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Hello and welcome to The Rahman Review.
I'm Gideon Rahman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator of the Financial Times.
This week's podcast is about Iran's nuclear program and the threat of another war in the Middle East. My guest is Sanam Vakil, Director of the Middle East Program at Chatham House here in London.
Nuclear talks between the US and Iran began in Amman last weekend and are set to continue soon.
President Trump's repeatedly warned that if the talks fail, military action is the alternative.
So is Iran heading for a new nuclear deal, or for war?
With Iran, yeah, if it requires military, we're going to have military.
I'm sure Israel will obviously be very much involved in that.
He'll be the leader of that, but nobody leads us.
We do what we want to do.
That was of course President Trump with an unambiguous threat towards Iran.
It all sounds very alarming, but talk of a bombing raid on Iran's nuclear program has been around for decades and there have been previous rounds of talks and deals reached and then broken.
So I began my conversation with Sanam Vakil by asking her what's different this time.
Well, 10 years on from the Iran nuclear agreement, the landscape has changed geopolitically, regionally within Iran, and of course, considering Iran's nuclear program.
Looking bottom up, Iran's nuclear program has advanced significantly since the US withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018.
That's the one known as the JCPOA.
Yes. Yes, that's right.
And Iran took to advancing its program to pressure the international community to come back to the negotiating table.
There were efforts at renegotiating under the Biden administration that didn't result in any new arrangement.
But basically, Iran has increased enrichment, increased its centrifuge production, and it closer today to a nuclear weapon or is seen by experts as a threshold state.
Regionally, since October 7th, the landscape has very much changed.
Israel has taken a very direct military approach to set back the axis of resistance.
Iran backed proxies in the region and has certainly weakened Hamas and Hezbollah, and Assad's defeat in Syria has damaged Iran's defense posture across the region.
There have also been direct strikes between Israel and Iran in 2024 and so Iran certainly is backfooted.
And then, more broadly, there is the geopolitical angle to consider.
Iran has become closer to China and Russia.
Europe has been trying to save the Iran nuclear agreement but is increasingly frustrated by Iran's nuclear activities, support for Russia in the war in Ukraine, but also for Iran's detainment of European nationals and dual nationals as well.
So in this climate, we have an advanced nuclear program, a threat of a military campaign against Iran, but also an opportunity between Tehran and Washington in a very short time period to bridge these tensions and arrive at a potential new nuclear agreement.
unclear if it's going to be bigger or better.
So you said in a very short time period.
Why is that? Because people are saying they've got to do this in months.
Normally, these negotiations can go on for literally years.
The time sensitivity is connected to the original Iran nuclear agreement that had sunset clauses or expiration dates and one of the expiration dates, even though the agreement is basically non -operational, is October 18th of this year.
where European countries that were signatories—Germany, France, and the U .K.—have said that if there is no new arrangement, they will impose snapback sanctions against Iran.
And that would lead to more multilateral alignment between Europe and the United States and potentially take Iran's file to the U .N. Security Council again.
And so we are racing against that clock, and that clock is actually not really October 2025 but somewhere this summer, because that process needs reportedly 90 days to start, and they've suggested that this process needs to begin by July.
So that's the clock we're racing against. And we're also racing against, as you say, the clock of a potential war.
And I was interested in the way you put it I mean, the Israelis are very open now that they would like to attack Iran, yeah?
Yes, they are. They see Iran as set back.
They have hit Iran twice in 2024 in April and in October, and the October strike targeted Iran's air defenses.
So they really see this as a historic, once in a generation opportunity to strike Iran's nuclear facilities and try and extend the sunsets, if you will, by taking out as much of Iran's capabilities as possible.
By doing that, though, of course, there are some very clear risks.
First of all, over the past year, as Iran has seen the axis of resistance and its defense posture collapse, it has begun to openly discuss the possibility of weaponizing its nuclear program.
This could very much be about pressure and leverage building as well, but that open discussion is certainly alarming.
Secondly, of course, Israel could and has shown that it can hit Iran and come home, but obviously the bigger risk is what happens the day after and this isn't going to be a one and done type strike.
