Today’s New York Times has a front-page article headlined “As Trump Seeks Iran Deal, Israel Again Raises Possible Strikes on Nuclear Sites.” It was written by a team of the newspaper’s leading foreign affairs analysts, and lays out the evidence that Israel has plans to strike Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites – and who knows what else – whether or not the United States joins in this project. Indeed, the same investigative team reported in April that Israel intended to attack Iran’s nuclear in May, but was “dissuaded” by the Trump team. How dangerous is this, and why is it happening?
The key issue in this standoff – for the US, Israel, and Iran – is whether the intended outcome is to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, or to destroy all Iranian facilities that produce “enriched Uranium,” which is needed for nuclear power, nuclear medicine, and nuclear weapons. The dilemma is that the same process that makes Uranium useful for nuclear power will – if carried further – make Uranium useful for nuclear weapons.
This was the dilemma that led to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970: an attempt to promote nuclear disarmament, prevent non-nuclear states from going nuclear, and allow for all countries (signers of the treaty) to enrich Uranium for energy and medicine. For non-nuclear states with a nuclear energy program, rigid inspections were required to guarantee that Uranium enrichment did not proceed beyond the requirements of nuclear power or medicine. As a signer of the Treaty, Iran has undergone these inspections, as well as additional ones. Both the 2015 Nuclear Agreement and any future agreement would have the same level of inspections. Iran says that it is willing to abide by the rules (once again), but is not willing to give up its right to enrich Uranium.
What is “Nuclear Enrichment”?
Whether you are making a nuclear weapon or nuclear power, a fundamental step is nuclear enrichment. Both weapons and nuclear power use Uranium. Uranium occurs naturally, and is mined and refined. Most Uranium is described as U238 – the number of protons and neutrons in a Uranium atom add up to 238. But there is a variant of Uranium – U235 – that has three fewer neutrons and can be used for weapons and nuclear power. Only 1 out of about 140 Uranium atoms occurring in nature is U235. The process of “enrichment” separates U235 from the Uranium U238.
Enrichment is done by turning Uranium into a gas, and then putting the gas into a series of rapidly spinning centrifuges. Centrifugal force pushes the heavier atoms – U238 – to the outside walls of the cylinder - while the lighter atoms – U235 – remain nearer the center of the spinning cylinder. By running the gas through a series – a cascade – of centrifuges, a higher and higher proportion of the Uranium atoms will become the U235 version. Once the desired level of enrichment is reached, the gas is turned back to a solid and is ready for use.
Again, in “natural” Uranium, the proportion of U235 atoms is less than 1 percent. To make Uranium useful for running nuclear power, the proportion of U235 must be almost 4 percent. To make Uranium useful for medical research and analysis, the proportion of U235 must be about 19 percent. And for a Hiroshima-type nuclear bomb, the proportion of U235 must be above 90 percent.
The Rise and Fall and Perhaps Rise of Negotiations
In 2015, after more than a decade of discussions, disagreement, and finally negotiations, the United States (with some allies) and Iran reached an agreement that allowed Iran to continue its nuclear program with strict safeguards. Throughout this period, the threat of war hovered over the negotiations if Iran did not come to an agreement, while the United States and the United Nations imposed harsh economic sanctions on Iran for its alleged failure to comply with the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 2018, however, the agreement that had been negotiated by the Obama administration was rejected by the Trump administration. While it appeared that Iran was abiding by the terms of the nuclear agreement, including required inspections and limits on the amount of usable uranium that was produced, the Trump administration refused to lift the economic sanctions on Iran, which were crippling Iran’s economy. Trump maintained that he could force Iran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement that was more constricting on Iran’s nuclear program, and that he would use harsh economic sanctions to force Iran to agree to terms.
But new negotiations never took place, nor did they during the Biden administration. In April 2025, the Trump administration announced that they wanted to restart negotiations with Iran in order to make a new, “better,” treaty. Israel’s wars on Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, and a brief missile-exchange between Israel and Iran, served as the background to the US renewed interest in negotiated with Iran. Why did the United States do this? Was this to preempt a possible Israeli attack on Iran, which the US feared would become a regional war into which the United States would be drawn? Or was it perhaps a prelude to war, designed to show that Iran was intent on ultimately making a nuclear weapon and thus refusing to make a reasonable deal with Israel’s ally, the United States?
