Skip to main content
Thursday, November 12, 2026Nov 12
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Opinion: A new Iran deal leaves us meeker and weaker

AP file photo by Vahid Salemi of The Associated Press / International Atomic Energy Organization, IAEA, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, left, speaks with Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami during their meeting in Tehran on March 5, 2022. As the war in Ukraine rages on, diplomats trying to salvage the languishing 2015 Iran nuclear deal have been forging ahead with negotiations.
AP file photo by Vahid Salemi of The Associated Press / International Atomic Energy Organization, IAEA, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, left, speaks with Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami during their meeting in Tehran on March 5, 2022. As the war in Ukraine rages on, diplomats trying to salvage the languishing 2015 Iran nuclear deal have been forging ahead with negotiations. AP file photo by Vahid Salemi of The Associated Press / International Atomic Energy Organization, IAEA, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, left, speaks with Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami during their meeting in Tehran on March 5, 2022. As the war in Ukraine rages on, diplomats trying to salvage the languishing 2015 Iran nuclear deal have been forging ahead with negotiations.

By Bret Stephens / The New York Times 4 min read

What does President Joe Biden think he will get out of a new nuclear deal with Iran?

A year ago, the answer seemed reasonably clear to the administration: Tehran had responded to Donald Trump’s decision to walk away from the original 2015 deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA – by enriching uranium to ever-higher levels of purity, bringing it increasingly close to a nuclear bomb or at least the capability to build one quickly. Barring a new deal that put limits on enrichment, Iran seemed destined to cross the nuclear finish line sooner rather than later. Hence the urgency of a deal.

But today we live in a different world. It’s a world in which Russia and China – parties to both the JCPOA and the current negotiations – are definitely not our well-wishers, and a world in which Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates wouldn’t answer Joe Biden’s phone calls in the midst of the greatest geopolitical crisis of the 21st century.

Asked earlier this month whether Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would affect the nuclear negotiations, Antony Blinken was definitive: “These things are totally different and are just, are not, in any way, linked together,” the secretary of state told Margaret Brennan of CBS.

But they are linked together, in ways large and small, tactical and strategic. The United States isn’t even negotiating directly with Tehran but is instead relying on its intermediaries.