Is Iran on a collision course with the west?

Time is running out for an unpredictable US president and a distrustful Iranian supreme leader to find a diplomatic solution to their differences. At stake could be a new war amid nuclear weaponisation.

By Andrew England and Najmeh Bozorgmehr. FINANCIAL TIMES.

Seven years ago, Donald Trump strode purposely into the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House and sounded the death knell of what much of the rest of the world considered a landmark success of global diplomacy.

To "prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon", Trump said he would sign a memorandum that reimposed damaging sanctions on the Islamic republic, the start of his so-called "maximum pressure" campaign.

In 12 minutes, Trump had torn up Barack Obama's signature foreign policy achievement: a 2015 accord with Tehran that strictly limited Iran's nuclear activities and had the buy-in of Europe, Russia and China.

"If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen in just a short period of time," Trump said. "The world's leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons."

Now back in the White House, Trump is confronting the repercussions of his 2018 decision - Iran went from complying with the deal to aggressively ramping up its nuclear activity and is now locked in a collision course with the west that is set to come to a head this year.

At stake is the risk of a new war erupting in the Middle East, and, if Iran believes it faces an existential threat, the possibility of it weaponising its expanding stockpile of highly enriched uranium to become the globe's 10th nuclear armed power.

"There's space for diplomacy. But both sides have to have the political will and the urgency to meet the moment," says Kelsey Davenport, director for non-proliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. "Absent that, the escalatory kind of tit-for-tat will spiral out of control this year."

Some are clamouring for conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government, emboldened after a year in which it dealt Iran and its proxies a series of stinging blows, is pushing the US to support military action against the republic.

Even the European signatories to the 2015 accord the UK, France and Germany, dubbed the E3-appear on a confrontational path with Tehran.

They opposed Trump's original decision to abandon the deal, known by its acronym, the JCPOA, and battled in vain to revive it with the Biden administration. But they have become increasingly frustrated by Iran's aggressive expansion of its nuclear activities and Tehran's intransigence under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A critical juncture may arise in the autumn, ahead of the expiration of key JCPOA clauses on October 18. The E3 have threatened to use the deadline to trigger the so-called "snapback process which would reinstate UN sanctions on Iran.

Western diplomats acknowledge snapback would be a dangerous moment that would embolden hardliners in Iran, the US and Israel, raising the threat of military action. However, they feel they little choice if there is no progress on the diplomatic front.

The republic has already warned that it would withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty if snapback is triggered. And Tehran has raised the ante by dramatically expanding its production of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, which is close to weapons grade.

The US intelligence community does not believe that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, but doing so is firmly within its grasp. Tehran has the ability to produce enough weapons-grade fissile material for "six weapons or so in less than two weeks", says Davenport.

"So there is a real risk of Iran breaking out multiple bombs' worth of weapons-grade uranium, before those moves could be detected," she says. "Iran could produce a crude nuclear weapon in a matter of months."

The hope is that Iran and the US can find a diplomatic off-ramp to ease the world's biggest proliferation crisis since North Korea first conducted nuclear weapons tests two decades ago. The fear is that time is running out for a transactional and unpredictable American president to come to a political solution with an Iranian supreme leader who distrusts and loathes the US.

"This is a game of chicken," says a regime insider. "It's like two drivers speeding towards each other; the winner is the one willing to risk everything rather than veer off course out of fear."

When Trump returned to office in January, there were hopes that diplomacy might be possible as he has repeatedly said he wants a deal with Iran.

Tehran had been signalling it was willing to enter back into negotiations on the nuclear file. Reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian won elections last year promising to secure sanctions relief - seemingly with Khamenei's backing.

But in February, Trump signed an executive memo that showed he was willing to play hardball with Iran. In it, he declared that Washington would restore maximum pressure sanctions to drive Iran's oil exports its financial lifeline to "zero". It added that Iran should not only be denied a nuclear weapon, but also its intercontinental ballistic missiles, and that its "terrorist network" be neutralised, a reference to the regional militants it backs.

The memo was viewed in Tehran as evidence that Trump wants to force the republic into submission. Iran's ballistic missile arsenal and its support for regional militant groups are key to its defence strategy and represent red lines for the regime.

Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says Trump's memo "essentially changed the dynamic in Iran".

Regime hardliners, who were opposed to the JCPOA from the outset, have sought to exploit the pressure on Iran to weaken Pezeshkian and his reformist backers.

The memo "put the wind in the sails of the hardliners who immediately said, 'Don't look at what he says, look at the text of what he signed," Nasr says. "There's domestic pressure on the supreme leader... he already thinks the US is out to squeeze them, and that it's after the Islamic republic itself."

But Trump's messaging has been characteristically capricious. Only hours after the memo was published, he posted on his social media site that he hoped to negotiate a "verified nuclear peace agreement" with Iran, which would be followed by a "big Middle East Celebration" when it was signed.

Khamenei, who has long ruled out negotiations under maximum pressure or the threat of war, slammed the door on talks, saying Washington could not be trusted. Negotiations would be "neither wise, nor prudent, nor dignified," he said.

In March, Trump sent a letter to Khamenei reiterating his preference for an agreement. He was "not looking to hurt Iran", he said soon after sending it, but held out the threat of military action: "There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal."

Iran had responded to the letter last week. Pezeshkian said yesterday that in his response to Trump, Khamenei ruled out direct negotiations but left the door open for indirect talks. A challenge for the regime is deciphering what kind of deal might satisfy Trump: will he focus on a mutually acceptable agreement so he can claim to have resolved a global crisis, or will he push for Iran's complete capitulation?

