Israel’s and the US’s historic attack on Iran between June 13 and June 24 set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program by around two years, but the long-term direction of the nuclear standoff will be decided by diplomacy, with the next big meeting between Tehran and the E3 (UK, France, and Germany) set for Friday.
After this summit, the Islamic Republic will have approximately five weeks until the E3 deadline – the end of August – before these countries start the process of “snapping back” the global sanctions against Iran.
While the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal had many holes, one of its positives was the ability it gave any of the E3 countries to activate the global sanctions snapback mechanism with no possibility for Russia or China to veto it.
That ability to snapback sanctions expires on October 18.
Hence, the E3 wants to start the UN’s bureaucratic process several weeks before.
America is out of this round of talks as Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, does not trust it after US President Donald Trump paraded around his accomplishments of “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program.
Also, Khamenei does not want to agree to zero nuclear enrichment, something which his Foreign Ministry and Atomic Energy spokespeople continue to declare as loudly as they can.
What does Iran want with new deal?
So what is Khamenei’s game?
Having been bludgeoned the worst in his 36-year history as Iran’s ayatollah, is he really aching for more Israeli and US airstrikes?
That is a possibility, as Khamenei misjudged how much leverage he had over Israel and the US last month, and as Iranian pride could blind it to what would be its most rational course at this moment.
But there is another alternative; in this latest nuclear dance, there is far more than meets the eye.
The truth is that after Israel’s and the US’s airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear program, the snapback conflict is much less decisive than it once was.
Let’s say that Iran sticks to refusing to make concessions on nuclear enrichment, the E3 then invokes the global sanctions snapback, and in response, Tehran pulls out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The main question would still be: Is Iran, in fact, moving again toward a nuclear program or not? And if it is, is it moving at a pace that could reduce the countdown to a nuclear weapon to under a year or shorter? Or, rather, is its rebuilding happening much more gradually, in a way that puts the danger far off into the future?
So far, a month after the attacks, it appears that Iran is still digging through the substantial rubble left over from the Israeli and American attacks and still does not know where its nuclear program stands, other than embarrassingly admitting serious damage.
If it takes even several months to dig through all the debris, then the nuclear threat remains around two years away.
If, after those several months, Iran starts to rebuild some centrifuges and to enrich some uranium, but does not start rebuilding any of the weapons group activities, then it will still remain at least a year away, according to most estimates. That estimate will not shrink until it begins restoring weapons group activities.
The West may be worried that it is blind regarding Iran’s nuclear program in terms of IAEA inspector coverage, but it has been blind at various levels since 2021, and this did not stop the Mossad and IDF intelligence from accurately targeting dozens of nuclear sites and over a dozen nuclear scientists.
If Israel could carry out that kind of surveillance before, it can do it again.
Khamenei might be just fine with such a situation.
The Islamic Republic would take a hit economically, but its economy is already in very bad shape. And Russia, China, and some others would still find ways to circumvent sanctions to keep Iran afloat.
Back in the 2010-2015 era, when Russia and China supported sanctions in a more real way, they were both angry at Iran for various bilateral insults, and they were also weaker and more dependent on the US and the West than they are today.
So it is possible that diplomacy will fail, both sides will exercise their worst diplomatic threats, and yet Israel and the US may refrain from attacking because Iran could quietly stay away from a nuclear red line, which might force the hands of Jerusalem and Washington again.
Alternatively, right before the August 29 deadline, or right before the real deadline of October 18, Iran may agree to a new historic deal with real restrictions on nuclear enrichment and some kind of face-saving gestures toward it.
In that case, all of the current Iranian statements will be subsequently exposed as posturing to try to get the best deal it can before settling for a deal that avoids global sanctions.
So August 29 could turn out to be the most important turning point of the decades-long nuclear standoff, or it could be an overblown deadline with much less impact than it might have had if Israel’s and the US’s June strikes had not altered the reality that all of the sides are looking at.