'Max pressure' 2.0 on Iran could trigger a nuclear crisis

In less two months the second Trump administration will begin its work and, as with other administrations over the past four decades, one of the most important foreign policy issues it will face will be Iran, its nuclear program, and its relations to the so-called “axis of resistance” that consists of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, armed Shiite groups in Iraq, and the remnants of the Palestinian resistance forces.

The national security team that the president-elect has nominated consists mainly of hardline Iran hawks. Many of them have spoken in the past about the possibility or necessity of bombing Iran to stop its nuclear program, if not to overthrow the regime.

For example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the nominee for secretary of state, and Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), Trump’s choice for national security adviser, have both said that Israel should not be discouraged by Washington from carrying out direct attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and infrastructure. Waltz has also suggested in the past that the U.S. could consider conducting its own attacks on Iran under some circumstances. Back in 2020, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, urged Washington to attack targets in Iran in retaliation for Iran-allied militia strikes on U.S. bases in Iraq.

The pressure on Iran increased significantly on November 21 when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) approved a resolution sponsored by the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and France that condemned Iran for insufficient cooperation with the agency and ordered its director general, Rafael Grossi, to prepare a comprehensive report by next spring on all unresolved issues between Iran and the agency dating back more than two decades.

The move appears intended to lay the foundation for returning Iran’s nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council by next summer, if no breakthrough in the relations between the two sides is forthcoming before then.

Iran reacted relatively mildly to the resolution’s approval, with former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who now serves as Vice President for Strategic Affairs, announcing that Iran will activate some advanced centrifuges that are used for uranium enrichment.

Many observers had expected Iran to take stronger action, such as expelling IAEA inspectors, particularly since its government had only days before offered to halt its production of uranium enriched at 60 percent and impose strict limits on its stockpile, and Grossi himself had reported good progress in his talks with Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian. But Iran’s offer to unilaterally limit its nuclear program was rejected by the three European powers as “inadequate.”

During his presidential campaign, Pezeshkian repeatedly said that, if elected, he would pursue direct negotiations with the West and the United States, a position he has reiterated frequently since his election. In this, he appears to have the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who, after Trump pulled the United States out of the nuclear agreement with Iran — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — in 2018 and ordered the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani’s, Iran’s top military leader, two years later, had rejected any direct negotiations with Washington.

Evidence for Khamenei’s apparent change of heart is the reemergence of Ali Larijani, Iran’s former chief nuclear negotiator who has also served as speaker of Iran’s parliament and as a longstanding adviser to Khamenei, in the political and foreign policy arenas. Iran’s hardliners had previously isolated him, preventing him from running for the presidency and attacking him and his family for alleged corruption.

But since the death last May in a helicopter crash of Pezeshkian’s ultra-conservative predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, Larijani has returned to the public spotlight. In mid-November, he traveled to Lebanon to assess the evolving situation in the war between Israel and Hezbollah and consult with the country’s leaders. He may also have played a role in advising Hezbollah to accept a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal.

In a recent interview, Larijani declared that Iran is ready to enter negotiations with the United States. “It is said that the incoming United States [Trump] administration rejects JCPOA. All right, let’s negotiate a new one,” he said. “The United States says that it accepts Iran’s nuclear program, provided that we do not produce nuclear weapons. All right, let’s negotiate. We will not move toward making the bomb, but you must also accept our conditions.” In fact, negotiations between Iran and the European troika will begin Friday November 29.

Trump’s advisers have spoken about reimposing the “maximum pressure policy” against Iran, which Trump put in place after exiting the JCPOA. Although the Biden administration mostly retained the same policy, and even imposed new sanctions on Iran, there is now talk of a second Trump administration ratcheting up the economic pressure on Iran even more than under his first term.

While the maximum pressure policy of 2018-2021 greatly harmed Iran’s economy and the lives of ordinary Iranian people, it failed spectacularly in forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear program or terminate its support for its allies in the region.

Indeed, Iran waited a full year after Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA in what it called a period of “strategic patience” during which it continued to abide by its obligations under the JCPOA, before it began distancing itself from the agreement, as permitted under the accord’s Article 35. It accelerated its nuclear program by installing new advanced centrifuges, elevating the uranium enrichment level to 60 percent, and reactivating the deeply buried Fordo nuclear facility, which, under the JCPOA, had been converted to a research institution. As a result, it now has about 183 kg of uranium enriched at 60 percent. This implies that under the most favorable conditions, the breakout time for Iran to have enough highly enriched uranium to produce a nuclear bomb has been reduced to less than one month (compared to at least a full year under the limits imposed by the JCPOA in 2015).

If the second Trump administration reverts to its maximum pressure policy or imposes an even harsher version, and if Washington and its European allies push the IAEA Governing Board to refer Iran’s nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council and reimpose multilateral sanctions on Tehran, it is quite possible that Iran may exit Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) altogether, expel the IAEA inspectors, and move towards making a bomb.

Iran’s hardliners have long urged such a course. In a letter to Khamenei in 2022, Saeed Jalili, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, proposed that Iran abandon the JCPOA, enrich uranium at 90 percent— the grade needed for a nuclear bomb — and then, and only then, offer to negotiate directly with the United States.

Calls to abandon the nuclear agreements are no longer limited to hardliners such as Jalili. Kamal Kharrazi, who served as foreign minister under the former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami and as a foreign policy adviser to Khamenei, warned on November 1 that “If an existential threat arises, Iran will modify its nuclear doctrine. We have the capability to build weapons and have no issue in this regard.”

The doctrine to which Kharrazi was referring is based on Khamenei’s fatwa, or religious edict, that banned production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons. Many others across the political spectrum have also expressed reservations about the wisdom of staying in the JCPOA and the NPT if the West increases its pressure on Iran.

For the first time in many years, Iran’s political establishment is ready to directly negotiate with the U.S. regarding its nuclear program and possibly other issues, including the future of the “axis of resistance,” between the two countries. But that same political establishment appears to be moving toward a consensus that if the U.S. and its allies implement a harsher maximum pressure policy, Iran should withdraw from the NPT and accelerate its nuclear program in a direction that the West has long feared.