The United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, and the U.S. and Iran have been in a shaky ceasefire since April.
Now President Donald Trump says the parties are close to a peace deal. But any deal will require Iran to give up some of its nuclear ambitions. “They will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said Monday. He recently said he isn’t concerned about rising costs in the U.S. either: “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said.
That opens up Trump to a whole new series of issues that could call into question how effective he is as a negotiator: how long it will take to end the war, what he gives to Iran in exchange and whether Iran can be trusted to follow through.
Here’s what to know about the sticking points to a peace deal with Iran.
You’re reading The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a free analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Get it in your inbox every weekday.
First, the Strait of Hormuz needs to reopen
Iran has been controlling one of the world’s biggest shipping routes for oil since the war’s start. It’s an effective leverage point against the U.S., and Iran’s leaders are unlikely to fully reopen it without getting something in exchange, said Suzanne Maloney, the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, who has advised Republican and Democratic administrations on Iran.
“The Iranians have never fully closed the strait, but now that they have, they don’t want to go back to a place where they can’t monetize it,” she said.
Any deal to open the strait that gives Iran control over it could lead to more trouble down the road, warned Mark Cancian, a military expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If Iran walks away from a deal saying, ‘We have now established sovereignty over the strait,’ it’s bad news across the world, because there are lots of straits that countries would like to have sovereignty over. So as a precedent it would be really disastrous.”
Is Iran willing to give up its ambitions to be a nuclear power?
Trump gave many reasons for starting the war, but this was a big one. It’s also what party leaders have been messaging to Republican voters contending with higher gas prices from the war.
A decade ago, under President Barack Obama’s administration, Iran committed to a comprehensive deal with the U.S. and other countries to not seek a nuclear weapon. Trump pulled the U.S. out of that deal in his first term, arguing (at times with false or misleading information) that the deal was too weak and that the U.S. gave Iran billions of dollars.
Over the ensuing years, Iran has been steadily getting closer to being able to have a nuclear weapon, saying its purposes are peaceful. Last summer, the U.S. dropped a heavy bomb on the mountains in Iran that targeted some of its nuclear facilities.
Now the negotiations seem to center on whether Iran will give up its highly enriched uranium, which is dangerously close to nuclear grade, and promise not to build more.
This will all take time. “You can’t do a nuclear thing in 72 hours on the back of a napkin,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the New York Times this weekend.
What will Iran get in return?
Probably money. Obama “gave Iran massive amounts of CASH, and a clear and open path to a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump wrote Sunday on social media. “Our deal is the exact opposite.”
But the Trump administration is floating the possibility of giving Iran more than the nation ever got under its nuclear deal with Obama; as much as $20 billion in unfrozen assets, compared to less than $2 billion under Obama.
Top Republicans are not happy about that prospect. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) posted on social media what he sees as a worst-case scenario: “Iran is now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz. … That outcome would be a disastrous mistake.”
Rubio defended Trump this weekend: “The idea that somehow this president … is going to somehow agree to a deal that ultimately winds up putting Iran in a stronger position when it comes to nuclear ambitions is absurd.”
Can Iran be trusted?
Even if Iran agrees to a strict deal curbing its nuclear program, the U.S. will either have to take Iran’s word that it won’t pursue a nuclear bomb or get Iran to allow third-party observers into the country, said Maloney.
“I think it’s possible for the president to come out of this war with the clear assertion that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon in the near future or anytime soon,” she said, “but whether the Iranians seek to do so nonetheless is probably beyond his control.”
While the war has knocked out much of Iran’s top leadership and capabilities to make a bomb, the remaining leadership appears even more defiant and hard-line.
“They have demonstrated that they can take a punch and that they can respond accordingly,” Richard Nephew, a former State Department official under the Obama administration, told The Washington Post’s Michael Birnbaum recently.
The post The many hang-ups to a peace deal with Iran appeared first on Washington Post.