It would be multiple strikes that would be needed, and that wouldn't really eradicate Iranian know -how, the knowledge that Iran has built cannot be eliminated.
And thirdly, I think the important risk to bear out is that it isn't necessarily going to collapse the program but could actually spill over into a broader regional war where Iran has very clearly threatened to attack infrastructure around the region, if not US bases, U .S. personnel, and that could just lead to a conflict that would be devastating not just for Iranians but for a region that has seen so much conflict over the past 18 months.
There is an expectation or a hope that a weakened Iran and strikes on Iran would lead to the final collapse of the weakened Islamic Republic, and I think that that is a misinterpretation of the regime in Tehran, its institutions, and also the intent of the people to uprise, this could have a blowback and build back legitimacy for the Islamic Republic, maybe not in a meaningful way, but Iranians are very nationalistic and it's important to not underestimate the power of that nationalism under a military strike.
And how do you think Trump is approaching this?
because on the one hand, he likes to portray himself as a tough guy but also as a peacemaker.
He's also very pro -Israel, but Israel at the moment is pushing for war, and he is pushing for negotiations.
I mean, he's so unpredictable.
But how do we see him handling this?
What would the Americans actually want?
I think the president is trying to compartmentalize the very active and dangerous Middle East files.
He clearly has seen Prime Minister Netanyahu twice and the White House on both occasions it appears that he's given Netanyahu a very long runway to get the job done in Gaza.
But I think in tandem to that, President Trump has tried to segregate the Iran file and take it away from Netanyahu effectively.
President Trump signed an executive order on February 4th imposing maximum pressure sanctions against Iran, but at the same time said very clearly that he would prefer to a deal and he'd prefer to resolve tensions with Iran in a peaceful way, which clearly goes against what policymakers and what the Prime Minister in Israel is pushing for.
Yeah. And we saw during the Biden administration that at times the Israelis were quite prepared to ignore what the White House was saying.
I mean, most obviously, they attacked Lebanon when the White House, as far as we know, was saying, don't do this.
Do you think they would defy Trump in the same way they defied Biden?
As of right now it appears Netanyahu has a free reign of action on and around its borders, but not beyond that, and I think the prime minister and the US president don't seem to have as close relations as let's say the Israelis would like to, and so he, I think, will be quite careful in pushing for a military attack, but he also has to be quite careful in not spoiling the negotiations, and that's something we have to watch out for in the coming months, should negotiations continue and gain momentum.
Because the negotiations are being handled by the extremely busy Steve Witkoff, who is also simultaneously trying to negotiate an end to the Russian -Ukraine war and I think has been involved with Gaza as well, so what do we know of Witkoff's approach to Iran?
When we say a deal, as I understand it, you could either be talking about like dismantling the Iranian nuclear program, or you could be talking about sort of mothballing it?
Where do you think he stands on that?
Well, I think that's what the Iranians were trying to get a sense of in these last meetings that were held just last weekend in Oman.
And I think they came away understanding that the dismantling, or what is known as the Libya model, which is what Israel is pushing for, is not what the U .S. is really seeking, but in fact, is looking to blend down, scale down Iran's nuclear program, and perhaps extend the sunsets or timelines of the nuclear deal and create a sort of similar deal to the JCPOA with some add ons perhaps.
Which is the one that Trump said was a terrible deal that he ripped up.
Exactly. Yeah. But in a way, they're in a worse position than that the time that negotiated the JCPOA because Iran is very close to obama, isn't it?
I mean, if they would really have to scale it back quite a lot, because from what I read, they could, is it weeks or months?
Well, there are certain debates about weeks or months, but Iran is a threshold state.
It has the capabilities.
It has the know -how.
It would take a number of weeks, at which I think the intelligence community would be aware of what Iran was trying to do.
It's important to note that the National Intelligence Council and Tulsi Galber, Trump's appointee, has recently said that Iran has not yet decided to weaponize its program.
So the focus is about taking back Iran's program and preventing weaponization.
