Anyone who has been paying attention over the last few weeks will likely not be surprised that the Trump administration seems to be moving toward a new Iran nuclear deal that will not fulfill Israel’s expectations.
The Jerusalem Post has received strong signals from top Israeli officials in this direction, and public statements by American officials have essentially confirmed this trend.
In quick succession, Washington and Tehran held a first round of nuclear talks on April 12, a second round this past Saturday, and have now scheduled a third round for April 26.
The first round was designed to set a baseline of goodwill and a conceptual framework of where the sides could agree.
This second round delved into greater detail about the various broad issues, both areas where the sides agreed and disagreed.
However, the third round shows how serious these talks are.
Now, the technical experts on each side are meeting up to discuss specific, concrete solutions and terms for complex problems.
All of this is against the background of US President Donald Trump’s plan to visit Saudi Arabia in a matter of weeks, which could signal some additional seismic shifts in the region.
How bad is the situation from the perspective of top Israeli officials?
It seems a foregone conclusion that Iran will not need to destroy their uranium-enriching centrifuge fleet.
Mossad Director David Barnea and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Israel’s best current tag team on the issue, seem not to have succeeded in convincing US envoy Steve Witkoff otherwise.
It would also seem obvious that the Islamic Republic will need to dilute all of its 60% enriched uranium back down to a much lower level to push its countdown time away from a nuclear weapon.
The question is, will Tehran have to destroy some of its centrifuges and ship out some of its uranium? Will it need to stop running its advanced centrifuges that could enrich enough uranium from scratch for a new nuclear weapon in something like a month or two?
Will it need to shut down its underground facilities, which are harder to strike from the air?
And all of that is preliminary to the essential question of ballistic missiles.
One of the most glaring holes of the 2015 nuclear deal was that it pretended that ballistic missiles were not part of the picture because they were primarily being used as conventional weapons.
However, they are also the delivery vehicle for nuclear weapons.
So any nuclear deal in 2025 that does not address ballistic missiles – given that Tehran has now mastered almost every other nuclear weapons skill besides the delivery process – is being grossly negligent at an even higher level than in 2015, when Iran was not that close to delivering a nuclear weapon anyway.
How can Trump carve a new path?
This would also be a place where Trump could distinguish himself from Obama’s 2015 deal by saying he got a whole new issue included in the agreement.
For the Iranian side, if their program only has some forward-looking limits, is under supervision, and doesn’t require the destruction of its centrifuges, they could still claim they did not really give Trump any new concessions.
Of course, the preference of top Israeli officials at this point is a straight-up aerial attack on Iran’s mostly defenseless nuclear sites following the Israeli Air Force’s dismantling of most of Iran’s quality air defenses on October 26.
But if Trump is making a deal anyway, Israel could position itself to support the agreement or not attack it if it includes certain items, such as limiting and controlling advanced centrifuges and ballistic missiles.
If there is a meeting of technical experts this coming Saturday, hopefully, it will be about working through some of these issues, taking into account the Israeli perspective, and not merely returning to the 2015 nuclear limits that will be unable to restrain a more mature nuclear Iran.
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