The meeting of NATO defence ministers and Munich Security Conference has left unanswered the question over whether the Biden administration will bring remaining U.S. troops home from Afghanistan by May 1, in accordance with the U.S.-Taliban agreement. The ambiguity of European and U.S. statements following the meeting may be intended to pressure the Taliban and Afghan government back to the negotiating table. But indecision this close to the deadline risks throwing away a one-time opportunity to leave Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s remarks at the NATO meeting assured partners that the “U.S. remains committed to a diplomatic effort to end the war,” but also that the United States will not take a “hasty or disorderly withdrawal” from Afghanistan after nearly twenty years. As a result, the Biden administration is pushing itself into a corner in which it will likely forfeit a one-time opportunity to leave by May without having to broker a new understanding with the Taliban, a path which would be fraught with risk and uncertainty.
The consequences of unilaterally ignoring the May withdrawal deadline will be the dissolution of the U.S.-Taliban agreement, placing U.S. soldiers back in the crosshairs of the Taliban, and an end to intra-Afghan negotiations. A peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government may be unlikely if the United States leaves, but it is dead on arrival if Washington chooses to ignore the deadline altogether.
An endless U.S. war effort will be left as the only remaining option. The passing of the withdrawal deadline will coincide with the beginning of the Taliban’s fighting season and violence will surge even more. This will lead to calls in Washington to cease diplomatic outreach with the Taliban and increase troop levels. If President Biden resists these calls and instead seeks to leave Afghanistan, then any date he chooses will be labeled as “arbitrary” since the May deadline will have passed. This will most likely lead to a doubling down of the counterinsurgency effort of the last twenty years.
NATO partners may also pressure Biden to remain in Afghanistan. The NATO mission in Afghanistan known as Resolute Support was intended as a training mission and that largely remains the case for countries like Germany and Italy. But the majority of combat missions are U.S.-led and the Pentagon provides twice as many troops as the next largest NATO contributor which is Germany. The United Stateshas accounted for 67 percent of all coalition deaths throughout the war in Afghanistan with the U.K. and Canada accounting for the majority of the rest.
The NATO mission in Afghanistan remains a U.S.-led war and it is therefore reasonable for President Biden to pursue an exit that advances U.S. interests. Still, it is crucial that Washington provide partners who have supported Washington in Afghanistan adequate time to withdraw their own remaining troops. This is why the Biden administration should make it clear to NATO sooner rather than later that it is leaving Afghanistan.
Policy reviews are important but the world does not stop spinning as they occur nor do the opportunity costs. Regional diplomacy to push the Taliban toward a ceasefire and Kabul toward an interim government appears to be underway. The Biden administration should participate in such initiatives. But it should not use U.S. troops as a source of coercive leverage in diplomatic efforts because ultimately that runs counter to the goals of diplomacy. Now is the time to bring U.S. troops home before it is too late.
Adam Weinstein is Deputy Director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute, whose current research focuses on security and rule of law in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden during a tour of the largest military training facility in Afghanistan in 2011. (Photo by Chief Petty Officer Brian Brannon/public domain)|Afghan national army Chief of Staff Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi meets Vice President Joe Biden during a tour of the largest military training facility in Afghanistan in 2011. (
Top image credit: An Iranian man (not pictured) carries a portrait of the former commander of the IRGC Aerospace Forces, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and participates in a funeral for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, Iranian nuclear scientists, and civilians who are killed in Israeli attacks, in Tehran, Iran, on June 28, 2025, during the Iran-Israel ceasefire. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto VIA REUTERS)
Washington’s foreign policy establishment has a dangerous tendency to dismantle nations it deems adversarial. Now, neoconservative think tanks like the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and their fellow travelers in the European Parliament are openly promoting the balkanization of Iran — a reckless strategy that would further destabilize the Middle East, trigger catastrophic humanitarian crises, and provoke fierce resistance from both Iranians and U.S. partners.
