Iran’s alarming nuclear dash will soon test Donald Trump

“It would reallyiaeaunjcpoaiaeajcpoa be nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step,” declared Donald Trump on January 23rd, speaking with the insouciance of a man complaining to a waiter about his meal. In fact Mr Trump was referring to Iran’s nuclear programme. The “further step” was an Israel strike. And whether it can be “worked out” is perhaps the biggest question in the president’s .The past year was painful for Iran. Its president . It was twice hit by Israeli missiles, which its best air defence and missile facilities. And three of its regional allies—Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza—have crumbled. Its nuclear programme is a rare area where Iran might claim to retain the initiative.Late last year Iran was producing around 7kg of uranium enriched to 60%—a stone’s throw from weapon’s grade—each month, enough to make around two nuclear bombs per year if enriched further. Now it is installing more advanced centrifuges, and feeding some with uranium already enriched to higher levels. “The capacity is increasing by a factor of seven,” Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (), a watchdog, told . There is no plausible civilian use for all this.Iran suspended its formal nuclear weapons programme in 2003, but continued to pursue weapons-related work. The killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear physicist, by a satellite-controlled gun in 2020, almost certainly by Israel, has left a vacuum. No one person co-ordinates weapons-related activity. An Israeli source says that “there are now at least five or six Fakhrizadehs and they’re much harder to get at”. Some units in Iran’s programme are thought to be conducting research without telling policymakers. Iran is not believed to have any secret enrichment sites other than Natanz and Fordow. But there are worries it is hoarding undeclared centrifuges to use later.Many in Israel would like to strike Iran’s nuclear sites to prevent it from getting a bomb. But Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister who once advocated such action, and other former Israeli politicians argue that Iran’s programme is now too advanced and deeply buried to take out. “Practically speaking, you cannot easily delay them in any significant manner,” he conceded in October. Other Israeli officials, buoyed by the success of their strikes last year, insist that they could still do serious damage—if America helps provides the necessary bunker-busting bombs, as well as intelligence.Mr Trump is not convinced. “They can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he insisted recently, “they are religious zealots”. But his early moves suggest he is not keen on an immediate scrap. Within hours of taking office, Mr Trump fired Brian Hook, a hawkish official who was Iran envoy in Mr Trump’s first term. He then withdrew security protection from Mr Hook and Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state. Both were targets of Iranian assassination threats because of Mr Trump’s decision to kill Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general, in 2020.Many of Mr Trump’s early appointees are also fiercely opposed to American entanglement in the Middle East. Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s new policy chief, wants the country to focus on Asia. Hawks are also alarmed by chatter that Mr Trump might appoint Steve Witkoff, a real-estate investor who serves as Middle East envoy, as envoy to Iran, too.Mr Trump’s preference is to resume “maximum pressure” on Iran by adding to and enforcing sanctions. The question is to what end. The president will have to decide how far he wants to roll back Iran’s programme, and whether to demand constraints that go beyond those of the , a nuclear deal which he left, and essentially killed, in 2018. Mr Grossi is confident that the could design a system for “checking on” Iran’s various pathways to a bomb, though he warns that the agency is now “pretty much in the dark” on Iran’s procurement of components for centrifuges. Mr Trump will also have to decide whether he wants to focus on nuclear issues alone or also cover regional ones, such as Iran’s support for armed groups.For their part, Iran’s leaders are in a quandary. The loss of their missile stockpiles, air defences and regional allies means that the nuclear option is more attractive. But that same trio of factors means that they are in a poor position to weather the fallout if they are caught in the process of dashing for a bomb. Israeli spies have demonstrated a remarkable degree of penetration of Iran over the past year.Mr Grossi, who visited Iran in November, says that he saw in Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, “a desire to engage with us more constructively and comprehensively”. Mr Pezeshkian is a weak president who has little say on nuclear policy. But even those with real decision-making power have reason to cut a deal. Iran’s leaders fear Mr Trump’s impetuosity. They are also in dire economic straits. “Iran is likely to choose negotiations for now,” says Raz Zimmt, an Iran-watcher at Tel Aviv University. Even so, he is unsure whether the gap between Mr Trump and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, can be bridged. “They will try and string [Mr Trump] along in negotiations,” says an Israeli intelligence official.That may only work up to a point. “We are working against a very tight timeline,” acknowledges Mr Grossi. Under the , Britain, France and Germany—the three remaining Western members of the pact—can vote to re-impose the full panoply of pre-2015 sanctions on Iran, a move they threatened in December. If they do not do so by October, they lose that ability. Iran has said it might pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in response. There is no consensus between London, Paris or Berlin right now. The timetable could also shorten if Israel believes that Iran is making a clandestine dash for a bomb. Like Iran, America’s allies are waiting to see how Mr Trump will approach talks. “Iran will hopefully make a deal,” said the president on January 23rd. “And if they don’t make a deal that’s okay too.”