US policy toward the regime is: nuclear surrender or else - The Jewish Chronicle

Within weeks of taking office, President Trump has dramatically reversed a decade of Iran policy under his democratic predecessors. The president made it clear that, like Presidents Biden and Obama before him, he prefers negotiations to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But unlike his predecessors, and unlike his inclination during his first term, what he has in mind is military force, not sanctions, if Tehran does not quickly agree to negotiate what are essentially terms of surrender.

Trump has redefined US goals, reversing previous American policy. Having withdrawn from the nuclear deal in 2018, Trump now wants a full dismantlement of Iran’s programme, including uranium enrichment and missiles, not just a better nuclear deal. Trump has thus completely repudiated the Obama-era US Iran policy. The Iran nuclear deal concluded in 2015 by the Obama administration allowed Iran to keep its nuclear industrial complex, including enrichment and said nothing about Iran’s missile programme. Trump has now given the regime a two-month ultimatum (which Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has already rejected) to give it all up before it faces military consequences.

To be sure, US intelligence believes that despite Iran’s serious violations of the nuclear deal and stockpiling enough highly enriched uranium to quickly weaponise it for several nuclear bombs, Iran has not embarked on weaponisation yet. The recently published, unclassified Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community states that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. That’s good, if true. The same Threat Assessment, however, also notes that there is pressure on Iran’s Supreme Leader to change his mind.

Israel penetrated Iranian air space twice in 2024, exposing Tehran’s vulnerabilities and destroying much of its air defences in the process. To make matters worse for Tehran, it lost Syria. Hezbollah is in tatters and so is Hamas. The Trump administration is pounding Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen.

Given its current weakness, Iran, which continues to defy the international community by stockpiling ever larger quantities of highly enriched uranium, could accelerate its preparations and seek to restore its deterrence by testing a nuclear weapon. It would not take long and it would make sense, from Iran’s standpoint, to do so sooner rather than later to deter military strikes from the US, Israel or both. Tehran has the know-how and the industrial infrastructure to build it – we know that from the nuclear archive Israel stole in Tehran in 2018 – and it has the delivery means – its vast long-range missile arsenal. Time is running out.

Trump is therefore not merely posturing when he says Iran has two months to agree to direct negotiations about fully dismantling their programme. The president is getting ready to unleash America’s military might on Iran’s nuclear sites. The US is already engaged in target practice against the Houthis to neutralise their chokehold on international maritime traffic through the Red Sea, one of the busiest commercial waterways in the world. Meanwhile, its air force has deployed strategic bombers and other critical military assets in Diego Garcia, a likely staging ground for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. War could be coming soon – unless Iran blinks or tests first.

If it blinks and surrenders its nuclear enrichment facilities, weaponisation programme and long-range missiles, the regime might not survive the humiliation: the country is beset by protests and widespread discontent, and it is heading into summer with an unprecedented water crisis at hand, the result of years of mismanagement. A show of weakness vis-à-vis its international foes, coupled with domestic unrest, could unsettle the ayatollahs and their Praetorian guard, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. If it tests, the Middle East would be convulsed by a nuclear arms race, while Iran’s nuclear umbrella would give its proxies the needed breathing space to rearm and regroup. It’s a recipe for conflict, the likes of which we have not seen yet in the region.

The Trump administration is not going to wait and see whether Iran tests. As Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said in a recent interview: “If they had nuclear weapons, the entire Middle East would explode in an arms race. And that is completely unacceptable for our national security.” The Trump White House means it. A war against Iran may come sooner than expected.

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior adviser with 240 Analytics, a risks analysis platform focused on mapping terrorist and terror finance networks