As Israel and Iran exchanged blows in mid-June, FDD’s Brenda Shaffer argued that Iran’s multi-ethnic makeup was a vulnerability to be exploited. Shaffer has been a vocal advocate for Azerbaijan in mainstream U.S. media, even as she has consistently failed to disclose her ties to Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR. For years, she has pushed for Iran’s fragmentation along ethnic lines, akin to the former Yugoslavia’s collapse. She has focused much of that effort on promoting the secession of Iranian Azerbaijan, where Azeris form Iran’s largest non-Persian group.
Shaffer’s views align with a recent Jerusalem Post editorial which, amid the euphoria of Israel’s initial strikes in this month’s war against Iran, called on President Trump to openly embrace Iran’s dismemberment. Specifically, it urged a “Middle East coalition for Iran’s partition” and “security guarantees to Sunni, Kurdish and Balochi minority regions willing to break away.” The same outlet is on the record calling for Israel and the U.S. to support the secession from Iran of what it calls “‘South Azerbaijan,” (meaning the Azeri-majority regions in northwestern Iran).
Meanwhile, the foreign affairs spokeswoman for a centrist liberal group in the European Parliament convened a meeting on the “future of Iran,” ostensibly to discuss the prospects for a “successful” revolt against the Islamic Republic. The fact that the only two Iranian speakers were ethnic separatists from Iran’s Azerbaijan and Ahwaz regions made clear her agenda. Since the European Parliament unilaterally cut all relations with Iran’s official bodies in 2022, it has become a playground for assorted radical exiled opposition groups, such as monarchists, the cultish MEK (Mojaheddeen-e Khalk), and ethnic separatists.
Yet Iran is not some fragile patchwork state on the verge of collapse. It is a 90-million-strong nation with a deep sense of historical and cultural identity. While proponents of balkanization love to fixate on Iran’s ethnic diversity — Azeris, Kurds, Baloch, Arabs — they consistently underestimate the unifying force of Iranian nationalism. As the scholar Shervin Malekzadeh noted recently in the Los Angeles Times, “There is a robust consensus among scholars that politics in Iran begins with the idea of Iran as a people with a continuous and unbroken history, a nation that ‘looms out of an immemorial past.’ Nationalism provides the broad political arena in which different groups and ideologies in Iran compete for power and authority, whether monarchist, Islamist or leftist.”
Decades of foreign pressure, from sanctions to covert operations to war, have only reinforced this cohesion. The idea that stirring separatist sentiment will fracture Iran is a dangerous fantasy — one that deliberately overlooks how schemes hatched, in major part, by pro-Israel neoconservatives, have backfired in Iraq and Syria leaving chaos in their wake.
This approach is not only morally grotesque; it is based on a profound misunderstanding of Iran’s internal dynamics. Shaffer and her ilk expect that external pressure on Tehran would lead to an Azeri (and other minorities’) uprising against Tehran. Instead, like the rest of Iran, Israel’s recent attack triggered a rally-around-the-flag effect, because Iranian Azerbaijanis are deeply integrated into the national fabric: both the highest officials in the country — the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Massoud Pezeshkian — are of Azeri ethnicity.
A month ago, I walked the streets of Tabriz, a city steeped in Iranian history and identity. Far from being a hotbed of secessionism, Tabriz is living testament to Iran’s enduring unity. The Azerbaijan Museum proudly displays artifacts from millennia of Iranian civilization, while the Constitution House commemorates Tabriz’s pivotal role in Iran’s 1906 Constitutional Revolution — a movement that shaped modern Iranian nationalism and continues to inspire democratic forces and civil society across the country.
The idea that Tabriz — or any major Azeri-majority city in Iran — would rise up in revolt at the behest of Washington or Jerusalem is a pipe dream. Iranian Azerbaijanis are not some oppressed minority waiting for liberation; they have thrived in Iran. Most critical Azeri activists in Iran frame their demands in terms of cultural rights, not independence.
Admittedly, local grievances may be more pronounced in the Kurdish and Baloch regions, particularly in the latter – remote, poor and Sunni. But even here, there is no evidence of strong popular support for secession. Besides, trying to capitalize on whatever disaffection may exist would put the U.S. on a collision course with its allies and partners in the region.
