Stunning news today as European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borell announced a “pause” in the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna, citing “external factors.” Diplomats say this refers to the eleventh-hour demand by the Russians, one of the original JCPOA signatories, to relieve some of its sanctions over the Ukraine invasion in exchange for its support on a renewed deal.
Though the JCPOA has not been killed by these Russian demands, Moscow does have the ability to harm the United States by delaying the agreement at a crucial point of Washington’s vulnerability to high oil prices. It may also have the ability to pull the plug on the agreement as a whole by triggering snap-back sanctions in the UN Security Council or preventing the Joint Commission from adopting the decision to bring the US back into the deal. The snap-back option would of course create a very significant crisis between Tehran and Moscow.
In retrospect, the parties were clearly mistaken in thinking that Russia would continue to compartmentalize the JCPOA talks from its tensions with the West. The Ukraine crisis of 2014 did not undermine the JCPOA negotiations, but it is of course incomparable to the Ukraine crisis of 2022. It remains unclear, however, if the Russian objective is to delay the deal to undermine the West’s efforts to pressure Russia over Ukraine or to completely scuttle the deal.
Though Tehran has been tempered in its statements so far, it must clearly be angered by the Russian maneuvers. But Iran is stuck between two bad choices: Accepting the potential collapse of the deal and continued U.S. sanctions, or seeking a potential agreement with the U.S. outside of the JCPOA. The latter could dangerously increase tensions between Tehran and Moscow while making Iran dependent on the U.S. at a time when GOP officials have made it clear they will kill the JCPOA if they take the White House in 2024.
Hopefully, the deal can still be salvaged. But if it collapses on the goal line because of Russian sabotage, it further underscores the folly of Biden not going back to the deal via Executive Order on the first day of his presidency. No one could have predicted Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine as a factor, but many predicted that it would be unpredictably messy to negotiate a return.
Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
A police officer stands outside the hotel where a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission, or Iran nuclear deal, is held in Vienna, Austria, April 27, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger|A police officer stands outside the hotel where a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission, or Iran nuclear deal, is held in Vienna, Austria, April 27, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
Top image credit: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds a joint press conference with Syria interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Ankara on Febuary 4, 2025 (Turkish presidential press service via EYEPRESS and REUTERS)
Of all powers in the Middle East, none did as much as Iran to help President Bashar al-Assad weather the Syrian civil war.
When Assad’s regime fell in late 2024 to a coalition of rebel groups led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Tehran lost its closest Arab ally, constituting a major crisis and humiliating setback for Iran. The amount of blood and treasure that the Islamic Republic invested in shoring up Assad’s government meant that his overthrow was, as the senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Behrouz Esbati put it, a “very bad defeat” for Iran.
Now, approximately six months into the post-Assad era, Syria and Iran are cautiously re-engaging in limited ways that underscore a pragmatic approach by both Damascus and Tehran.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is intent on strengthening diplomatic and strategic relations with the West, building on his recent fruitful engagements with the U.S. and France. In pursuit of this goal, he is likely to exercise considerable caution in his dealings with Tehran, mindful of the fact that Washington and most European capitals view Iran with deep suspicion and regard the Islamic Republic as a destabilizing force in the Middle East. As such, he will seek to avoid any actions or overtures toward Iran that could jeopardize his efforts to build trust and cooperation with Western powers.
As reported by the National, an Abu Dhabi-based media outlet, on May 20, Iranian officials have acknowledged being in “indirect” communication with Syria’s relatively new government, with Turkey and Qatar acting as intermediaries.
Nevertheless, Tehran has signaled that it is “not in a hurry” to reestablish full diplomatic relations.
Mohammad Sheibani, the Iranian Foreign Ministry's special envoy for Syrian affairs, explained that the Islamic Republic is “watching and waiting” to see how Syria’s situation plays out under Sharaa’s HTS-dominated government. According to the National, Tehran is seeking to find ways to possibly engage Syria’s current government and revive Iranian investments previously made in the Syrian economy.
The Iranian diplomat specified that “appropriate” conditions on political and security grounds would need to take hold prior to direct talks with Sharaa’s government. He voiced his concerns about instability in post-Assad Syria potentially fueling “growth of terrorism and ISIS” — identified by Sheibani as a threat not only to Syria but the entire Middle East. Stability in Syria, he argued, requires “the whole political spectrum” to participate in the country’s political process.
