Australia/Israel Review

All eyes on the new Administration’s Iran policy

Donald Trump was sworn in on Monday, January 20, a day after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect and the first three Israeli hostages returned home after 471 days in captivity. Trump claimed credit for the deal even before he entered the White House and will likely be hoping to leverage the ceasefire for further gains in the region, in particular, progress on Israel-Saudi normalisation. 

But there is another pressing issue that looms in the background: Iran’s race towards nuclear breakout. 

All eyes should be on the President’s Iran policy. Will he opt to ramp up economic sanctions on the Iranian regime – as he did in his first term – in order to push for a new nuclear deal to replace the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed by President Obama in 2015 and from which Trump withdrew in 2018? Or will he greenlight an Israeli military strike on Teheran’s nuclear program – or even launch an American strike against a regime that stands accused of plotting to assassinate him?

According to reports, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to visit Trump shortly after the inauguration to coordinate next steps on the pressing issues in the region, including: post-war plans for Gaza, assuming the ceasefire holds and progresses to its next steps; Lebanon, where the initial implementation phase of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire reached in late November is due to be completed by Jan. 26; and Syria following the fall of the Assad regime. 

However, the bigger issues of Iran’s nuclear program and Israel’s potential normalisation of ties with Saudi Arabia, accompanied by an American defence treaty with the Kingdom, will likely dominate any discussions. 

Both Trump and Netanyahu desperately want to see a Saudi deal materialise – the US President to earn his place in history and perhaps gain a Nobel Peace Prize, and the Israeli PM to try to improve both his future political prospects and burnish his legacy. However, they could differ on the path there. Trump is likely to push for concessions from Netanyahu on both an end to the Gaza war and a political horizon for the Palestinians that will be palatable to the Saudis. This is something that the current Israeli Government will find hard to swallow, even given the departure of Itamar Ben-Gvir and his far-right “Jewish Power” party, which left the coalition in protest at the hostage deal. On that basis, though, agreement to the hostage deal is already seen by some observers as an act of deference by Netanyahu to the incoming President. 

But if the two leaders could differ on the path, if not the destination, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, on Iran, things are more complicated. Trump has made bellicose statements regarding Iran, but behind the scenes is also said to have reached out to the new regime to raise the possibility of talks. 

Trump’s confusing messaging

In October, after Iran’s massive but mostly unsuccessful ballistic missile strike on Israel, Trump lashed out at President Joe Biden for saying Israel should not target Iran’s nuclear facilities in response. Speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina, Trump said, “I think he’s got that one wrong. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit?”

Just a couple of weeks earlier, however, he had suggested at a press conference in New York that he would be open to talks on a revamped version of the nuclear accords from which he withdrew. “Sure, I would do that,” he said. “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible.”

In an interview with Time magazine after his election win, when asked what were the chances of the US going to war with Iran under his presidency, he responded, “Anything can happen. It’s a very volatile situation.” 

While the new US President is keeping his cards close to his chest, Israel has reportedly been sending out feelers regarding the possibility of the Trump Administration supporting an Israeli strike on the Iranian nuclear program. Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer met unofficially with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November to discuss the issue, but there have been contradictory reports regarding the outcome of that meeting. 

One version has it that Dermer came away thinking there was a high likelihood Trump would either support an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities or even prepare a US strike – which would likely be more militarily effective. Yet other stories said Dermer returned empty-handed. 

Other reports claim that Trump reached out to Iran via Oman prior to taking office, expressing readiness to reach a new nuclear deal different from the one reached in 2015. Oman played an important role in back-channel negotiations that eventually led to the JCPOA. 

Trump’s appointee as Middle East advisor, Massad Boulos – a Lebanese-American businessman and the President’s daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law – gave an interview which is perhaps illustrative of the ways in which the needle might swing.

Speaking with the French magazine Le Point, Boulos stated that Trump would renew his “maximum pressure” policy from his first term but would also be willing to negotiate with the Iranian regime. Boulos said:

… There are three very important points for [Donald Trump]: Iran must absolutely not have nuclear power; Iran’s ballistic missiles pose a risk not only to Israel but also to the Gulf countries; and finally, the problem posed by Iranian proxies in the region, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, or Yemen. Apart from these three axes, Trump did not talk about regime change.

A sense of urgency

Time to make a decision one way or another is likely to be short.

