Iran nuclear stand-off hardens after two decades of failed deals
Direct talks this weekend trod a familiar path of tortuous and frustrating diplomacy between Washington and Tehran
Andrew England in London
When JD Vance sat down for talks with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the head of Iran’s delegation on Saturday for high-stakes talks, the US vice-president was making history as the most senior American official to engage in negotiations with the Islamic republic.
But when the discussions turned to Iran’s nuclear programme — which will be central to reaching any peace agreement — he was following a well-trodden path that has challenged, frustrated and confounded US and European governments for more than two decades.
The difference this time: the stakes are higher than ever and the distrust on both sides has only grown deeper.
“The meeting with Iran began early in the morning, and lasted throughout the night — Close to 20 hours,” Donald Trump posted on Sunday morning.
“I could go into great detail . . . but, there is only one thing that matters — IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!”
Ever since an Iranian opposition group claimed in 2002 that the republic had built secret nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak, there have been western fears that the Islamic regime was covertly developing the capacity that would enable it to weaponise its programme.
In the years since, the US and European states have made multiple attempts to convince Tehran to rein in its nuclear activity, efforts that have been characterised by suspicion on all sides and protracted haggling.
“The Iranians have never said they will not negotiate over the programme.
What they’ve said is ‘we will never negotiate over missiles’,” said Vali Nasr, a former US official and a professor at Johns Hopkins University.
“It’s always been up for negotiation and the terms have always been the same — sanctions relief in exchange for capping the programme.
So then the question becomes the terms, the trust and all of that.”
European states first struck an agreement with Tehran in 2003 under which Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment activities and meet protocols set by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog.
But Iran began producing uranium hexafluoride, which is used as feedstock in the enrichment process, at a facility in Isfahan.
Within a couple of years the talks had halted and in 2006 Tehran announced that it had enriched uranium for the first time, using the Natanz plant.
The US and Europe responded by pushing through a UN Security Council resolution that imposed sanctions freezing assets of Iranian entities and individuals related to the nuclear programme — a stick that would be repeatedly used over the next two decades.
By 2006 the US intelligence community concluded, with high confidence, that Iran had halted activity related to a weaponisation programme.
After Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, he decided a new policy approach was needed.
This started a process in 2009 where the so-called P5+1 — the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany — resumed talks with Iran.
But after mass protests erupted in Iran following the disputed re-election of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad that year, the diplomatic process floundered.
The US, the UK and France also announced that Iran had built a second secret enrichment facility, Fordow, deep in the mountains near the holy city of Qom.
Tensions only began to ease after Hassan Rouhani, a centrist who had the support of regime reformists, won the presidential 2013 election, succeeding Ahmadi-Nejad a hardline populist whose two terms were marked by hostility with the west.
Weeks after his inauguration Rouhani, who had been involved in previous nuclear negotiations, held a phone call with Obama — the highest-level contact between the US and Iran since the 1979 revolution.
That paved the way for more intense talks in Geneva, culminating in Iran and the P5+1 signing “Joint Plan of Action” that was intended to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive agreement on the nuclear programme.
Months of tortuous negotiations followed in Geneva and Vienna, with Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry leading the US’s delegation and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, an urbane regime reformist, heading the republic’s team of negotiators.
Both sides depended on large teams of experts who hunkered down for hours, thrashing out the technical details on how to put restrictions on the nuclear programme and the mechanism of sanctions relief.
They eventually agreed on what became known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA, which was signed by the US, the UK, France, Germany, China and Russia, and ratified by Iran’s parliament in October 2015.
Under the terms of the accord, Iran agreed to enrich uranium to levels no higher than a purity of 3.67 per cent, to cap its stockpile of enriched uranium at 300kg, with the rest transferred offshore, and to a strict monitoring regime overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In return, it was promised significant sanctions relief.
It was implemented in 2016, but quickly began to unravel after Trump took office the following year, promising to tear up the accord.
He abandoned it in 2018, and imposed hundreds of sanctions on Iran, in what he described as a “maximum pressure” campaign against the republic.
Joe Biden sought to revive the JCPOA after he entered the White House in 2021.
But Iran had raised the ante as it had responded to Trump’s maximum pressure campaign by dramatically expanding its nuclear activity, installing advanced centrifuges and enriching uranium up to 60 per cent purity — a short step from weapons grade — and reducing its co-operation with the IAEA.
Biden did secure a prisoner swap deal with Iran in September 2023, under which Washington agreed to unfreeze $6bn in Iran’s oil funds held in South Korea.
The funds were transferred to an account in Doha and the agreement was viewed as a step towards confidence-building measures under which Tehran would agree to cap its enrichment programme.
But hopes of broader progress were upended after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered a wave of regional hostilities, intensifying tensions between Iran and the west.
After Trump returned to the White House, he sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying he wanted to reach an agreement.
But he also warned that if the regime did not agree to a deal, “there will be bombing and it will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before” as he set a 60-day deadline for an agreement.
Washington and Iran held five rounds of talks, with US envoy Steve Witkoff, a real estate tycoon, charged with negotiating on behalf of the administration at the indirect talks with Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, a veteran nuclear negotiator.
But from the outset the talks appeared doomed to fail.
Trump, in a rush for a quick deal, demanded that Iran give up its right to enrich uranium.
Tehran has repeatedly said that is a red line, insisting it is its right as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty.
Then, 48 hours before Witkoff and Araghchi were to hold a sixth round of talks in Oman, Israel launched its 12-day war against Iran.
Trump briefly joined the conflict to bomb the republic’s main nuclear sites — Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan.
History then repeated itself.
The Trump administration and Iran started fresh talks in February, again mediated by Oman, with a focus on the nuclear talks, with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner joining Witkoff at the negotiations.
Once more the US insisted on zero enrichment, but Washington also wanted to include broader issues including curbing Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and its support for regional militant groups.
After the third round of talks in Geneva on February 26, Oman’s foreign minister Badr Albusaidi, the main mediator, said the negotiations had made “significant progress”.
But Trump was stepping up his threats to launch military strikes against Iran as he expressed frustration with the progress.
Immediately after the February 26 talks, Albusaidi flew to Washington and spoke with Vance in a bid to urge him that a deal could be reached and to convince Trump not to go to war.
The Omani diplomat told CBS news that Iran, which has repeatedly denied it has ambitions to build a nuclear weapon, had agreed to give up its stockpile of enriched uranium.
“There is no accumulation, so there would be zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification,” he said.
But US officials disputed his version of events.
The following day Trump joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in launching the war and assassinating Khamenei.
“A lot of these nuclear-related issues are longstanding, including the right to enrichment which has been a perennial problem, but with Trump it’s substantially harder,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst at Crisis Group think-tank.
“There’s never been an effort to frame an understanding as a zero-sum outcome, and with the Iranian psyche it’s just so incompatible.”
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