Batu Coşkun, a political analyst at the Sadeq Institute (an independent public policy think tank based in Tripoli, Libya), expects Iran to eventually formalize diplomatic relations with Syria’s post-Ba’ath government.
“Syria is being embraced in the Arab world and Western sanctions are easing,” he told RS. “It’s unthinkable that Iran would not formalize diplomatic ties, particularly as Tehran’s regional rivals, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have emerged as al-Sharaa’s primary interlocutors. Though at the current stage, Iran remains reliant on the current power brokers in Syria, namely Turkey and the Gulf.”
Balancing the US and Iran
The White House’s shifting stance toward post-Assad Syria is an important factor to consider when assessing Damascus’s perspective on engagement with Iran. At least for now, President Donald Trump’s administration is aligning Washington’s Syria foreign policy more closely with Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, as demonstrated by Trump’s recent face-to-face meeting with Sharaa in Riyadh in mid-May and his administration’s lifting of some U.S. sanctions on Syria.
With Sharaa seeking better ties with the U.S. and other Western powers, he will be careful to avoid moves toward Tehran that might undermine his efforts to establish a positive image of his government in the West’s eyes.
“Sharaa seems to be saying all the right things related to the U.S., and how Trump’s national security elite view the region. This can be tied to his comments related to normalizing ties with Israel, and positioning Syria as a country open for business with the West,” said Coşkun. “Likely, Sharaa will retain his distance [from] Tehran as the new Syria’s goal of cultivating strong ties to Western powers eclipses any need for an urgent rapprochement with Tehran.”
“Both Iran and Syria are testing each other’s boundaries and moving towards an informal, pragmatic relation at a time of radical uncertainty, mainly due to the U.S.’s unpredictable strategy in the region,” said Marina Calculli, assistant professor in International Relations at Leiden University, in an RS interview. “Overall, Tehran sees the Syrian government as subjugated to the influence of the United States, and therefore unable to establish its own foreign relations.”
Nonetheless, Sharaa will probably be careful to avoid making too much of an enemy out of Iran. Although Iran and the “Axis of Resistance” are weaker today as a result of the 2023-24 Israel-Hezbollah conflict and Assad’s fall last year, the Islamic Republic maintains substantial clout in Iraq and Lebanon — two countries on Syria’s borders with which Sharaa wants to establish positive relations.
“Iraq is especially important for trade, water and energy and these deals cannot happen without the green light by pro-Iran Iraqi political factions,” Calculli said. “[Sharaa] may think that in a long-term perspective it is unrealistic and unwise to antagonize Iran. It may also be unwise to do so in a short-term perspective, especially at a time in which Iran is trying to conclude a deal with the U.S.”
The Turkish and Qatari bridges
Turkey and Qatar’s desires for a certain “balance” in Syria largely motivate Ankara and Doha to serve as diplomatic bridges between Damascus and Tehran.
On one hand, Ankara and Doha want to prevent Syria from becoming “a zone of Iranian influence,” said Javad Heiran-Nia, the director of the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran (a primarily self-funded NGO that receives a portion of its funding from the Iranian government). But he also explained that, on the other hand, Turkey and Qatar have interests in bringing Tehran to recognize the relatively new Syrian government “to ensure that Iran is not completely sidelined from Syria’s political landscape.”
Furthermore, as Heiran-Nia observed, Iran, Turkey, and the GCC members have some common cause in post-regime change Syria.
“The disintegration of Syria and the resurgence of terrorist groups in the country are shared concerns for Iran and regional states, including Turkey and Qatar. Aside from Israel, no country in the region benefits from Syria’s fragmentation. Thus, Israeli influence in Syria and the occupation of parts of it are also common concerns for Iran, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf Arab states,” he told RS.
Turkey and Qatar seem to be mostly in the same boat when it comes to questions about post-Assad Syria’s foreign policy. Turkey and Qatar were major winners from Syrian regime change, and as key conduits for other nations looking to reestablish ties with the Islamist rebels-turned-rulers in Damascus, Ankara and Doha have played pivotal roles in facilitating Syria’s reintegration into the international community.
