Trump says he was in favour of a military option in Iran to make off with the uranium until he decided the odds were against it. That plan is in the past now, as is his view that the stuff is ‘entombed.’ What you have instead is an effort to put together a 60-day deal with Tehran to clear the way for the Strait of Hormuz and for us to start talking about the nukes.
Why the raid was shelved
It would have been a big operation, Trump said, one that meant putting in a lot of men and moving in a great deal of gear. His people told him you were looking at a minimum of two weeks to pull it off.
He’s called the material ‘nuclear dust’ and made it plain we still have the means to go in. ‘We could get it right now,’ he put it. ‘I don’t think they could stop us if we set our minds to it, but why would we? It’s entombed.’
Then there was the matter of not wanting to be in the same position as a previous rescue job. ‘I did not feel like being like Jimmy Carter,’ he said, with a nod to the 1980 fiasco in Tehran where we tried and failed to get our hostages out.
You don’t need a deal with Iran to get your hands on the uranium, according to Trump, but he’s not closing the book on diplomacy. He doesn’t have any desire to sit down with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, though he concedes it could come to that if we can work something out. ‘If it happened … I would be respectful,’ he said.
Sensitive politics around leadership
The politics of it all factor in. ‘We put an end to his father, his wife and his son, so I’m not exactly his top pick… But he has a good name in some quarters, I’ll give him that,’ Trump said. He did expect to be treated with some decorum by Khamenei.
Diplomatic track advances in parallel
With the notion of a raid off the table, the White House is after a memorandum of understanding with Iran to put an end to the hostilities and get into the nitty-gritty of nuclear talks. According to officials and those in the region, we are in the last leg of these negotiations, even if there are still some chasms to cross.
The main points of the paper are:
– A 60-day extension of the ceasefire
– The Strait of Hormuz being opened up to all traffic
– Iran getting to move its oil in the meantime
– Some hard talks on the enriched uranium and where we want to set limits
To get ready for it, you had Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Oak Ridge having a word with the technical side of things. They were in with the experts at the National Laboratory and the Y-12 complex, where you find the know-how on centrifuges and how to process uranium.
Don’t read too much into the trip to Oak Ridge, a US official will tell you. It doesn’t mean we have a done deal, but it does show we are in a serious mode. You can read some good news in the way the White House has been talking to us, but we also see that there are fault lines in Tehran on how to proceed, officials will have you know.
What is on the table
Witkoff and Kushner put a 60-day memorandum in front of their Iranian counterparts last week and came to an understanding, US officials say. It’s meant to be a quick fix for de-escalation and to open a line of communication on the nuclear issue.
If it comes to fruition, this is an attempt to put some order to a conflict that has been going on for over three months now. You have to remember it started with those US-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28 and the way Iran hit back in the strait.
Sticking points and timelines
There are still two things that keep the process from moving as fast as we’d like, if you ask the people in the room. One is the pace at which Iran is willing to down-blend its uranium. We’re after a 60-day window; they want 90. Then there is the matter of when and how much of the frozen money gets put on the table.
In short, we have:
– 60 days or 90 for the down-blending
– The order and volume of any fund releases
Why it matters now
The economics don’t lie. When the strikes came in late February, Iran made life hard in the Strait of Hormuz and put 20% of the world’s oil in a vice. An accord that lets ships and sales go again will be felt in the cost of freight and fuel in no time.
And of course there is the uranium. Trump has been saying it’s ‘entombed’ and under control, but both sides are making ready for the nitty-gritty of what to do with the stockpile. That’s the rub: you either get some de-risking via diplomacy, or you face new trouble if these conversations fizzle out.
What comes next
Our side is working to the 60-day mark. An aide to the supreme leader let us know that while the overtures are fine, there is still some debate in Tehran.
In Washington we are looking at this from every angle-security, the markets, and politics. For his part, Trump has made it clear he won’t be authorising a high-stakes raid at the moment, though he hasn’t put the option away. This MOU is the test of whether we can make more headway in two weeks than a military op ever would.
