As a fragile cease-fire holds between the United States and Iran, negotiators remain deadlocked over the future of Tehran’s nuclear program. Both sides entered the talks convinced that they had prevailed in what Iranians now call the “third imposed war,” reducing incentives for compromise and reinforcing maximalist positions. All the while, the issue that has shaped U.S.-Iran relations for more than two decades—uranium enrichment on Iranian soil—remains intractable.
Operation Epic Fury, as the United States calls it, has not fundamentally altered Iran’s nuclear calculus. If anything, it has reinforced Tehran’s determination to preserve what it views as both a strategic asset and a symbol of its national sovereignty. This reality carries an uncomfortable implication for Washington: Demands for “zero enrichment” remain as unrealistic today as they were before the war. In fact, arguably they are more so, in that the war has reinforced Tehran’s negotiating baseline. Any future agreement will therefore have to focus not on the complete dismantlement of Iran’s enrichment capacity but on rigorously monitoring its nuclear program, enhancing transparency, and preventing weaponization.
As a fragile cease-fire holds between the United States and Iran, negotiators remain deadlocked over the future of Tehran’s nuclear program. Both sides entered the talks convinced that they had prevailed in what Iranians now call the “third imposed war,” reducing incentives for compromise and reinforcing maximalist positions. All the while, the issue that has shaped U.S.-Iran relations for more than two decades—uranium enrichment on Iranian soil—remains intractable.
Operation Epic Fury, as the United States calls it, has not fundamentally altered Iran’s nuclear calculus. If anything, it has reinforced Tehran’s determination to preserve what it views as both a strategic asset and a symbol of its national sovereignty. This reality carries an uncomfortable implication for Washington: Demands for “zero enrichment” remain as unrealistic today as they were before the war. In fact, arguably they are more so, in that the war has reinforced Tehran’s negotiating baseline. Any future agreement will therefore have to focus not on the complete dismantlement of Iran’s enrichment capacity but on rigorously monitoring its nuclear program, enhancing transparency, and preventing weaponization.
The nuclear standoff has occupied the minds of eight U.S. presidents. But in the past two decades, the more consequential question has been domestic enrichment capacity in Iran—an issue that had already been resolved under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal.
Since mastering uranium enrichment technology in 1999, Iranians have long insisted on retaining enrichment capacity citing their Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) rights— an argument that the United States rejects. As Iran’s program expanded, however, opposition to enrichment became increasingly impractical. It could not be reversed or wished away. European officials tried to urge U.S. negotiators to accept enrichment as a reality, but they were reluctant to do so.
Ultimately, U.S. President Barack Obama came to the realization that a diplomatic solution would be close to impossible without ceding ground on enrichment. As former nuclear negotiator and later CIA Director William Burns wrote about Obama’s approach, he saw that even back then, Iranians were defiant in the face of sanctions and international pressure.
Eight years after his decision to withdraw the United States from the JCPOA, President Donald Trump is now grappling with the unintended consequences of his own mistake. The United Nations-backed deal was by no means perfect—as is usually the case with international agreements—but as a nonproliferation agreement, it served its intended purpose. It severely curtailed the expanding program, subjecting Iran to the “world’s most robust” inspection mechanism, as Yukiya Amano, a former director-general of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), described it. After years of negotiations, sanctions, and diplomatic isolation, the nuclear deal legitimized Iran’s enrichment project under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231.
The first Trump administration miscalculated Iran’s response to the U.S. withdrawal from the agreement. Officials dismissed the possibility that Tehran would restart its nuclear program and instead adopted a hard-line policy of zero enrichment. When asked what the administration would do if Iran restarted its nuclear program, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a staunch opponent of the JCPOA, stated, “We’re confident that Iranians will not make that decision.”
When the benefits of the JCPOA didn’t materialize and Europeans were seemingly powerless to fulfill the deal’s requirements themselves, Iran slowly began to breach the terms of the agreement and by May 2019 took its first “remedial step.” By that July, Iran had started enriching slightly above the limitations of the deal, at 4.5 percent, and in January 2020, it took its fifth and final step of abrogating all JCPOA restrictions. When a sabotage attack on Natanz in April 2021 caused a blackout at the nuclear facility, Iran escalated by announcing its plans to enrich uranium to 60 percent. This was a major escalation intended to “poke in the eyes of Americans,” former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif pointed out years later, so they understand they “cannot bring us to our knees.” The pattern of escalation in response to outside pressure is clear.
Iranians did not give up on the principle of enrichment even after the United States and Israel decided to jointly strike Iran’s nuclear program in June 2025. Those strikes came after all enrichment activities had been halted due to the massive destruction at Iran’s underground facilities anyway. Shortly after the end of the 12-day war, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, when asked about future of uranium enrichment, retorted, “We cannot give up enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists. And now, more than that, it is a question of national pride.”
Since then, several rounds of negotiations between Iran and the United States have been held with the help of first Oman and now Pakistan. In February, before the United States and Israel launched their latest war, Iran had agreed to a “zero stockpile” proposal, which meant that it would not stockpile any fissile material that could be used to develop nuclear weapons; in the words of Omani Foreign Minister and mediator Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi, this was a “very important breakthrough.” It allowed Iran to save face and maintain an enrichment capacity while eliminating the possibility of dashing for a bomb—the stated objective of Trump.
But even a second round of war has failed to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. U.S. intelligence assessments reinforce this reality: Since Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, the timeline for Iran to produce a nuclear weapon—should it choose to do so—has remained roughly nine to 12 months.
Yet a negotiated outcome need not be zero-sum. One potential pathway is the establishment of a multinational enrichment consortium that would allow Iran to retain enrichment on its own soil while addressing U.S. proliferation concerns—particularly if Washington were directly involved. Under IAEA supervision, such a center could supply low-enriched uranium to regional states for civilian use, reducing incentives for indigenous enrichment programs. The concept is not new—variations of it have been discussed since the 1970s and intermittently explored by both Tehran and Washington—but it remains burdened by significant technical, political, and logistical challenges.
A more viable path forward may lie in a time-bound suspension agreement. Under such an arrangement, Iran could agree to pause enrichment-related activities for a mutually defined period in exchange for sanctions relief, before resuming a limited, closely monitored program under the supervision of the IAEA. Ratification of the Additional Protocol to the NPT would further strengthen transparency and help mitigate concerns about the program’s future trajectory.
This approach has precedent: In the early 2000s, Iran agreed with Germany, France, and the United Kingdom to voluntarily suspend enrichment and implement the Additional Protocol while negotiations continued toward a more permanent solution. Although that arrangement, known as the Paris Agreement, ultimately collapsed amid opposition from the Bush administration, it allowed Tehran to maintain its claim to enrichment while preventing a potential showdown with the United States.
Recent diplomatic proposals reflect a similar approach. Reports indicate that Iranian officials proposed a five-year moratorium during April talks with their U.S. interlocutors, while U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance pushed for a significantly longer, 20-year suspension. The gap between these positions highlights a central reality: The dispute over enrichment will not be resolved anytime soon. But it can be contained through a midrange agreement that defers the issue, lengthens breakout timelines, and preserves space for continued diplomacy by allowing both sides to claim victory.
Trump has repeatedly stated that his objective is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. But his administration has increasingly conflated “no nuclear weapons” with the full dismantlement of Iran’s domestic enrichment infrastructure. The two are not the same. The past two decades—and the recent war—have demonstrated that coercion can slow Iran’s program but it cannot erase its capabilities, destroy ambitions, or compel Tehran to accept terms it views as unconditional surrender.