These Turkish and Qatari efforts were instrumental in securing the latest round of sanctions relief. In contrast, the lack of any significant Iranian role in these developments reflects a broader shift in regional power dynamics, marking a relative decline in Tehran’s influence alongside the rising prominence of Ankara and Doha, which have vested interests in shaping Sharaa’s perception of regional actors, including Iran, and how Damascus engages with them.
Ultimately, the transformation in Syria’s foreign relations since the collapse of the Ba’ath regime almost six months ago is remarkable. The very states that once stood as Assad’s fiercest regional adversaries in the aftermath of the 2011 uprising — Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia — now appear to be the closest partners of the “New Syria.” In a striking reversal, Iran, once Assad’s most steadfast regional ally, now finds itself reliant on these Sunni powers as intermediaries simply to maintain dialogue with Syria’s post-regime change leadership.
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Top image credit: Inspired by maps via shutterstock.com
Since mid-April, Iran and the United States held numerous rounds of nuclear negotiations that have made measured progress — until Washington abruptly stated that Iran had no right to enrich uranium. Moreover, 200 members of the U.S. Congress sent president Trump a letter opposing any deal that would allow Iran to retain uranium enrichment capability.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called U.S. demands “excessive and outrageous” and “nonsense.” Since the beginning of the Iranian nuclear crisis in 2003, Tehran has drawn a clear red line: the peaceful right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is non-negotiable.
In my 2012 book “The Iranian Nuclear Crisis,” I revealed for the first time that during nuclear talks with the U.S. and other world powers, Khamenei had explicitly told then-chief negotiator Hassan Rouhani that if Iran were to abandon its legal and legitimate right to enrichment, either he must resign or ensure such a decision be made only after the Leader’s death. I disclosed this fact publicly so that Washington would understand: no nuclear deal that denies Iran its enrichment rights is politically or legally viable within Iran.
Eventually, the Obama administration, understanding this reality and favoring diplomacy over war, reached the historic 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA) — the most comprehensive non-proliferation deal ever signed.
The current U.S.-Iran nuclear talks will fail if Washington denies Iran’s rights for enrichment under the NPT. In fact, and somewhat paradoxically, allowing Iran to enrich uranium is not a threat to U.S. national interests — it could be an opportunity.
Balancing power in the Middle East
There is now broad bipartisan consensus in Washington that the United States must refocus its strategic posture away from regional entanglements and toward countering great powers — particularly China. To do so effectively, a new Middle Eastern order must be founded on a concept of “balance of power” rather than “hegemony.”
Any effort to grant regional dominance to regional powers including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, or Iran will only perpetuate the instability of recent decades. The White House’s Middle East strategy must be anchored in a “regional balance,” not unilateral containment.Washington’s double standard — tolerating, if not supporting, Israel’s nuclear arsenal while denying Iran’s NPT-protected right to peaceful enrichment — effectively supports Israel’s strategic supremacy in the region.
Learning from failed wars
A quarter of America's 400 wars have been in the Middle East and Africa. There is also growing bipartisan recognition that U.S. military interventions in the Middle East have failed— costing trillions of dollars, tens of thousands of American lives, and fostering terrorism and instability in the region.
Since the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, every U.S. president has tried to avoid new wars in the region. Obama regretted intervening in Libya and described it as his worst mistake. The recent U.S. war on Yemen has cost $7 billion and ultimately failed. After a month of bombings, President Trump announced an end to offensive operations saying that the Houthis promised not to target American ships. A military confrontation with Iran would far exceed the cost and chaos of Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. Enrichment rights may be controversial — but war would be catastrophic
The logic of nuclear balance
Kenneth Waltz, the father of neorealism in international relations, argued in a 2012 Foreign Affairs essay that a nuclear-armed Iran could bring strategic stability to the Middle East by balancing Israel’s nuclear monopoly. In his view, mutual deterrence reduces the risk of war.
While I disagree with Waltz on proliferation, I agree that Israel’s nuclear monopoly is neither a solution and nor sustainable. Sooner or later, the other powers in the region will inevitably seek nuclear capabilities. The only viable alternative is implementing existing U.N. resolutions that call for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.
