Trump’s pledge to renegotiate Iran deal remains at standstill as election nears

President Donald Trump has not struck a new deal with Iran after pulling the U.S. out of the Obama-era nuclear arms pact, and the chances of renegotiation are slim after the U.S. killed top Iranian military leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike.

Iran responded to the January airstrike with a statement announcing that Iran would no longer adhere to restrictions on uranium enrichment under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the international agreement from which Trump withdrew the U.S. in 2018.

The two countries had not renegotiated the deal before Soleimani's killing, despite Trump's vows. On the campaign trail, then-candidate Trump vowed to replace the deal President Barack Obama signed with Iran and five other countries, saying he'd land a "totally different deal."

Trump tweeted optimism about the prospect of a new agreement June 5, urging Iran to "make the Big deal" before the 2020 election. But experts say that Iran has been reluctant to find a middle ground, and that the Soleimani killing made a new deal less likely.

"There are almost no signs of any real chance of negotiations, much less a deal, during the remainder of this presidential term," said Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy and a former State Department official.

Georgetown University's Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear policy expert at the Atlantic Council who has advised several Republican presidential campaigns and served under the administrations of George W. Bush, Obama and Trump, agreed that renegotiation before November's election is "unlikely."

Both experts said that while the Trump administration has remained open to communications, Iran is not eager to talk. Nephew said the Iranians have effectively determined to wait to see if Trump wins re-election before deciding whether to pursue further negotiations.

Before Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal, we found that Iran was largely compliant with the terms of the agreement. We reported that while the deal was in effect, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the foremost authority on the matter, said it found that Iran had committed no violations — aside from some minor infractions that were rectified.

Responding to Trump's June 5 tweet, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, wrote in a tweet that the U.S. and Iran had a deal before Trump's advisers "made a dumb bet" by pulling out of it. "Up to you to decide when you want to fix it," Zarif said.

That fix hasn't come. Instead, the Trump administration has ramped up sanctions, tacking new penalties on top of the sanctions that existed before the original nuclear pact went into effect. 

The U.S. has also sought to pressure the United Nations to extend an embargo blocking arms sales to and by Iran. The embargo is set to expire in October 2020.

"The strategy remains the same: to place 'maximum pressure' on the Iranian regime to force it to the table to renegotiate the nuclear deal," Kroenig said. "The United States has succeeded in placing unprecedented levels of pressure on Iran, primarily through sanctions. The regime is also vulnerable due to the COVID-19 outbreak and a weak healthcare system."

Some of the demands — including that Iran stop enriching uranium and end its relationship with the terrorist group Hezbollah — are "beyond Iran's willingness to even discuss," Nephew said.

Soleimani's killing is yet another key stumbling block to U.S. efforts to bring Iran back to the negotiating table. And if Iran chooses to retaliate further at a later date, the U.S. would likely find it even harder to iron out a new accord with them, Nephew said.

"It made negotiating with Iran under Trump extraordinarily hard," he said. "Soleimani's killing was seen by leadership in Iran, if not the entire population, as a martyrdom."

The two countries could eventually strike a new deal. But for now, the standstill continues.

We rate this Promise Broken.