The ongoing US-Iran negotiations facilitated by Pakistan are focused on resolving two key issues – the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and narrowing the differences over Iran’s nuclear program. Pakistan seems to have brokered a conditional and short-term agreement for the opening of Hormuz, but the differences over Iran’s nuclear program remain a major impediment that has the potential to derail the entire peace process.
President Trump wants a permanent freeze of the nuclear activities and removal of 460 Kgs of enriched uranium from the Iranian soil so that he can claim to have concluded a better deal than the Obama era’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he himself terminated in 2018. The Iranian leadership, on the other hand, remains cautious due to their past experiences of negotiating with Trump and is unlikely to offer major concessions as they view the nuclear program as a ‘non-negotiable national pride.’
Iran is one of the first signatories of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and joined the NPT in 1968. As a non-nuclear weapon state signatory to the NPT, it has obligations to declare all its nuclear facilities and implement comprehensive safeguards agreements that are to be verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran built new centrifuge facilities at Fordow in 2009, which it failed to notify the IAEA, triggering concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions amongst some Western countries, and more specifically in Israel.
To resolve these inconsistencies, the US, along with other countries, engaged in negotiations that led to the conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 – also known as the Iran nuclear deal, negotiated between the P-5+1 and Iran. The JCPOA permitted Iran to enrich uranium up to 3.67% and limited its stocks to less than 300 kgs for an initial period of 15 years. In return, the US promised to work with its partners to lift sanctions, allowing Iran to resume its trade relations with the rest of the world.
The JCPOA was pragmatic and could have permanently addressed international concerns. Instead of building on the agreed framework, President Trump blamed his predecessor for negotiating a soft deal and terminated the agreement in 2018. Iran was once again subjected to renewed sanctions, forcing it to respond by increasing enrichment levels to 60% over the next few years.
Subsequent efforts to negotiate a better deal did not yield a positive outcome, and after having tried the military option, Trump is now looking for a face-saving agreement that could be presented as a success for his voters and to the rest of the world. The US seems to be insisting on a 20–25-year timeline during which Iran won’t be allowed to enrich uranium, while Iranians could possibly agree to a relatively short period of 5-10 years with tangible guarantees that the agreement would not be abrogated again unilaterally.
The controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program is not new. For more than three decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been raising alarm about Iran’s nuclear program, offering different timelines that ranged from a few years to a week’s time before Iran could even build a bomb. In the 2002 US congressional committee hearing, Netanyahu built a case for the invasion of Iraq and argued that both Iraq and Iran were acquiring nuclear weapons that needed to be stopped by a military action. The US eventually invaded Iraq on a curated threat but failed to discover weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Secretary of State Collin Powell, in an interview later, admitted that the information fed to him by the US entities was wrong and had ‘blotted’ his record, which he deeply regrets.
Similarly, in a more recent interview, former US Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that Prime Minister Netanyahu had been pestering several US presidents, including Obama, Joe Biden, and George W Bush, urging them to launch a military action against Iran. His proposals included launching a military offensive to eliminate the Iranian leadership, incite regime change, and destroy the Iranian military – the same were echoed by senior US Administration officials during the five weeks war with Iran. All previous Presidents refused PM Netanyahu’s demands except for President Trump, who, despite the assessment provided by his own Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, that Iran had not resumed the nuclear weapons program it ended in 2003, authorised the military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025.
The timeline of June 2025 US-Israeli strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities also brings out role of the IAEA, which may have been partially complicit in building a justification for a military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
On June 12, 2025, the IAEA informed the member states that Iran had ramped up production of enriched uranium. The same day, the IAEA’s Board of Governors (BoG) concluded that Iran is in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, and within 24 hours, Israel launched aerial strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities located at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. After 10 days of the strikes, the US also joined and launched strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, claiming that Iran’s nuclear infrastructure had been completely obliterated.
The June 2025 strikes seem to have been carefully choreographed with the IAEA’s internal decision-making process, which brings into question the role of the IAEA as an independent UN body that is otherwise responsible for regulating peaceful applications of nuclear technology amongst its member states.
Following the June 2025 strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the US and Iran once again engaged in a back-channel diplomacy that led to indirect talks facilitated by the Sultanate of Oman. On Feb 27, in an interview, the Omani Foreign Minister revealed that the two countries were close to reaching a nuclear deal that could have permanently addressed major concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear program and prevented the current conflict, but the Israeli PM seems to have used his influence forcing the US to join in launching a major military offensive against Iran, which it did on Feb 28, 2026.
After five weeks of war, the US may not have achieved any of its stated military and political objectives. The Strait of Hormuz that was already open before the conflict has been reopened by Iran, albeit with conditions, and therefore cannot be deemed a military success. Similarly, Iran that was amenable to negotiating a nuclear deal before the conflict would now be extremely cautious, without any tangible assurances. Therefore, any nuclear deal to be negotiated with Iran would have to take into consideration Iran’s sensitivities and its past experiences in dealing with the US. For Iran, the enriched uranium may not necessarily be the ‘road to a bomb’, but it is the Iranian pride for which it has demonstrated that it would be willing to pay any price.
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