IRAN is at its weakest moment externally since the Iran-Iraq war. Israel’s aggression in Lebanon and Gaza has critically wounded Iran’s allies Hezbollah and Hamas, while Yemen’s Houthis are under intense pressure from massive US air strikes. And Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, the linchpin of Iran’s strategy of surrounding Israel with a ‘ring of fire’, has gone. Tehran’s Axis of Resistance is virtually no more.

Israel’s air strike on Iran on Oct 26 last year had damaged its missile production capabilities and knocked out the S-300 air defence systems. Prior to that, Iran’s two drone and missile attacks on Israel had been largely ineffective, exposing the weakness of the former country’s much-vaunted deterrence capabilities.

As Paul Salem wrote for the Middle East Institute recently, “For many years, Israel and Iran maintained an uneasy equilibrium of mutual deterrence and limited hostility”, but that is over. US President Donald Trump is being pressured by Israel to target Iranian nuclear facilities at Tehran’s moment of ‘maximum vulnerability’, or face the prospect of unilateral action.

Trump does not want to act militarily; he’d rather deploy ‘gunpoint diplomacy’. He has re-imposed his policy of maximum pressure aimed at driving Iran’s oil exports to zero, forcing the country to abandon the nuclear option. In an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News, he said: “There’re two ways of stopping them [Iran]: with bombs or with a written piece of paper. And I’d much rather do a deal.” He has since written to Iran’s Supreme Leader proposing direct nuclear talks.

Trump presents a threat and an opportunity.

Iran has reportedly increased its stockpiles of 20 per cent and 60pc enriched uranium. This brings it closer to building a bomb should it decide to do so, or use it as a leverage to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Since coming to power, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has been signalling an interest in returning to the JCPOA. Ali Larijani, an adviser to the Supreme Leader, has been more specific. Speaking to the Trump administration, he has said in a media interview, “…we won’t pursue a bomb, and you accept our conditions to reach an agreement”.

The regime faces serious economic challenges because of Trump’s extreme pressure. Relief is doubtful due to the ambiguity surrounding support from China, because of its possible strategic accommodation with Washington, and uncertainty about Russia’s backing in view of the emerging Putin-Trump bonhomie.

Israel sees a window of opportunity here to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities but lacks the capability to do so. It will not find a partner in the US, which may have the capability but not the intent. Israel sees Iran in terms of expansionism. The US interest is much broader. Washington looks upon Iran and its nuclear programme in the context of global geopolitics, its regional interests in the Middle East, and security of the Persian Gulf and its link to global shipping, which is vulnerable to Iranian retaliation to any military strike by the US or Israel that could ignite a wider war. The isolationist Trump does not like war. Besides, a loss in war shatters a strongman’s myth of invincibility.

Trump is thus unlikely to attack Iran or greenlight an Israeli attack. Removal of the Iranian ‘threat’ might make the Arab monarchies feel relatively secure, and thus less amenable to US influence and compulsion to normalise with Israel, and possibly less dependent on American weapons. It might also push Iran into China’s lap. The attack will be another Mossadegh moment — the overthrow of Iran’s prime minister in 1953 — further setting back US- Iran relations for decades to come.

Yet Tehran cannot afford to take heart from the unlikelihood of war. Growing public grievances ag­­gravated by crippling sanctions pose a serious risk. A nuclear deal could help. Iran will not bargain away its nuclear programme, the ultimate guarantor of the regime’ survival, but it could take the gamble of rolling it back. The programme may have reached a dead end anyway as any further movement towards weaponisation heightens the risk of attack. The weakened regime can no longer balance all these risks, including its risky posture in the region, and is treading cautiously.

Trump presents a threat and an opportunity. The regime may have chosen to take the opportunity. All that Iran may have to do is give enough concessions so that he can prove to his base, as in the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement renegotiations during his first term, that he got a better deal from the one he withdrew from. Iran’s ‘threshold capability’ to build a wea­pon is a sizeable bargain chip. Compulsions and incentives, at least for talks if not a deal, thus exist on both sides.

The writer, a former ambassador, is adjunct professor, Georgetown University, and Visiting Senior Fellow, National University of Singapore.

Published in Dawn, April 4th, 2025