Iran's enrichment program — and Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of one — offers the U.S. a unique opportunity: to support a regional nuclear consortium under international supervision in the Persian Gulf and even the Middle East. This would remove the risk of nuclear weapons development while preserving NPT rights.However, such an achievement will only be sustainable if Israel, like all other countries in the Middle East, joins the NPT and renounces its nuclear weapons.
Upholding the NPT and the US-led global order
The post-WWII global order, built around U.S. leadership, has long rested on the NPT’s twin goals: nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. The Middle East’s nuclear future can be governed only by the NPT — nothing else. The decades-long U.S. double standard — tolerating Israel’s nuclear arsenal while denying Iran peaceful enrichment — has undermined global norms and fueled regional instability.
“What angers the Arabs most is the perception they have of a double-standard U.S. policy consisting of two approaches, one for Israel and another for the Arab countries” wrote Mohamed El Mansour, an influential Moroccan historian. Double standards and the inconsistency with international laws and regulations will ultimately threaten U.S. credibility and long-term strategic interests.
Economic stakes
President Trump recently boasted of securing trillions of dollars in trade deals with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. “You know, we took in $5.1 trillion in the last four days from the Middle East,” Trump said. Such agreements require long-term regional stability. A war with Iran would put every U.S. military base in the region within reach of Iranian missiles and drones. The cost of lost deals and military escalation would erase any economic gain and burden American taxpayers for decades.
Breaking the Israel-centric mold
It is no secret that current U.S. positions in nuclear talks are heavily influenced by Israeli policy — not American interests. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has lobbied Washington for a U.S.-led war against Iran during past decades and now, demands the full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program while he knows such a demand non-negotiable for Tehran. Israel is even reportedly considering attacking Iran’s nuclear program while Trump’s negotiations are ongoing.
U.S. Middle East policy has long been aligned with Israeli preferences, but unconditional support has backfired. Today, more than two-thirds of Americans , 69%, prefer a peaceful agreement with Iran and that neither Israel and nor Iran possess nuclear weapons. Over 60% of Americans now believe Israel is playing a negative role in resolving the key challenges facing the Middle East. The International Court of Justice has accused Israel of plausible genocide. Mass protests across the West reflect growing disillusionment. As a result, Israel is one of the world’s most isolated countries. More importantly, Western silence on Israel’s conduct has discredited the very ideals of human rights, women’s rights, and international law that the U.S. once championed.
***
The U.S. cannot afford to repeat old mistakes. Instead of opposing Iran’s legitimate enrichment rights, Washington should leverage them. This is not about appeasement — it is about realism, law, and long-term American interests. A balanced, rules-based approach rooted in the NPT and regional diplomacy is the only sustainable path forward. Moreover, through a fair and mutually face-saving nuclear deal, Washington can open the path to normalize diplomatic relations with Iran based on mutual respect and non-interference, as enshrined in the U.N. Charter.
The veteran neoconservative talk host is repulsed by reports that President Donald Trump might be inching closer to an Iranian nuclear deal, reducing the likelihood of war. In addition to his rants on how this would hurt Israel, Levin has been howling to anyone who will listen that any deal with Iran needs approval from Congress (funny he doesn’t have the same attitude for waging war, only for making peace).
He has been lashing out, too, at conservatives who don't share his fury on the subject. Here on Eric Stakelbeck's newscast:
When the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, it took 45 seconds to blow that city off the face of the earth and 60,000 people with it. And we should have done what we needed to do then that war, given the Battle of Okinawa and how many casualties we had, that's not my point. My point is, can you imagine a death cult, a terrorist regime that says, Death to America with these kinds of weapons, I cannot, so the isolationist, the pacifist, the appeasers, the world has dealt with them before, just because they're so called, self identified influencers, bloggers, podcasters, they don't mean a damn thing to me. The fact is, reality we this generation, is being told by a death cult that they want to eliminate the United States that they're within effectively weeks of having nuclear weapons and for our generation to impose on our children and grandchildren and generations yet born this kind of a threat is a sin.
On Monday, Levin obliquely chastised the Trump administration, fresh from a Middle East trip that did not include Israel, for not giving more deference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “(He) is the elected prime minister of the sovereign nation of Israel, unlike the assorted dictators and terrorists who run the countries surrounding Israel,” Levin wrote. “He deserves our government’s respect not the treatment of some kind of inferior bureaucrat.”
