This sums up the position between President Trump's negotiation team and Iran. It is whether the US risks allowing Iran to continue producing nuclear fuel if the alternative is no trade and there is a possibility of another war in the Middle East.
For Trump and his envoy, Steve Witkov, negotiations with Iran are a new experience, and the claim that he will never give up his ability to enrich uranium in Iranian soil threatens to threaten an agreement that the president, confidently predicted a few weeks ago, predicted to be out of reach.
But what President Barack Obama faced a decade ago is roughly the same troubling dilemma. Reluctantly, Obama and his aides concluded that the only path to the Accord was to allow Iran to continue producing small amounts of nuclear fuel, spin the nuclear centrifuge, and that scientists were at work.
The deal – an agreement in which all Republicans in Congress voted against along with some Democrats – contained Iran's ambitions for three years before Trump escaped from it. Iran was in compliance with the terms of the agreement.
Trump is now essentially facing the same choices he faced with his first predecessor. And like Obama, he faces opposition from the US Iranian Hawks and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Over the past few months, Netanyahu has been calling for a preemptive attack on Iran's nuclear site.
“There's a bit of deja vu here,” said Wendy Sherman, the key negotiator of the 2015 agreement for the Obama administration. “Obviously there are US senators, members of Congress and Israeli officials who advocate for a complete demolition of Iranian facilities and zero enrichment. We faced the same challenges.”
She said Witkov is very hoping for him, saying that he recently said it is important in negotiations in Iran that it is important for everyone to figure out what they're looking for and make them feel like they've got something, like in real estate deals in New York.
“He has a tough job,” Sherman said. He later served as Secretary of State.
But an Iranian official said, “It's very clear that we need to enrich not just small amounts, but also small amounts. She noted that Trump has access to some of the tools Obama didn't.
Trump appeared to have admitted on Monday that the negotiations had made a challenging shift. “They just want things you can't,” Trump said Monday. “They don't want to give up on things they have to give up. You know what it is. They want enrichment.”
Iran says it has not officially responded to Trump and Witkov. Under his proposal, Iran will be allowed to continue enriching at low levels over the years until a consortium is formed to provide nuclear fuel to power plants around the Middle East.
The consortium's fuel production takes place somewhere in the region. Under the US proposal, production was not carried out on Iranian territory. For years, other proposals have floated to move production to islands in the Persian Gulf, where facilities can be built on the ground and more easily monitored or destroyed.
It must have taken years to get the consortium to work, so Witkoff considered the proposal an elegant way for everyone to declare victory. Iran could say it would have become richer in the near future. Trump could argue that he got what Obama didn't.
So far, it hasn't worked. Iranian officials say they are embracing the idea of ​​the consortium as long as they are in Iranian soil.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has dismissed the idea as a Western ploy to drive Tehran out of its nuclear fuel business. But both Witkov and Iranian negotiators understand the risks of disrupting negotiations. Netanyahu may take away the failure to update its military campaign.
Neither wants to put the war at risk, so both sides avoid declaring that negotiations are at a dead end. Negotiators meet this weekend in Oman, where they are acting as mediators.
No one is talking about deadlocks. In a letter from early April to the Supreme Leader, Trump, who demanded that the deal be made in two months, is no longer discussing the deadline.
“No matter how long the negotiations take, “One point is certain, and that has to be enriched in Iran,” Iran's deputy foreign minister and top nuclear negotiator Majid Takt Ravanch said in an hour-long video interview with the IRNA of the state communications agency. He added: “This is our red line.”
It puts Trump in a tough spot, officials acknowledged. The threat in Iran is greater than it was 10 years ago. The country currently produces so much fuel at the level near the bomb, and it is possible that fuel will be fired in a short order for 10 nuclear weapons. (It will take several months, perhaps a year, experts say)
And the facts of Iran With the Israeli missile attacks compromised air defenses in October, Netanyahu argued that even if Israel didn't have the weapons needed to reach its deepest production sites, there was never a better opportunity to attack the country's nuclear sites. Iran's top national security council said in a statement Monday that if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear facilities, it would retaliate with a strike against Israel's nuclear facilities.
“The most sensitive site is half a mile underground,” said Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which inspects Iran's nuclear facilities, recently that he visited the site.
Trump, Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and military leaders reportedly met at Camp David on Sunday night, and will be discussing diplomatic and military choices. If so, it is not clear what conclusion they have reached.
The next morning, Trump was still in the president's hideout and spoke with Netanyahu, some who continued to admit him, but mostly one official said to prevent him from complying with negotiations by threatening imminent military action.
The conversation was the latest in an increasingly tense relationship between Trump and Netanyahu. According to his colleagues, the Israeli Prime Minister is surprised at how Trump has insisted on diplomatic settlements.
The removal of Michael Waltz as Trump's national security adviser was widely seen in Washington as motivated by Waltz's traditional and powerful views on Iran, and by his traditional and powerful views on Iran, which was the Republican standard in Trump's first term.
In fact, Trump's own party is divided into Hawks, who advocate for a complete dismantling of Iran's infrastructure, and more isolated camps than saying, most importantly, avoiding sucking up the US into another war in the Middle East.
So far, Trump and his closest aides have danced between these two camps.
And inspectors say Iranian nuclear centrifuges are still spinning faster than ever, providing more fuel for weapons to be used to build weapons or traded in trades.