The regime was already worried about the influence of hawks in his administration - and Netanyahu - who consider Iran to be at its weakest in decades and eye a window to convince Trump to dismantle the republic's nuclear and missile programmes.

There needs to be a "credible" military threat to force Khamenei to choose "between his nuclear programme or his regime", says Mark Dubowitz, co-founder of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative Washington-based think-tank.

Trump is considered averse to sending US troops into combat. But Dubowitz thinks Iran may be the exception.

In 2020, Trump shocked many by ordering the assassination of Iran's powerful commander Qassem Soleimani, pushing the foes to the brink of war. In recent weeks, he has launched waves of strikes against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, while warning Tehran it would face "dire" consequences for any attacks by the militants.

Still, Dubowitz is uncertain about the direction Trump will take, pointing out that while there are hawks in the administration, there are those on the outside aligned to the Maga movement who will caution against conflict with Iran.

"It may be for Trump that the Islamic republic remains the exception in a way that he's seeking to exercise American power," Dubowitz says. "On the other hand, the risk... is that the Iranians offer him some deal short of dismantle-ment, sort of JCPOA-plus, and then Trump calls it the greatest deal ever negotiated."

As Khamenei weighs Iran's options, his prime goal is ensuring the republic's survival. He wants to avoid war, but not be bullied into accepting the US's "maximalist" demands, says the regime insider.

Yet for all the outward defiance there is recognition that the republic is at its most vulnerable since the 1980s war with Iraq its economy choked by sanctions, its defences battered by chastening Israeli strikes.

Israel claims to have destroyed much of Iran's air defences in strikes in October, while Lebanese militant movement Hizbollah, which Tehran has considered a first line of defence against its enemy, has been severely degraded. The fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime in December robbed Iran of its only state ally in the region.

At home, Tehran is in a far worse economic predicament than when Trump first imposed maximum pressure. The rial has plummeted since Trump returned to the White House, while annual inflation is hovering about 32 per cent. The malaise is deepening as the chasm between the ageing, theocratic leadership and a youthful population has widened.

Yet the regime insider says Tehran still believes the costs that would come from a "limited confrontation" might be preferable to negotiating under maximum pressure. "The Islamic republic isn't gambling with its survival. Its pragmatism and instinct for self-preservation dictate resistance," the insider says. "The key question is whether the public will tolerate further economic hardship."

Iran's leaders have taken some measures to try to ease public disillusionment, including acknowledging that strictly enforcing the hijab law is no longer feasible. The depreciation of the rial has allowed the government to announce a 45 per cent minimum wage rise for millions of workers starting next month.

Still, analysts and diplomats caution against overstating the regime's vulnerability.

"Iran is weak. But weakness is in the eyes of the beholder," says Nasr. "Tehran is capable of doing a lot of things in the Gulf - there's a lot that can go sideways."

When Iran feels threatened, it typically seeks to ensure others pay a price and raises the stakes.

After Trump imposed maximum pressure in his first term, Iranian forces were blamed for sabotaging tankers in the Gulf and a missile and drone attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure in 2019 that temporarily knocked out half the kingdom's crude output.

Last year, Iran traded direct missile fire with Israel for the first time although most of its projectiles were intercepted by Israel's defences, the US and its allies.

"Iran doesn't want war under any circumstances as there's a significant disparity between its capabilities and the US," the insider says. "However, if no other option remains, it will fight."

Tehran has improved relations with Gulf rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which backed Trump's first maximum pressure campaign, but have since sought to de-escalate tensions. But the insider says that, in the event of a "major war", Iran would target US bases in the region and oil facilities.

Iran has also long used its nuclear advances as a point of leverage with the US and as a warning to its foes not to push it too far. Negotiating a new accord to reverse its recent gains is likely to be far more complex, and Iran knows it has few other chips to play.

Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to produce only low enriched uranium at a level that could be used for fuel or a nuclear power plant in return for sanctions relief. Its stockpile was limited to 300kg, meaning it contained a tiny fraction of what would be sufficient to run Iran's only nuclear plant.

But today its stockpile, including highly enriched uranium, has swelled past 8,200kg including 275kg of enriched to 60 per cent by early February it has installed thousands of advanced centrifuges and developed expertise that cannot be reversed.

Diplomacy may be difficult, but there is still hope a deal can be struck. Iran's diplomats have suggested that the top leader's directive on negotiations does not rule out the possibility of indirect talks, as has happened before.

The E3, meanwhile, have held talks with Iranian counterparts in what western diplomats describe as "exploratory" to gauge the appetite and potential con-tours for a deal.

Nasr says one option may be for Trump to negotiate a less ambitious deal that essentially caps Iran's enrich-ment programme, and "you kick the can down the road".

But that may not be enough to contain Israel. Jacob Nagel, a former head of Israel's National Security Council under Netanyahu, says the prime minister wants Iran prevented from having any nuclear programme or facilities for the "next 100 years".

"Israel can do whatever it needs. It's always better to do it with the US, but there are things we can do alone," Nagel says. A senior western diplomat warns that "a collision course seems inevitable".

Hossein Mousavian, a former senior Iranian diplomat, now at Princeton University, cautions that a military attack is the one thing that might push Iran to weaponise. "The US entering a war with Iran would have consequences 10 times worse than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," he says.

Yet just as the US fails to understand the republic, says the western diplomat, the regime typically overplays its hand.

"I'm very pessimistic. If both sides were moving in the direction of confidence building, maybe. But they're just shouting," the diplomat says. "If Khamenei is playing a negotiating tactic, the question is who has the upper hand? It's not Khamenei."