Trump has for years dangled force as a means to get his way in negotiations.
“There is a lot of contradiction within the Trump administration on Iran,“ said one Western diplomat, who asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the issue. “Sooner or later, it will have to come to a head.”
Trump, who in his first term ripped up a 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by predecessor Barack Obama, returned to office saying he would resume his “maximum pressure” policy of sanctions but openly said he was doing so reluctantly out of deference to hawkish advisors.
Witkoff said Trump was proposing a “verification program” to show Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon -- in line with Obama’s deal, which was backed by European allies.
Iran insists it is not seeking a nuclear bomb, but US intelligence believes it could build one quickly if it decided to do so.
Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, which supports peaceful resolutions, said a maximalist position of ending the nuclear program was a non-starter with Iran.
Both Witkoff and the president himself are “not ideologically opposed to a mutually beneficial deal” with Iran, but no one else in the administration appears to agree, Vaez said.
Khamenei already will struggle to accept negotiations with Trump due to his past track record, including ordering the killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
“If Iran was smart, they would take this opportunity and say, well, here’s an American president who really doesn’t seem that heavily involved in this issue,“ Vatanka said.
Play for time?
Iran's main regional ally, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, fell in December after an offensive led by Sunni Islamists.
Hanging over diplomacy is the prospect of military action by Israel, which already struck hard at Iran's air defenses last year.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that a “credible American and Israeli military threat is instrumental” in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, including in leveraging a strong agreement.
“There is a great amount of cognizance within folks in the administration that Tehran is trying to play the administration to stall for time, and that there needs to be some real benchmarks if diplomacy is going to be an option here,“ he said.
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