Just two days after authorizing military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an end to the air war between Iran and Israel and declared that it was time for peace. “Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region,” he wrote on his site Truth Social. Whether the cease-fire will hold remains to be seen, but if Trump is hoping for a quick return to diplomacy, he is likely to be disappointed.
Trump and his national security team find themselves in a bind. As administration officials have admitted, Iran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and centrifuge components have probably survived military operations by Israel and the United States. In order to locate and secure them, Washington will require Tehran’s cooperation. So far, however, Trump and his negotiators have been unable to cajole Iran’s leaders into making significant concessions. Most notably, the Iranians continue to reject calls to give up uranium enrichment entirely. Trump may hope that his recent display of U.S. military power, combined with Israel’s aggressive military campaign over the past two weeks, will force Iran to compromise, but this is unlikely. If anything, Iran’s leaders will be more reluctant to pursue diplomacy after Trump twice allowed ongoing talks with Iran to be scuttled by military action—first by greenlighting Israeli airstrikes and then by joining the war directly. His ultimatums promising more military punishment and his references to the possibility of regime change are equally unhelpful.
The challenge that the Trump administration faces now is not with the severity of the threats it has issued but with the credibility of the assurances it can provide to Iran’s regime. For Trump’s coercive approach to diplomacy to work in pushing Iran into a strong nuclear deal, two things are necessary. First, the United States must issue believable threats to impose significant and painful consequences if Iran ignores or violates U.S. demands. Trump has done that, with his social media posts, the surge of U.S. military forces to the region, and, most emphatically, his strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. These warnings and actions, however, may still have limited impact on Iranian behavior without the second requirement: meaningful U.S. assurances that Iran won’t suffer the threatened consequences—or other repercussions—if it acquiesces to U.S. demands. Iran’s leaders need to believe that if their country bends the United States won’t try to break it.
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