This combo of pictures show President Donald Trump, left, addressing a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, March 4, 2025, and a handout of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attending a ceremony in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis - Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
This combo of pictures show President Donald Trump, left, addressing a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, March 4, 2025, and a handout of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attending a ceremony in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis - Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
It’s a question that’s been at the heart of America’s Middle East policy for the past two decades: How far is the U.S. willing to go to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb?
Over the next few weeks, President Trump could provide the answer.
Mr. Trump has made clear that his administration is prepared to engage diplomatically with Tehran’s theocratic rulers and is open to a new agreement that would limit Iran’s nuclear program.
But Mr. Trump has also delivered some of the most blistering rhetoric to date from a U.S. president toward Tehran. And his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, recently reiterated that the administration is deadly serious about military action against Iran if necessary.
Whether that would take the form of unilateral American strikes or an Israeli-led operation backed by Washington isn’t clear, but the White House’s rhetoric has extended beyond the usual “all options are on the table” refrain to something much clearer.
“If you force him to choose between a nuclear Iran or taking action, the president’s been clear: He will take action,” Mr. Rubio told radio host Hugh Hewitt this week.
Iranian officials in recent days expressed openness to at least the idea of such diplomatic engagement with the U.S., perhaps because of the hardball approach Mr. Trump is employing elsewhere, particularly the restart of aggressive American airstrikes targeting one of Iran’s key proxy groups, Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
But at the same time, Tehran is racing ahead with its uranium enrichment efforts and, according to most estimates, could build a nuclear weapon in a matter of days.
Both Israel and the U.S. have vowed that they will not allow that to happen, setting the stage for potential direct military action by one or both countries if Mr. Trump’s diplomatic push is not reciprocated. The president reportedly laid out that two-month negotiation window in a letter he sent to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier this month.
During his first term, Mr. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, the multilateral pact that placed new limits and monitoring demands on Iran’s suspect nuclear programs in exchange for economic sanctions relief.
The Trump administration re-imposed harsh economic and diplomatic sanctions on Iran, in what Mr. Trump said was a pressure campaign to get a stronger deal with Iran. Iran’s economy has been badly hurt, but no new deal ever was struck.
While international inspectors said Tehran was largely adhering to the original 2015 accord, critics of that deal said it did not go nearly far enough in restricting Tehran’s nuclear ambitions — and also did not address Iran’s support for anti-Israel regional allies such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Any new agreement could address such support for those groups, along with Iran’s backing for Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Shiite militias that have targeted American troops in Iraq and Syria.
U.S. leverage
The U.S. may have an unprecedented amount of leverage over Iran at this moment. Hamas and Hezbollah, key pieces of Iran’s proxy network across the region, have been devastated by Israel’s military campaign against them, which began after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Jewish state.
With the full backing of the Trump administration, many analysts also believe there’s an opportunity for a broader Mideast diplomatic deal, one that could result in regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia establishing formal diplomatic ties with Israel and deeper security ties with the U.S. Such a pact, which would build on the Abraham Accords of Mr. Trump’s first term, would significantly marginalize Iran.
And as Mr. Trump pursues diplomacy, he’s simultaneously ramping up America’s military campaign against Yemen’s Houthis, another key ally of Tehran. The rebel group, which enjoys financial and logistical backing from Iran, has targeted more than 100 international commercial and military vessels sailing in and around the Red Sea since November 2023, including U.S. military ships.
Mr. Trump authorized fresh airstrikes against the Houthis last weekend and also issued new warnings to Iran.
“To Iran: Support for the Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY!” the president wrote in a Truth Social post as the strikes unfolded. “…If you do, BEWARE, because America will hold you fully accountable and we won’t be nice about it!”
The twin messages — diplomatic outreach with unmistakable demonstrations of military strength — may be getting through to Tehran. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said this week that Iran will respond to Mr. Trump’s letter of “threats and opportunities” in due time.
“Iran’s policy is clear: under pressure and sanctions, we will certainly not engage in direct negotiations. Negotiations must take place from a position of equality,” Mr. Araghchi said, according to English-language accounts of his remarks.
“We are prepared for threats and war, but this does not mean we seek war,” he said.
And the supreme leader himself used a Persian New Year’s Day address Friday to warn Washington that any attempts to impose a settlement on Iran would be resisted.
In the continuation of his remarks, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution referred to the statements of US politicians about Iran, stating, ” “The U.S. must know that when facing Iran, threats will never achieve anything,” he said, according to the official IRNA news service. “… The U.S. and others must know that if they commit any malicious act against the Iranian nation, they will receive a severe blow.”
Political and technical hurdles
There are several key aspects to consider as the Trump administration weighs its options. Some more hawkish voices on Iran argue that policymakers must accept this core truth: Iran will never abandon its nuclear ambitions and will never stop supporting anit-Israel militant groups in the Middle East as long as the current regime is in power.
“There is only one way to bring Iranian state behavior in line with international norms: regime change,” said former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“Both the constitution of the Islamic Republic and the founding statutes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps make export of revolution a priority. To change Iranian behavior requires changing the constitution and erasing the Revolutionary Guards,” Mr. Rubin told The Washington Times.
Mr. Trump has already demonstrated his willingness to go after the IRGC. During his first term, he authorized a January 2020 airstrike in Baghdad that killed the then-commander of the IRGC, Iranian
Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The two nations nearly went to all-out war over the strike.
So far at least, it seems the Trump administration disagrees with Mr. Rubin’s assessment and believes Iran’s current rulers can be forced to accept a negotiated deal.
But there are also the steep technical challenges of striking an effective and enforceable deal: The International Atomic Energy Agency last month said that Iran has more than 600 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60%. That’s up from just 204 pounds last November.
That uranium is one technical step away from being enriched to weapons-grade levels of 90%, meaning Iran could construct a bomb within days. An analysis last fall by the Institute for Science and International Security, citing United Nations data, said that Iran’s stocks of enriched uranium and its centrifuge capacity combined are sufficient to make up to nine nuclear weapons in a month’s time, and as many as 15 within five months.
The U.S. may want a complete, permanent, verifiable end to Iran’s nuclear program. But many analysts say that simply won’t happen.
“From a nonproliferation standpoint, the complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program is ideal, particularly given Iran’s illicit attempt to develop nuclear weapons in the past, but it is not realistic,” the Arms Control Association said in a recent issue brief posted on its website. “The best option to prevent this crisis from escalating is to reach an effective, verifiable nuclear agreement. The complexity of Iran’s nuclear advances and the short time frame will require the Trump administration to focus on quickly implementable measures that maximize transparency and roll back Iran’s most proliferation-sensitive activities, in exchange for tangible benefits to Iran.”
“One option for an agreement could be to focus on limiting enrichment levels and stocks, while allowing Iran to retain some of its advanced centrifuges,” the association said in its analysis. “Eliminating the stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium and limiting enrichment to reactor-grade, or less than 5%, would reduce the immediacy of proliferation risk while allowing Iran to retain some of its enrichment infrastructure as a guarantee.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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