And that would require this new agreement to limit Iran's enrichment activities, blend down its stockpile, and set up a new inspections regime that was previously handled by the IAEA.
could perhaps continue that oversight.
And Rafael Grossi is actually going to Tehran this week, perhaps to kickstart that process.
So it sounds like the Americans are adopting almost quite a conventional approach for Trump.
For now, it appears so.
Now, last week in Muscat, the discussions were very high level.
They didn't get into the details.
So, what we're going to see in the talks this weekend and perhaps in the weeks ahead would be simultaneous working groups that are put together to look at how to scale down Iran's nuclear program in a timely manner, while looking at how sanctions relief can be granted.
The JCPOA, while it did constrain Iran's nuclear program, and there are important points here One, on the first page of the JCPOA, Iran did commit to never pursuing a nuclear weapon.
But two, the agreement was repeatedly verified by the IAEA 14 times actually to confirm Iran's verification.
But what Iran was not happy about with the JCPOA is that it wasn't obtaining the so -called sanctions relief that it was seeking because there were so many additional sanctions on Iran that we're preventing Western businesses from coming back into the country.
So the sanctions framework that is developed also requires a lot of work and Iran is going to be looking for perpetual sanctions guarantees if it restrains its nuclear program in a meaningful way.
I wouldn't think you'd get anything perpetual from Donald Trump.
He seems to change his mind every week.
You would think so, I think that the Iranians are looking at this situation and assessing that perhaps, Donald Trump has the capability to muscle Congress to support sanctions relief for Iran and this could be from Tehran's perspective, an equal opportunity to extract as many economic benefits as possible knowing full well that it might not be a sustainable deal.
Yeah, I mean give me a sense of how the Iranians are approaching this.
I mean you say they have a realistic hope of some kind of sanctions relief.
We also discussed this Israeli perception that the Iranians are in a weaker position than they've been for a very long time with their proxies, you know, taken out to some extent and having been attacked.
So are they approaching this in the state of anxiety, that they've got months to stave off an attack, or do they see this as an opportunity?
How do you think they're thinking of this?
I think this is both an opportunity and of course a serious challenge, but Iran has been preparing for these negotiations much earlier.
It's important to remember that last year, Iran held snap presidential elections after its previous president mysteriously died in a helicopter accident.
The new president, Massoud Pezeshkyan, is relatively moderate and came into office promising sanctions relief.
relief, and sanctions relief can only really come to Iranians if there is a broader negotiation.
So the system in Iran was relatively aligned in this way.
And I think over the past months, although rhetoric has become heated and Iran's supreme leader also got involved and said there should be no direct negotiations with Washington, they're aware that without negotiations, of course, there will be mountains of further sanctions and oversight preventing Iran from exporting oil, and they've been able to continue to do so.
And at the same time, the military strikes very much loom.
And that, of course, is not in their interest in tandem to thinking about the domestic climate where the economic impact of sanctions has really transferred to increasing levels of poverty, high degrees of inflation, massive depreciation of their currency.
Ultimately, of course, they have seen rounds of very serious protests inside the country.
It's a triple threat, if you will, and so negotiations stave that off, and perhaps buy them the economic relief and time to build back economic resilience and popular legitimacy if that's even imaginable.
You said that obviously they're very scared of international isolation, but there was all this discussion, mainly actually before Trump came back to power, but from the Biden team of this idea of an axis of adversaries of where Iran was working quite closely with Russia, with China, with North Korea.
How real was that? Or is it?
Well, it's not just Washington that talks about the axis of adversaries or upheaval many countries do, including here in the UK.
I think these countries have long had relationships, but they're not operating as an axis.
There are certain economic opportunities and there's a necessity of isolation and sanctions that has led to increased cooperation, particularly between Iran and Russia, for example, since the war in Ukraine.
There have been longstanding military contacts and engagement, but this has yet to really become a united adversarial axis.
And the more that we talk about them as an axis, I think there is greater impetus and opportunity for them to become something that they are not yet.
But has, over the course of the Russia -Ukraine War, Iran worked quite closely with the Russians and perhaps with the Chinese on oil and other things?