Similar questions arise in connection with the apparent disagreement between Trump and Netanyahu. Since the end of the Cold War, Israel has regarded that Iran is an existential threat to Israel and all of the Middle East. Trita Parsi (below) and other scholars suggest that Israel’s goal to to renew its importance to the United States, now that the “Soviet threat” was no more. Moreover, Israel has sought to manipulate the United States into a war with Iran, alone or in partnership with Israel. In cooperation with “war hawks” of both US parties, Israel exaggerated or fabricated claims that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapon, and that Iran’s nuclear programs must be destroyed, not merely inspected and safeguarded. (Gareth Porter, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.)
Conclusion
I think we are allowed to speculate that Trump’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, to the extent that the US line remains “No Enrichment” rather than “No Nuclear Weapon,” is intended to result in failure, after which – as Trump has promised – a US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is inevitable. Similarly, I think we are allowed to speculate that the rift on this issue between Trump and Netanyahu is only apparent – a version of “good cop” and “bad cop” – by which Iran is supposed to seek to cooperate with the US on negotiations, fearing that an attack by nuclear-armed Israel is the outcome of not pleasing the USA.
I think this drama will reach its final act within weeks, if not days. Iran has indicated that if the US position is one of Zero Enrichment, a negotiated deal is not possible. Knowing only the public statements of the main actors, with no insight into “back channels” and behind-the-scene goings on, we must expect the worst. But the likelihood that the negotiations include much that is obscure to us, we allowed to hope. In the end, the only certainty is that a war involving a US or US/Israeli attack on Iran will plunge the Middle East into a new chapter of misery and murder. We must pay attention.
FURTHER READING
As Trump Seeks Iran Deal, Israel Again Raises Possible Strikes on Nuclear Sites
By Julian E. Barnes, et al., New York Times [May 28,2025]
---- As the Trump administration tries to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has been threatening to upend the talks by striking Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, according to officials briefed on the situation. The clash over how best to ensure that Iran cannot produce a nuclear weapon has led to at least one tense phone call between President Trump and Mr. Netanyahu and a flurry of meetings in recent days between top administration officials and senior Israeli officials. Mr. Trump said on Sunday that there could be “something good” coming about his effort to limit Iran’s nuclear program in the “next two days.” Others familiar with the negotiations said that at best there would be a declaration of some common principles. The details under discussion remain closely held and would likely only set the stage for further negotiations, starting with whether Iran could continue to enrich uranium at any level, and how it would dilute its stockpiles of near-bomb-grade fuel or ship them out of the country. [Read More]
Witkoff's latest 'zero enrichment' red line has zero chance of working
By Trita Parsi, Responsible Statecraft [May 19, 2025]
[FB – Trita Parsi is the author of several books about the US, Israel, and Iran. His most recent book is Losing and Enemy, about the negotiations that led to the 2015 nuclear deal under President Obama.]
---- Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s hard-charging envoy, is doubling down on “zero enrichment” as the red line in nuclear talks with Iran — a rigid stance that risks sabotaging diplomacy altogether. “We have one very, very clear red line, and that is enrichment. We cannot allow even 1% of an enrichment capability,” Witkoff tells ABC’s “This Week.” “Everything begins… with a deal that does not include enrichment… because enrichment enables weaponization, and we will not allow a bomb to get here,” he added. As I recently argued in The American Conservative, this demand has, for 25 years, proven both futile and counterproductive. It gives Iran more time to advance its nuclear program while stalling the realistic, verification-based deals that could actually constrain it. Unless Trump reverts to his original red line — weaponization — this rare chance to stop both an Iranian bomb and a war could slip away. [Read More]
Beyond Iran: a new nuclear doctrine for the Persian Gulf
By Seyed Hossein Mousavian, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [May 13, 2025]
[FB - Seyed Hossein Mousavian is an Iranian policymaker and scholar who served on Iran's nuclear diplomacy team in negotiations with the EU and International Atomic Energy Agency. He resides in the United States and is a visiting research scholar at Princeton University.]
---- After a letter was exchanged between US President Donald Trump and Iranian Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and since the first talks of April 12, four rounds of indirect and direct bilateral negotiations about Iran’s nuclear program have made progress. Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Trump’s chief negotiator Steve Witkoff are leading the talks.
At this stage of the talks, both sides should have reached a mutual understanding on verification and transparency measures. Iran’s full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) through implementation of the Additional Protocol, the most crucial inspection and verification mechanism, would resolve existing technical ambiguities over the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
In 2018, President Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, lso known as the Iran nuclear deal, after calling it the “worst deal ever.” On Tuesday, during his first trip in the Middle East of his second presidency, Trump said he wants to make a deal with Iran again. President Trump cherishes big, out-of-the-Xbox deals. As he tours the region, Trump should think beyond Iran’s nuclear issue and work to achieve the denuclearization of the entire Middle East. [Read More]