Turkey, a key NATO ally, will never tolerate U.S. support for Kurdish separatism in Iran, given its own decades-long struggle with the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK). The PKK’s Iran affiliate – PJAK (the Party of the Free Life of Kurdistan) has welcomed Israel’s attacks on Iran.
Similarly, Pakistan, already facing its own Baloch insurgency, will see Western meddling in Iranian Balochistan as a direct threat to its territorial integrity. Alienating these allies in pursuit of an unworkable regime-change gambit would constitute foreign policy malpractice.
Russia and China have long argued that Washington seeks to dismember its adversaries — from Yugoslavia to Iraq. Any push to balkanize Iran will validate their darkest suspicions, hardening their own domestic crackdowns against minorities, and accelerating their efforts to build an anti-Western coalition.
India, a country avidly courted as an ally by Washington, would similarly reject such policies as they would undermine New Delhi’s strategic trade and logistics projects, such as the development of the Chabahar port in Iran, India’s entry point to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan.
If Washington and its European enablers push for Iran’s disintegration, the consequences will also be felt acutely in Europe. A destabilized Iran would unleash a migration crisis dwarfing the 2015 Syrian refugee wave. It could also create fertile ground for terrorist groups — including the Islamic State. One of its franchises. ISIS-Khorasan, has already been active in Iran, including suicide bombings last year in Kerman. Add to that the inevitable energy shocks if Iran moves to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, and Europe will face a self-inflicted disaster.
The architects of this approach — hawks at FDD and their European and Israeli fellow travelers — are playing with fire. Attempts to fracture Iran will backfire spectacularly, unleashing chaos that will spill far beyond its borders.
Instead of indulging in fragmentation fantasies, the West should pursue pragmatic engagement. The alternative is likely another forever war — one that neither America nor Europe can afford.
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Top image credit: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe join a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and his intelligence team in the Situation Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 21, 2025. The White House/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump has twice, within the space of a week, been at odds with U.S. intelligence agencies on issues involving Iran’s nuclear program. In each instance, Trump was pushing his preferred narrative, but the substantive differences in the two cases were in opposite directions.
Before the United States joined Israel’s attack on Iran, Trump dismissed earlier testimony by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in which she presented the intelligence community’s judgment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” Questioned about this testimony, Trump said, “she’s wrong.”
Then, after a U.S. air attack that Trump claimed had “completely and fully obliterated” key Iranian nuclear capabilities, press reports about a leaked preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested that the U.S. airstrikes instead had probably set back the Iranian program only a few months. The White House pushed back, with Trump himself reaffirming his “total obliteration” language. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared that the reported intelligence assessment was “flat-out wrong.”
In the first instance, Trump was accusing U.S. intelligence of under-estimating a supposed threat. In the second instance, he was in effect accusing it of over-estimating what was left of this “threat” after the U.S. attack. The intelligence agencies were not in the first instance being dovish Pollyannas before suddenly becoming hawkish alarmists.
Instead, the episodes reflect Trump’s attempted spinning of the story into one in which he supposedly confronted a grave threat and, through his bold action, has eliminated it.
The administration has gone into overdrive in endeavoring to discredit any suggestion that the impact of the U.S. airstrikes on the Iranian nuclear program was not momentous and long-lasting. CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a statement that “a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes.” DNI Gabbard asserted on social media that “new intelligence confirms what @POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed,” while Gabbard disparaged the “propaganda media” for reporting on the leaked DIA assessment.
The pushback misses the main issues of whether the airstrikes were wise and what comes next in confrontation with Iran. Nobody disputes that the U.S. attack inflicted heavy damage. 30,000-pound bombs tend to do that. The Iranian foreign minister has acknowledged “significant and serious damage” to nuclear facilities from the U.S. strikes.
But even severe physical damage does not imply an inability to rebuild and reconstitute a program. Nor does it deny that even with severe damage to targeted facilities, there remain materials and equipment that can be a foundation for reconstitution.