Libertarian author and podcaster Tom Woods shared Levin’s post, adding, “Levin is getting very impatient with Trump. This is interesting to watch.”
“He's trying very hard not to come right out and condemn Trump,” Woods added, “and it's making him crazy.”
In March, a poll showed that 70 percent of Israelis wanted Netanyahu to resign. Another poll found that a majority of Americans, including 64% of Republicans, prefer an Iran deal over war.
Apparently, American citizen Levin has more reverence for Israel’s leader than most of Netanyahu’s countrymen do. He wants war more than his fellow Americans too. Weird.
It’s not just Mark Levin who is frustrated. Ben Shapiro is probably the most high profile contemporary neocon critical of Trump’s diplomacy, who says things like, “actually, the world is making clear that it is happy to reward terrorism. If Hamas were a conventional army (a la Russia), Israel would be able to do whatever it wanted with U.S. approval. Hamas is an evil terrorist group, so it must be rewarded and Palestinians given a state.”
In no world does Shapiro consider what is being done to innocent civilians, women and children, in Gaza “terrorism.”
There are also Bush-era hawks like Pamela Geller and Frank Gaffney who are still kicking around and predictably aching to blow up the Middle East as opposed to finding solutions. There are others.
But if you look at the reactions to Levin or any of these other figures’ pitches for war on social media, you will find as many if not more of their own audience, as well as other MAGA-aligned conservatives, disagreeing with them, or even mocking them.
To be clear, I’m not talking about neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, Max Boot or Jennifer Rubin, all Never Trumpers with far more affinity for Democrats than the GOP these days. I’m strictly talking about pro-war conservative voices who still consider their audiences and Trump’s one and the same.
They are increasingly not the same. What’s worse for neoconservatives is there is an ever-growing army of antiwar MAGA influencers that now outshine and overshadow the old guard. These would include ultra-popular personalities like Tucker Carlson who drew a hard line in the sand just a month ago upon suggestions that the U.S. should strike Iran.
“We’d lose the war that follows. Nothing would be more destructive to our country. And yet we’re closer than ever, thanks to unrelenting pressure from neocons,” he said. “This is suicidal. Anyone advocating for conflict with Iran is not an ally of the United States, but an enemy.”
None of them pull punches in their ‘America First’ foreign policy messaging to their millions of followers.
Libertarian comedian Dave Smith called out what he considers Shapiro’s “hypocrisy” during his interview with Tucker Carlson this month. "Ben Shapiro built a career opposing identity politics as a proud Zionist," he said. "You're out here saying 'facts don't care about your feelings', 'identity politics is wrong', and then while you're saying that, your number one priority is manifestation of identity politics.”
Ouch.
Then there are the MAGA-adjacent influencers, MAGA friendly when the moment calls for it but who are not exactly full bore Trumpians. Former Bernie Bro Joe Rogan is the most popular podcaster on earth and fits this category, as do libertarians like the aforementioned Smith and Woods. Comedian and podcaster Theo Von has a massive audience and has strongly condemned the slaughter in Gaza, after joining Team Trump in their recent trip to Qatar. Civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald is as thoroughly antiwar as ever and probably has a larger rightwing base among his audience today more than at any other time.
These are influencers who are setting the tone for what the right now broadly thinks an “America First” foreign policy should look like, and it is the opposite vision of the shrinking number of neoconservative-friendly voices.
The average tuned-in Trump voter simply doesn’t appear to be buying what the hawks are still hawking. Neocons want war. They have wanted war with Iran in particular for the entire 21st century. They still do. Badly.
As Trump’s MAGA movement continues to define the American right more than any other faction within it, neoconservative influencers, long accustomed to establishing narratives among conservatives, are seeing their relevance diminished.
In the past they could rile up their audiences with fears about Sharia Law taking over America, the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the Obama administration, or any of the other sensationalist tricks they used to gin up conservative support for the U.S.’s next foreign policy mistake. That’s simply not where the right is anymore.
President Trump and his non-interventionist rhetoric has had the most to do with this change. But so have the broadening collection of antiwar voices mentioned here, who are there to echo and affirm when the president, or Vice President JD Vance, or special envoy Steve Witkoff, or Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has something positive to say about realism and restraint, and critical of the neocons.
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