Trump's rush to end Iran War risks delivering weak nuclear deal

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has repeatedly said his war against Iran is intended to prevent Tehran from ever getting a nuclear weapon. But when it comes to core nuclear issues, he risks ending up with a worse deal than the one he abandoned in his first term.

With talks on hold amid a tentative ceasefire, the Trump administration is eager to find an alternative to restarting an unpopular war that has roiled markets and drawn criticism from allies, according to people familiar with the administration's thinking, who asked not to be identified without permission to speak publicly.

Facing growing urgency to reach a deal, the people said they doubt the administration has the time or leverage to insist on the types of complex and detailed monitoring mechanisms embedded in the 2015 Iran deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was negotiated during the Obama administration.

As a result, it's possible Trump's national security team may eventually settle for a nuclear agreement that might appear more ambitious on paper than the JCPOA but is less enforceable in practice than the 2015 accord, which Trump frequently called "the worst deal in history."

The Obama-era deal was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council and verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency, after taking more than two years to negotiate. IAEA inspections are required under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty ratified by Iran, so some level of monitoring is a non-negotiable requirement, unless Tehran leaves that bedrock arms accord.

But the 2015 deal "built in an Iranian commitment to go the extra mile" with enhanced verification, said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"Any new deal should do the same to give the international community extra eyes on the ground to monitor Iran's actions," she said. "This will be the best way to build confidence and make a U.S.-Iran deal more durable."

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the Trump administration has a track record of striking deals that benefit the U.S. "The American people can rest assured that the United States will not enter any agreement that does not put our national security interests first," Kelly said.

Earlier this month, U.S. negotiators started talks in Islamabad seeking a 20-year moratorium on uranium enrichment, according to some of the people familiar with the negotiations.

While Iran initially agreed to only five years, the nation is now indicating a willingness to settle for 10 years, some of the people said. In principle, that's more extensive than the 15-year commitment imposed by the Obama-era deal, which allowed limited enrichment rather than outright prohibiting it.

Yet under the original JCPOA, Iran agreed to submit to monitoring beyond even the strictest measures of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog. That included snap inspections of sites and access to machine workshops producing centrifuges, as well as sophisticated equipment installed in centrifuge cascades that measured enrichment levels in real time.

However, Iran is now openly rejecting some of the strictest requirements of the previous deal, such as handing over uranium stockpiles. The nation has become more sensitive about inspectors, though there's some openness to full IAEA supervision in return for phased sanctions relief, several of the people said.

"Any agreement that doesn't involve the UNSC and IAEA will be weaker simply because it won't be enforceable," said Chris Kennedy, economic statecraft lead at Bloomberg Economics and a former State Department official.

In return for nuclear commitments, the U.S. would lift sanctions, freeing billions of dollars in frozen assets. That trade-off - nuclear pledges for sanctions relief - also mirrors the JCPOA, except with less visibility into Iran's nuclear program.

"At its face, the kind of structure that's being described here of nuclear concessions for access to their money - that is the JCPOA," said Richard Nephew, a former U.S. diplomat involved in the JCPOA negotiations.

In the previous deal, "we had lots of IAEA reporting about what the current status of the nuclear program was. We don't have that now," said Nephew, now at Columbia University.

An added complication is that Iran's nuclear program has advanced significantly since Trump's withdrawal from the previous agreement, and seven years of know-how and enrichment can't be erased. The U.S. also is trying to simultaneously negotiate on Iran's ballistic missile program and its support for proxy groups.

Trump has repeatedly backed down on threats against Iran, most recently replacing a two-week truce he said he wouldn't extend with an open-ended ceasefire. His decisions to back down reflect a lack of appetite for returning to open fighting, said Alex Vatanka, an Iran specialist at the Middle East Institute.

"Going back to war is a lose-lose situation," he said.

(Magdalena Del Valle, Jonathan Tirone, Salma El Wardany, Michelle Jamrisko and Gregory White contributed to this report.)

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This story was originally published April 23, 2026 at 6:23 PM.