The underground enrichment facility at Fordow — the principal target of those 30,000-pound bombs — has received the most attention in the post-attack commentary. That facility is so deep underground that there is good reason to doubt that even multiple bunker-busters could destroy it, although Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), assesses that the sensitivity of the enrichment centrifuges to vibration means the centrifuges were probably put out of commission.
At least as important is the high likelihood that Iran, anticipating attacks, had already moved at least some of its enriched uranium to undisclosed locations. This may have included 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent that had been at Fordow.
There also remains the scientific and engineering talent that has been involved in a decades-long nuclear program and that is spread across too many people in Iran for even Israel to assassinate. That talent can be applied to reconstruction of any of the nuclear facilities, including the uranium conversion facility that Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted in adding his voice to the administration message about severe damage to the Iranian program.
Supposed timelines for potential reconstitution of Iran’s nuclear program have been thrown into the efforts to spin this story, carelessly and without foundation. Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard spoke of “years” needed for reconstruction. Trump said the Iranian program is “gone for years.” Asked whether the United States would strike Iran again, Trump replied, “I’m not going to have to worry about that,” implying no reconstructed Iranian program during the remaining three and a half years of his administration.
It is as yet impossible to make such projections that go much beyond educated guesses, and not only because solidly based projections would require on-scene observations that neither the IAEA nor the United States currently has. The timeline for reconstitution also depends heavily on the priority that the government doing the reconstituting gives to the project and the sacrifices it is willing to make to achieve its objective.
In this regard, one recalls how in the 1970s, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan declared that Pakistanis would “eat grass, even go hungry” if necessary to acquire a nuclear weapon. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, after Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, initiated an accelerated, high-priority clandestine nuclear program that brought Iraq far closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon than it ever was on track to achieve before the Israeli attack.
The administration’s spin efforts are especially off-target concerning Iranian intentions. This is the subject on which Trump first blew off a major intelligence community judgment and which determines whether warfare was ever needed in the first place to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Exaggerating a foreign threat is especially easy to get away with when it is largely a matter of intentions rather than capabilities. An assertion about capabilities might later be disproved by material evidence, whereas proof or disproof of intentions involves the more difficult question of what is inside foreign leaders’ heads.
If no good evidence of an Iranian intention to build nuclear weapons ever surfaces, Trump can claim that it was his decisive action that cowed or dissuaded the Iranians from taking that step. Alternatively, if the Israeli and U.S. attacks lead the Iranians — seeing the need for a stronger deterrent — to build a nuclear weapon, Trump can claim that this was the Iranian intention all along. It will be difficult for the public to sort out what in this story is true and what is false.
The American public has its own preconceptions that aid this kind of administration spinning, including a willingness to assume the worst on anything having to do with Iran. The administration can also exploit basic public ignorance on the subject, as indicated by a poll in 2021 in which 61 percent of respondents mistakenly believed that Iran already possessed nuclear weapons.
The relentless efforts of the Israeli government to depict Iran as a grave threat have played into perceptions held by elites as well as the public. Israel has injected scraps of intelligence into this alarmist campaign, which have involved supposedly “new” revelations that do not go beyond prior knowledge, or that are circumstantial observations that require a chain of worst-case assumptions to connect them to a supposed Iranian decision to build a bomb.
Israel has demonstrated through its offensive operations how extensive is its intelligence penetration of Iran. If the thin gruel it has offered about a supposed Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon is the best it can come up with, this thinness is itself evidence that Iran had made no such decision.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying for more than three decades that Iran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon. Although even a broken clock is correct twice each day, to believe what Netanyahu says about Iranian nuclear matters is to disregard how wrong he has been for so long. It also disregards how slanted any Israeli intelligence revelations on this subject are sure to be, given what has been the strong Israeli objective to get the United States involved in a war on Iran.
It is safe to assume that any intelligence Israel offers is a small fraction of what it has collected on the subject, carefully selected to support its effort to drag the United States into war. That is called cherry-picking. Americans should understand this concept, given that 22 years ago they were the targets of a similar tendentious use of intelligence to sell the invasion of Iraq, an episode I have recounted at length elsewhere.