Since the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018, Iran has significantly reduced the time it would need to achieve nuclear breakout. The agreement limited Iran to uranium enrichment of 3.67%, but since then, it has amassed sufficient stockpiles of uranium enriched to 60% U-235 enough for at least five nuclear warheads if further enriched to 90%, the level required for nuclear weapons. This is a relatively quick and easy process, and it is believed that Iran could complete this enrichment process within just a few weeks if it made a decision to do so. 

However, to produce a nuclear bomb, Iran would need to take additional steps: converting uranium from its gaseous form (uranium hexafluoride) into metal, casting and machining the metal into weapons components, mastering weaponisation and integrating the components into a missile warhead for delivery. This process could add several months to a couple of years to the process. Iran is known to have conducted computer simulations to advance this process, but it is not clear exactly where it stands or how long this would take it. 

While Iran has reached 60% enrichment and stopped there for now, other factors also impose time constraints on decision-makers. One significant factor is the snapback provision of the JCPOA, as formalised in a UN Security Council resolution. This mechanism allows any signatory of the agreement – comprising the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) – to file a complaint about Iranian violations and trigger the reinstatement of previous Security Council resolutions. These resolutions would reinstate an arms embargo, prohibit Teheran from exporting missiles and drones, restrict ballistic missile activities capable of delivering nuclear weapons and impose financial controls. Moreover, the snapback mechanism does not require consensus among Security Council members – any one signatory can trigger it. However, this provision is set to expire on October 18, 2025. Iran has warned it may withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if snapback is invoked.

Meanwhile, several Iranian officials have made statements over the past year suggesting that Iran could soon change its “peaceful” nuclear policy and has the know-how to build nuclear weapons.

A weakened Iran 

On the other hand, regardless of whether Trump opts to ramp up pressure on Iran and negotiate with the regime, or instead greenlights an Israeli strike or even American military action, it is clear that each of these paths has been made easier by recent events, which have severely weakened Iran both militarily and geopolitically. 

On Oct. 26 last year, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) hit Iran in response to the regime’s massive ballistic missile attack on Israel earlier that month. The strikes crippled Iran’s missile production capabilities, took out all its primary aerial defences, and damaged what Netanyahu described, without elaborating, as a “component” of Iran’s nuclear program. Media reports suggest the strike targeted a top-secret nuclear weapons research facility at Parchin, near Teheran, destroying advanced equipment used in designing plastic explosives critical for detonating nuclear devices. A US official described the operation as a clear signal of Israel’s deep intelligence capabilities, even regarding highly classified aspects of Iran’s nuclear program.

The route to a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program was further eased when the IAF conducted hundreds of strikes, decimating Syria’s air defences after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in early December.

Iran’s nuclear program is currently highly vulnerable to an Israeli airstrike (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

With Hezbollah and Hamas severely weakened, Iran is now exposed, with its aerial defences neutralised and only very limited capacity to retaliate through its proxies. Despite efforts to increase the flow of weapons to the West Bank via Jordan, its ability to mount a significant response has been substantially curtailed, with only the Houthis in Yemen remaining willing and able to offer retaliation if Teheran orders it. However, Houthi missile attacks on Israel – such as the one a day before the Gaza ceasefire – almost always fail to cause major damage. Direct Iranian strikes on Israel in April and October also fell short, resulting in minimal damage and only one fatality.

Israel has also made both covert and explicit threats against Iran. Days after striking the Teheran-backed Houthis, a distance of almost 2,000 kilometres from Israel, a squadron commander involved in the mission told Channel 12 TV: “Yemen is further away than Iran… if I were sitting in Iran, I wouldn’t sit calmly. The air force is ready to attack Iran now.”

The question is, will Israel be given that chance or will Trump use the threat of an Israeli strike solely as a means to ramp up the pressure on Iran to coerce it into agreeing to a new nuclear deal that will address widespread concerns about the JCPOA? At the very least, this would likely entail instituting stricter limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment, the removal of all but low-level enriched uranium from Iran, cancelling the sunset clauses of the JCPOA – which effectively allow Iran to escape all limits on its program in a couple of years – and much stricter international monitoring. Agreement would also be needed to address Iran’s proxy terrorism, which the JCPOA ignored completely. 

If Iran’s ruling clerics feel that the regime is in danger if it fails to comply – and for this, the credible threat of airstrikes will be essential – and if Israel is persuaded that a deal provides cast-iron guarantees, such an approach might just work. 

If Trump can somehow overcome the myriad challenges and deliver on both a stronger nuclear deal with Iran and a historic normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, it would reshape the Middle East for decades to come.