Live updates: Iran declares Strait of Hormuz ‘completely open’ as ceasefire holds in Lebanon
US President Donald Trump said a deal with Iran is coming, claiming on Thursday that “we’re going to have victory. Very shortly.”
He did not give any details on the promise — but then again, details are not often part of Trump’s modus operandi, because they may take too long to agree on. The Iran talks illustrate this perhaps more than any other issue.
Trump has given Tehran two weeks to agree a deal. That’s an ambitious goal given the previous Iran nuclear agreement, which Trump withdrew from during his first term, took years to negotiate.
Known as the JCPOA (which stands for Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the agreement was struck in 2015 under then-President Barack Obama. But work on it started years before that, when Obama decided, after coming to power in 2009, to engage with Iran directly.
The Obama administration opened a secret back channel with Iran and, in 2012, presented Tehran with a new offer: Iran would limit its nuclear ambitions, cap its uranium enrichment and allow international inspectors to inspect its sites in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions and unfreezing billions in frozen Iranian assets.
It took 20 months of intensive negotiations for the US and its partners to get to the deal. Former national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who was part of the negotiations, said nuclear negotiations like this are “particularly challenging.”
“They are both highly political, meaning they involve issues that require political leadership on each side to contend with, and they’re highly technical because they involve an understanding of the nuclear fuel cycle of how verification works, how nuclear stockpiles work, how centrifuges work,” he told the Harvard Kennedy School last year.
Sullivan said this meant large teams of experts from many different fields were involved.
Now compare that to the Trump approach. Negotiations are being handled by special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, both real-estate developers with little experience with nuclear negotiations, and the Vice President JD Vance who, according to Trump himself, is there mostly so that if the deal doesn’t happen, Trump has someone else to blame.
The team has been critized for having little technical understanding of the issues discussed, pressing instead for a quick headline deal that would allow Trump to take the win – with details to be ironed out later.
This approach may not be the traditional way to do diplomacy, but it has worked in the past in some cases – such as when Trump got a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