The recent statements by Ratcliffe and Gabbard intended to sustain Trump’s assertions of “obliteration” are another instance of cherry-picking. The statements are not assessments. When Ratcliffe, for example, cites “new intelligence” that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years,” this says nothing about what has not been destroyed and what is the reconstitution potential of the entire Iranian nuclear program.
Trump earlier had been aiming for an agreement with Iran that he could tout as a “better deal” than what Barack Obama had achieved. But now that Netanyahu has sucked him into warfare with Iran, Trump says, “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not.” He will find it hard to ignore evidence of continued Iranian nuclear capabilities and to brush aside U.S. intelligence assessments on that subject.
Trump will feel pressure to deal with those capabilities, and he will have difficulty sticking to his prediction that he will not have to worry about additional strikes on Iran. The pressure will come especially from the Israeli government, whose objective of having the United States militarily engaged against Iran will continue and whose defense minister, Israel Katz, is talking about an “enforcement policy” involving further attacks against Iran.
Meanwhile, the intelligence task of monitoring what remains of the Iranian nuclear program will be more difficult than ever. There is no substitute for on-site monitoring by international inspectors, especially the intrusive sort provided for in the comprehensive agreement that Iran signed in 2015 and that Trump abandoned three years later. Iran, angry with the IAEA for failing to condemn formally the Israeli and U.S. attacks and suspecting the agency of providing information to Israel that has facilitated Israeli attacks and assassinations, is in no hurry to restore the inspectors’ access.
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Top photo credit: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (President of the Russian Federation/Wikimedia Commons); U.S. President Donald Trump (Gage Skidmore/Flickr) and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei (Wikimedia Commons)
The recent conflict, a direct confrontation that pitted Iran against Israel and drew in U.S. B-2 bombers, has likely rendered the previous diplomatic playbook for Tehran's nuclear program obsolete.
The zero-sum debates concerning uranium enrichment that once defined that framework now represent an increasingly unworkable approach.
Although a regional nuclear consortium had been previously advanced as a theoretical alternative, the collapse of talks as a result of military action against Iran now positions it as the most compelling path forward for all parties.
Before the war, Iran was already suggesting a joint uranium enrichment facility with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Iranian soil. For Iran, this framework could achieve its primary goal: the preservation of a domestic nuclear program and, crucially, its demand to maintain some enrichment on its own territory. The added benefit is that it embeds Iran within a regional security architecture that provides a buffer against unilateral attack.
For Gulf actors, it offers unprecedented transparency and a degree of control over their rival-turned-friend’s nuclear activities, a far better outcome than a possible covert Iranian breakout. For a Trump administration focused on deals, it offers a tangible, multilateral framework that can be sold as a blueprint for regional stability.
To understand why this proposal is now the most logical, we must appreciate the depth of the diplomatic collapse.
Just before Israeli bombs rained down on Tehran killing numerous nuclear scientists and senior military commanders, U.S. and Iranian negotiators were deep in Oman-mediated talks, with President Trump reportedly considering the consortium proposal, accepting time-bound, limited enrichment on Iranian soil, with the understanding that precise details would be ironed out in subsequent negotiations.
Then, the strikes began. This sequence confirmed Tehran’s deeply held suspicion: diplomacy is a prelude to ambush, and international agreements are worthless without hard power to back them.
Iran’s recent legislative move to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is a direct response. It is a declaration that in a world governed by "might is right," Iran will pursue its own might in the dark. This is the new, dangerous reality. The old paradigm of constraining Iran through sanctions and inspections in exchange for easing its isolation will be difficult to resuscitate.
Practically, the consortium could allow enrichment to continue at Iranian facilities but would cap purity at 3.67%, the level established in the 2015 nuclear deal known as the JCPOA. This would reverse the recent trend of enrichment at 60% purity, which is a short technical step from the 90% needed for weapons-grade.
