Steven A. Cook
For five months, U.S. President Donald Trump seemed clearly to want a negotiated settlement to Iran’s nuclear program. Since the start of his second term in January, he sent U.S. negotiators to meet with their Iranian counterparts in either Oman or Italy five times toward this end. Yes, he had given Iran a 60-day deadline in April. But journalists and analysts mostly ignored it,
placing it in the category of Trump bombast much like his tariff timelines, which seemed to change daily. The conventional wisdom was and remained that Trump wanted a deal.
The U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan undermined this conventional wisdom—and likely closed off the possibility of negotiations. So what changed? And why now?
Steven A. Cook is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book is The End of Ambition: America’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East. X: @stevenacook
Read More On Iran | Israel | Nuclear Weapons | United States | War
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