Well, the Chinese have been certainly purchasing Iranian oil and helping Iran survive sanctions selling up to 1 .5 million barrels a day and Iran has built a shadow supply chain to circumvent sanctions and it's also helped the Russians do so.
Iran has signed a treaty with the Russians just recently to increase economic and military cooperation, but there are equally frustrations on the Iranian side where Iran would have like to see greater Chinese investment inside the country.
And the Chinese have been quite compliant with international sanctions.
And on the Russian side, there is a longstanding debate, if not suspicion, inside Iran as to Russia's intentions.
But it's important to note that the Iranian foreign minister is traveling to Russia this Friday and will be, of course, conferring with the Russians that are simultaneously having negotiations with Steve Witkoff.
Yeah. And we talked a bit about Israel and the Israel -US discussions on Iran, but Trump also has very close relations with the Gulf states with Saudi Arabia.
And I think he's going there quite soon.
So, what will they be saying and what are their interests?
Well, you know, the landscape in the Middle East has very much changed since the last Trump administration.
The regional states are all dealing with Iran in a direct way, Iran and Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic ties in March of 2023.
The UAE and Iran have also increased their relations, so it just shows you the landscape has changed.
Countries in the region want to directly deal with Iran rather than rely on the United States to manage security dynamics in the Middle East. But Iran has certainly threatened the Gulf States and made clear to them that if Iran is attacked or if Gulf States support or participate in an attack on Iran, that they will be in Iran's line of immediate fire.
And at the same time, Gulf States very much worry that an attack will not just lead to Iranian counter response but a broader spillover similar to what we saw in the 2003 Iraq war.
So they are working front channels and back channels and very supportive of this dialogue because they think obviously a de escalation between Iran and Washington will also cool down tensions across the region.
So the US is basically hearing completely opposite things from its two closest partners in the region.
Absolutely. And that also includes the Qataris and the Omanis as well as the Kuwaitis.
So I think we are seeing a very different Middle East and Turkey also has made it quite clear that it isn't going to stand by and support a strike, even though tensions between Iran and Turkey have also increased recently, particularly in Syria and over differences in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
they're not going to support what they would see a violation of Iranian sovereignty.
Yeah. And even my understanding of the dynamics within the Trump administration, I would think there's a considerable group within camp Trump, if I could call it that, who would regard an attack on Iran as precisely the opposite of what they're trying to do and forever wars and involvement in the Middle East. Inside the administration, although there is greater unity and loyalty to President Trump this time around, there is still a group of hawks that have neocons sort of views and see an opportunity in striking Iran and support Israel's agenda.
But many people around the president see the geopolitical tensions with Russia and China being most important and that the Middle East is a landscape of conflict that just drags the United States in and bogs the United States down.
So to finish, I mean, we were just chatting before we got going about how, I mean, you much more than me because this is your specialist subject, but for 20 years, this Iran nuclear dossier has been one of the things that, you know, every time I go to a meeting where people talk about the five big issues, it was one of them and it still is.
Do you think we're any closer to resolution, or will we be still having this conversation in five, 10 years time?
Well I think 2025 was always going to be a year of the Iran crisis because of the timelines and sunsets of the Iran nuclear agreement expiring, and it was inevitable that the international community would look to put further restraints on Iran.
But I do think that we are in a weird moment of convergence where Europe, most countries in the region—Russia, China, and the United States—are supportive of a new nuclear agreement and can perhaps leverage the changing geopolitical landscape of the Middle East in order to build a more sustainable deal.
And that, I think, would be beneficial to cool down regional tensions.
More broadly, I think ordinary Iranians need to be given an opportunity to have a breathing space economically.
And with that breathing space, of course, they'll perhaps be able to play a more vocal role in the politics and the future of Iran.
It's a different way of thinking about agency and accountability.
But I think, you know, should we be thinking about the transformation that will come in Iran, as its aging leadership, eventually retire, that agency and accountability has to come from within.
That was Sanam Vakil of Chatham House, ending this edition of the Rachman Review.
Thank you, thanks for listening, and please join me again next week.
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