In this framework, the U.S. proposed to help construct nuclear power reactors for Iran, with Iran able to maintain enrichment capped at 3.67% pending a final deal on the long-term location and construction of regional enrichment facilities. Sanctions would also be removed, although the question of whether removal would be piecemeal or comprehensive would be the subject of additional negotiation. Gulf partners, namely, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, would have a financial stake as shareholders. Their presence, potentially including on-site engineers, would create an extra layer of transparency and assurance that the enrichment program remains entirely peaceful, reducing reliance on IAEA inspectors alone.
Forcing "zero enrichment" is, and always has been, a diplomatic non-starter for Iran that only led to an impasse at the negotiating table and ultimately to military escalation. The consortium idea bypasses this dead end. It could allow for Iran to keep enriching, thus satisfying its core demand and providing a face-saving "win" to present to the public, showcasing the preservation of its nuclear program as a successful defense of its sovereignty.
For the U.S., particularly the Trump administration, the consortium is a perfect fit for its transactional foreign policy. The president can claim he used a demonstration of “peace through strength” to force Iran into a landmark regional deal. It is a “win” that is easily packaged: Trump could claim that he brought the region's rivals together and put a lock on Iran's potential development of a nuclear weapon.
For the Arab Gulf states, the consortium model addresses some of their most pressing needs: immediate security and future energy. First, it transforms them from sitting ducks in a future U.S.-Iran-Israel standoff into deal guarantors.
Second, it provides a powerful engine for their own nuclear ambitions. To diversify their energy mixes and free up additional barrels for export, Saudi Arabia and the UAE require civilian nuclear power. The consortium elegantly solves this by creating a shared, multinational fuel cycle.
Creative proposals suggest a division of labor: Iran, for instance, could maintain its prized technological capacity by manufacturing the centrifuges, while the enrichment itself could occur in a neutral country or on an Iranian island separate from the mainland. This would provide fuel for all members while allowing each side to claim a strategic victory.
The crucial benefit for Gulf states is securing a stable and transparent fuel supply chain. This sidesteps the immense political and technical challenges of developing an independent enrichment capability from scratch, a stated goal for Saudi Arabia. For the UAE, with its operational Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, the consortium offers a more resilient, regionally integrated fuel source, reducing reliance on international markets for uranium procurement and enrichment services.
Previously, Saudi Arabia, focused on its own ambitious nuclear energy plans with U.S. support, saw little reason to join a consortium where Iran held the upper hand. However, the recent war has likely made it more amenable to such an arrangement. Iran’s willingness to retaliate, even symbolically against U.S. bases on the other side of the Gulf, demonstrates its capacity to draw regional players into the conflict. For Riyadh therefore, the risk of being caught in the crossfire of another war could now outweigh the risk of cooptation by Tehran.
In a recent phone call, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signaled to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan his readiness to resume negotiations with Washington, but picked his words carefully: Iran seeks a "fair and reasonable" agreement that respects its "rightful entitlements." This language appears to affirm that while Iran is open to resuming talks, its core demand for enrichment remains unchanged.
Crucially, Pezeshkian also welcomed the support of "friendly and brotherly nations" in the process, a clear invitation for the very regional involvement a consortium embodies.
However, for all its potential, the consortium model is fraught with risk. It requires the Trump administration to navigate its own policy evolution, from an initial willingness to accept enrichment provided there was no weaponization, to the maximalist “zero enrichment” stance it later adopted. Reverting to that earlier pragmatism would mean managing a guaranteed diplomatic crisis with Israel that will demand immense political capital to navigate.
Pursuing a consortium framework also requires a high level of diplomatic ingenuity, as integrating Saudi Arabia and the UAE will involve complex negotiations to secure their buy-in before tackling the nitty-gritty of the consortium's operational structure, from its location to its day-to-day governance.
Furthermore, the risk of proliferation persists. The story of Abdul Qadeer Khan — the Pakistani scientist who stole centrifuge designs from the European Urenco consortium to jumpstart Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and run a global nuclear black market — is a cautionary tale of how know-how and critical material can escape even supposedly secure multinational environments.
The choice is no longer between a perfect deal and a flawed one, but between a pragmatic, albeit risky proposal and the catastrophic certainty of war. The consortium, for all its dangers, is perhaps the only workable idea on the table.
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