Get ready for “Maximum Pressure 2.0” on Iran

OCCASIONALLY, THEREJCPOAJCPOAIAEAUNJCPOAIAEAJCPOA are second acts in American diplomacy. During his first term as president, Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear deal agreed on in 2015 by Iran and world powers. He went on to pursue “maximum pressure”, a policy of crippling sanctions meant to compel Iran into a stricter agreement. It was only half successful: though the sanctions battered Iran’s economy, Mr Trump left office without a deal.Now he may get another chance. Many of the sanctions have remained in effect during Joe Biden’s presidency, but American enforcement has flagged: climbed from less than 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2019 to a high of 1.8m bpd earlier this year, almost all of them sold to China. People close to the president-elect are keen to resume the pressure when they take power in January—but such talk has prompted unease in the Middle East, and not only in Iran.Though Mr Trump has been , many of his cabinet nominees support tougher sanctions. Marco Rubio, his pick for secretary of state, opposed the original nuclear deal and criticised Mr Biden for his failure to enforce an oil embargo. Mike Waltz, the incoming national security adviser, wants to “reinstate a diplomatic and economic pressure campaign” against Iran.There may be dissenting voices. Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman tipped to be director of national intelligence, once supported sanctions on Iran but more recently has opposed them. But advocates of fierce embargoes have spent four years making detailed plans for how to implement them and the sceptics have no clear alternative. The new administration will probably go with the ready-made policy.Analysts think that tougher American enforcement could block up to 1m bpd of Iranian exports. That could halve Iran’s oil revenue at a time when its budget deficits are already soaring. What is more, Mr Trump might be able to avoid a big spike in American petrol prices: the International Energy Agency, a global forecaster, predicts an oil-supply glut of more than 1m bpd in 2025. The market could probably absorb the loss of some Iranian crude.Still, the effect might be temporary, since Iran has built a resilient network to defy American sanctions. And so the question is what America wants to achieve through sanctions—which are meant to be a means, not an end. For some hardliners in Washington, the ultimate goal has always been regime change. The Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a hawkish think-tank that has influence in Trumpworld, wants America to encourage labour strikes and regime defections, along with sanctions, to help topple the Islamic Republic.That might be a minority view, but there is broad consensus far beyond the incoming administration that a new nuclear deal is necessary. Even some supporters of the original agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (), think there is no going back to it. The sought to keep Iran’s “breakout time”, the period it would need to produce a bomb’s worth of enriched uranium, to around one year. It limited Iran’s uranium stockpile to 300kg enriched to 3.67% purity.Iran has blown past those limits. The International Atomic Energy Agency (), the ’s nuclear watchdog, estimated in August that Iran had more than 5,750kg of uranium enriched to various levels. That included 165kg at 60% purity, a hair’s breadth from weapons-grade. It has also resumed production of uranium metal, which can be used to make the core of a nuclear bomb. Iran could probably produce a bomb’s worth of enriched uranium in less than two weeks. Reviving the would lengthen that timeframe—but it would still be far less than a year.America could ask for many things in a new agreement. It could insist that Iran dismantle some of its nuclear facilities, particularly those that were used in the past for weapons research. It could require Iran to implement the Additional Protocol, an addendum to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which gives the further inspection powers. Beyond capping enrichment, a new deal could also try to restrict Iran’s missile programme, or to secure pledges that Iran would curtail its military support for groups like Hamas, a Palestinian militia, and Hizbullah, a Lebanese one.The problem, of course, is that diplomats have tried to negotiate some of these provisions in the past. Iran refused. This is where advocates of maximum pressure think Mr Trump is their secret weapon: he could threaten to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails, and he might seem crazy enough that Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, would take him seriously.Mr Khamenei may not, though. After a year of back-and-forth missile attacks between , many conservatives in Iran would be reluctant to negotiate away their nuclear programme. The supreme leader himself may not want to be flexible with the man who in 2020 ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s most feared commander.Instead he could try to call Mr Trump’s bluff. He knows that the incoming president does not want a war with Iran and that some of his allies are keen to disengage from the Middle East in order to focus on China. Rather than a comprehensive agreement, Iran could propose a limited one that simply pulls its nuclear programme back from the threshold. It could offer to get rid of its stockpile of 60% uranium, either by blending it down or shipping it outside the country, and to cap enrichment once again.This would be hard for Mr Trump to defend, a far weaker agreement than the one he abrogated in 2018. But inconsistency never troubles him. He could argue that his predecessor left him a mess. A more limited deal would find some support in Iran too. Hardliners once thought they could muddle along without sanctions relief; that idea seems to have died with Ebrahim Raisi, the conservative president killed in a helicopter crash in May. Masoud Pezeshkian, elected as his replacement in July, is desperate for more trade with the West.Binyamin Netanyahu might be tempted to play spoiler. He opposed the and has dreamed for years that America might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. But he would struggle to sabotage the new administration’s diplomacy. The Israeli prime minister has spent years promoting Mr Trump as Israel’s greatest champion in America; it would be ironic if Mr Trump ended up securing Republican support for a watered-down agreement with Iran.Gulf states, meanwhile, worry that the new president will fail. Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, supported maximum pressure during Mr Trump’s first term; now he talks cheerily about how Saudi Arabia’s relations with Iran are “on the right path”. The Saudis are keen to avoid a repeat of Mr Trump’s first term, when Iran targeted their oilfields. Prince Faisal visited Iran last summer, the first such trip in seven years. There is talk of joint military exercises.The kingdom has also tried to distance itself from Israel. Until the war it was considering normalising relations with the Jewish state. But at a conference in Riyadh earlier this month Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince, condemned Israel not only for its wars in Gaza and Lebanon but also for its recent air strikes on Iran. “Our policy is not based on ideology but on reality,” says another Saudi diplomat. They worry that Mr Trump might want them to cut ties with Iran and have urged the new administration not to shatter their fragile detente. With the Middle East mired in an ever-widening war, no one is in the mood to take risks.