博彩对冲

The past month has been a roller-coaster ride of escalatory rhetoric and military activity from the US and Iran, centered on the latter鈥檚 nuclear program. The Trump administration has labeled this program a potential existential threat to Israel and demanded it be dismantled. Iran, meanwhile, claims its program is a peaceful one that complies with its obligations as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Both Washington and Tehran walked this issue to the precipice before backing down and agreeing to negotiate. The US continues to maintain that a military option is still very much on the table, while Iran promises a devastating response if it is attacked. But for the moment, hostility has yielded to diplomacy.

When US President Donald Trump in 2018 withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the landmark Iran nuclear deal agreed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, three years earlier, Trump claimed he was looking for a 鈥渂etter deal.鈥� The agreement he tore up had been designed to keep Iran鈥檚 nuclear program contained through enhanced inspections and technical restrictions that provided a one-year 鈥渂reakout window鈥� 鈥� the time needed by Iran to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon. Trump conducted what he called a 鈥渕aximum pressure鈥� campaign of enhanced economic sanctions designed to compel Tehran to return to the negotiation table.

Seven years later, Trump is confronted by an Iran that has become a nuclear weapons threshold state, having accumulated enough 60%-enriched uranium and sufficient advanced centrifuge capacity to step up the enrichment process to produce enough weapons-grade uranium within a matter of days, according to US and International Atomic Energy Agency officials and experts. While the US intelligence community, in its latest threat assessment, has determined that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon and that the Iranian leadership continues to be opposed to possessing nuclear weapons, Iran could 鈥� according to statements made by former and current Iranian government officials 鈥� possess a nuclear arsenal within weeks. According to estimates derived from the quantity of 60% enriched uranium available, this could allow the production of three to five nuclear weapons. This is a steep departure from the constraints that had been imposed under the now-defunct JCPOA.

In and of itself, this new Iranian nuclear reality would warrant a response from the US, which has from the beginning taken a hard-line stance against Iran鈥檚 nuclear ambitions 鈥� a reflection of Israeli concerns that any Iranian enrichment capability represented a threat, given its potential to produce weapons-grade uranium (the current state of the Iranian enrichment program seems to have born this assessment out). Unwilling to go to war with Iran, however, Obama doubled down on sanctions, eventually opening the door for the JCPOA.

Trump, who has assembled one of the most pro-Israel US presidential administrations ever, finds himself facing a situation where the normal level of Israeli anti-Iran posturing has been enhanced. This is a result of the new reality that has descended upon the Middle East in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent expansion of the conflict from Gaza to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. Israel has found its territory bombarded by rockets, missile and drones. On two occasions, Iran was able to pierce the Israeli missile defense shield, demonstrating a vulnerability that has also been exploited by Yemen.

This enhanced sense of vulnerability by Israel has led to the country鈥檚 prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, putting pressure on the Trump administration to undertake military strikes to neutralize Iran鈥檚 nuclear program and facilitate the fall of its theocratic government. Trump, who campaigned on a platform of conflict avoidance and articulated several times that he was not seeking regime change in Iran, has pushed back against Netanyahu鈥檚 militancy.

One of the tenets of Trump鈥檚 foreign policy, however, is 鈥減eace through strength.鈥� Engaging with Iran, given Trump鈥檚 track record regarding the JCPOA and the role he played in ordering the assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, was always going to be difficult. Trump compounded this difficulty when his opening gambit on taking office was to double down on his former 鈥�maximum pressure鈥� campaign of economic sanctions. He then ordered the deployment of US military aircraft and naval vessels to the Middle East, backing up his threatening rhetoric with real-world capacity. Trump also sent a letter to the Iranian leadership demanding that Tehran not only eliminate its nuclear program but its ballistic missile arsenal as well. Trump further demanded that Iran end its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.

Iran鈥檚 response was to categorically reject Trump鈥檚 demands, reiterate its readiness to defend itself if attacked by the US and/or Israel, and threaten to carry out a 鈥渞eciprocal blow鈥� against them. Any Iranian retaliatory strikes would have the potential to inflict damage and casualties on US military installations in the Mideast Gulf, and, probably, to disrupt and destroy major oil and gas production infrastructure in the region 鈥� something that, if manifested, would prove extremely disruptive to global energy security and markets.

The US had boxed itself into a corner with its bellicosity. If Iran refused to climb down from its position and sit at the negotiating table, then Trump would have no choice but to carry out the threatened military strikes or else lose credibility. If he did not, the US foreign and national security policy premised on 鈥減eace through strength鈥� would be exposed as little more than a bluff. The major problem facing Trump wasn鈥檛 a lack of US strike capacity but the fact that Iran had made its most critical nuclear infrastructure immune to US conventional strikes by burying it deep underground. The Trump administration had tried to send a signal to Iran that its underground facilities were not immune to US conventional weapons, using B-2 bombers armed with the most powerful non-nuclear bunker-busting bombs in the US inventory to strike several underground weapons storage facilities in Yemen. According to Iranian and Yemeni sources, the strikes failed to destroy their targets, a fact which, if true, would only add to Iran鈥檚 sense of invulnerability.

Faced with the reality that the only option available to guarantee the destruction of Iran鈥檚 nuclear infrastructure was specially designed low-yield nuclear bunker-busting warheads and bombs 鈥� and unwilling to open the Pandora鈥檚 box of being the first nation to use nuclear weapons in conflict since the end of World War II 鈥� Trump softened his rhetoric, indicating that he was ready to engage in negotiations with Iran that were limited to resolving the nuclear issue.

Iran, picking up on the change in tone and following consultations with both Russia and China, agreed to 鈥渋ndirect鈥� negotiations with the US in Oman. Trump dispatched his special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who engaged, through intermediaries, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Both the US and Iran have indicated that the results of these talks were positive and that further negotiations are planned later this month. Trump鈥檚 rhetoric has cooled considerably, as has that of the Iranian leadership. And, for the moment at least, peace, not war, appears to be the Iranian endgame.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer whose service over a 20-plus-year career included tours of duty in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control agreements, serving on the staff of US General Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War and later as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq from 1991-98. The views expressed in this article are those of the author.