lead to positive political change in Iran is a fantasy. Just as likely, the regime will hunker down under duress, prolonging its hold on power. This is why even the most pro-Israel figures in the Iranian opposition, such as former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, oppose military strikes on Iran.
Iran’s population harbors very little hostility to Israel. A group of student activists recently tried to organize an anti-Israel rally at the University of Tehran, but only a couple of dozen people joined them, a small fraction of those who have turned out for rallies in Cairo, Amman, or New York City. But a direct war that costs Iranian civilian lives would easily change this.
The future of Iran and Israel does not need to lie in hostility. That’s why a deal that keeps Iran from going nuclear and avoids military strikes is the least bad option for everyone.
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