Nikita Smagin
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U.S. President Donald Trump may have torn up the previous nuclear deal between the United States and Iran during his first term in office, but he now seems serious about signing a new one. Washington has not only held several rounds of talks with the Iranians, but also dropped many of its demands.
That confronts Russia—which, united by a shared conflict with the West, has grown closer to Iran—with a dilemma: sabotage the negotiations in order to keep its ally isolated by sanctions, or try to become an important mediator in the agreement, as it was in the previous deal.
Back in 2017, Trump not only withdrew unilaterally from the agreement and imposed a slew of sanctions on Iran, but also made maximalist demands for a return to negotiations. The Iranians were asked to abandon both their nuclear enrichment and their missile program, and to cease all support for their proxy forces in the region. In the end, Tehran did not even make it to the negotiating table, despite the damage to the economy caused by the return of intensified sanctions.
However, that policy of putting maximum pressure on Iran failed, and now Trump is adopting a completely different position. Nothing if not extremely pragmatic, the U.S. president is trying to conclude as many deals as possible in the shortest space of time. That has already led to Washington entering into agreements with the Houthis in Yemen, and to unexpected steps to normalize relations with the new Syrian government. Another consequence of this pragmatism was the cooling of Trump’s relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Compared with the previous demands, Trump’s present requirements vis-à-vis Iran are far more modest. According to leaks, the current talks are focused exclusively on the nuclear program, with no attempts to incorporate other regional security issues. Ideally, the deal should ensure that Iran will never be able to possess nuclear weapons, and in exchange, the United States will lift sanctions, which is theoretically possible given the Republican majority in both houses of Congress.
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