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Trump and Khamenei staring at eachother across an Iranian flag.
Will Trump’s Iran strategy actually prevent war?
The United States is ramping up its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
In a letter sent to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in early March, President Donald Trump gave Tehran an ultimatum: reach a new nuclear deal with the US within two months or face direct military action – “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” as he told NBC News’ Kristen Welker on Sunday.
The letter proposed mediation by the United Arab Emirates (whose emissaries delivered the missive in question) and expressed Trump’s preference for a diplomatic solution. “I would rather have a peace deal than the other option, but the other option will solve the problem,” the president said.
In the three weeks it took the Iranian leadership to figure out how to respond, the US turned up the temperature.
First came intense airstrikes (of Signalgate fame) against Iran’s last remaining functional ally in the region, the Houthis in Yemen, starting on March 15 and continuing to this day. Then, the US issued its first-ever sanctions against Chinese entities for buying Iranian crude oil, including a “teapot” refinery in Shandong and an import and storage terminal in Guangzhou. And in recent days, the US military deployed a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers – capable of carrying the 30,000-lb. bunker-busting bombs needed to blast through Iran’s hardened enrichment sites – to its Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, in range of both Yemen and Iran. This move was “not unrelated” to Trump’s ultimatum, according to a senior US official.
Iran finally rejected direct negotiations with the US in a formal response to Trump’s letter delivered last Thursday via Oman, its preferred mediator. President Masoud Pezeshkian stated on Sunday that although the Islamic Republic won’t speak directly with the Trump administration while maximum pressure is in place, Tehran is willing to engage with Washington indirectly through the Omanis.
Whether Trump’s two-month deadline was to strike a deal or to begin negotiations remains unclear. Either way, there’s no chance that two sides that deeply mistrust each other – especially after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the original nuclear deal in 2018 – could reach an agreement over issues as complex as Iran’s nuclear program and support for regional proxies in just a couple, or a few, months (let alone a single one).
But does that mean that Trump’s ultimatum is doomed to end in confrontation? Not necessarily. In fact, his “escalate to de-escalate” strategy could be the best hope to avoid a crisis this year.
A ticking time bomb
While US intelligence assesses that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, it has become a threshold nuclear state with enough 60% enriched uranium to produce six nuclear weapons (if enriched to 90%) and the ability to “dash to a bomb” in about six months (though weaponizing a device would probably take it 1-2 years).
European governments have long made it clear that unless Iran reins in its enrichment activities by this summer, they will “snap back” the UN sanctions that were lifted as part of the 2015 nuclear deal before the agreement expires in October and they can no longer do so.
Iran has vowed to respond to snapback sanctions by withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Given the precedent set by North Korea – whose NPT exit in 2003 was followed by ever-greater steps toward weaponization – and the already advanced state of Tehran’s nuclear program, NPT withdrawal could be the action-forcing event Israel needs to convince Trump to support a joint strike on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
Which means that the US and Iran were likely headed for a collision later this year even if Trump hadn’t issued his ultimatum.
Strange bedfellows
And yet, both Trump and Iran’s leadership would much prefer to avoid a military confrontation in the near term.
Trump’s political coalition includes both traditional Republican war hawks and “America First” isolationists who are averse to US involvement in new forever wars. Whereas cabinet officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth advocate for a more combative approach toward the Islamic Republic, none of these prominent national security hawks are in charge of the Iran file – Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, a Washington outsider and a restrainer, is.
Most importantly, Trump ran as a peacemaker and has repeatedly stated his preference for a deal, believing that bombing Iran could mire the US in an unpopular war that’d divert precious resources from his domestic priorities and endanger his friends in the Gulf for little political upside. The solidly MAGA Vice President JD Vance echoed this concern when, in the leaked Signal group chat, he flagged the risk to oil prices from striking the Houthis for the sake of “bailing out” the Europeans.
For its part, Iran is historically vulnerable and eager to negotiate a deal that brings sanctions relief to its battered economy. While capitulating to Trump’s demands is politically dangerous for Khamenei and would weaken the regime’s domestic position, neither he nor other hardliners would welcome a military showdown with the US and Israel.
Take it or leave it
The threat of a crisis later this year creates an opening for Trump to pressure Tehran into offering concessions that allow the US president to claim progress and avoid triggering snapback sanctions.
Last year’s effective destruction of Iran’s regional proxy network – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria – dealt a blow to the country’s conventional deterrence and heightened the importance of its nuclear program. Iran will therefore resist making any meaningful concessions on this front. If there’s one piece of the nuclear file it could cede ground on, it’s its stockpile of 60% enriched uranium, which Tehran could conceivably agree to freeze.
Where Iran could potentially offer more is in backing away from its proxies, at least temporarily. Though it doesn’t have operational control over the Houthis (unlike the decimated Hezbollah), the Islamic Republic could deprive them of the bulk of the weapons systems and intelligence they rely on to attack Red Sea shipping lanes. It could also instruct Shia militias in Iraq to refrain from targeting US troops.
The regime would find these choices politically and ideologically unpalatable. But with its so-called Axis of Resistance already in shambles and little Tehran can do to rebuild it in the near term, its strategic value is nowhere near what it was a year ago. A chance at avoiding a snapback and US bombing could accordingly be seen as a worthwhile trade.
Less for less
While a breakthrough agreement is highly unlikely to be reached before the summer (or at all), the two sides’ mutual desire to avoid escalation suggests that Trump would be receptive to the relatively minor concessions Tehran could be willing to make – the most it can conceivably offer under the circumstances.
But those concessions would need to come soon, before snapback is triggered. And even this best-case scenario wouldn’t buy Iran any sanctions relief. Instead, they’d get to kick the can on snapback sanctions and possible US military action while negotiations on a more comprehensive – and aspirational – deal are underway.
If, however, Iran’s modest concessions fall short of what Trump deems acceptable, the risk of military escalation this year will rise sharply – either when Trump’s ultimatum comes to a head or when snapback gets triggered, Iran exits the NPT, and Israel considers a strike (whether solo or joint with the US).
Iran has not yet made the decision to build a nuclear weapon. And unless it’s attacked, it remains unlikely to do so, knowing full well that any overt steps toward weaponization would invite certain, immediate, and devastating retaliation. But nothing would make the Islamic Republic dash for a bomb more than getting bombed.
Iran’s leaders are asking for trouble
It’s impossible to predict when and where a wildfire will begin, but it’s easy to know when the ground is dry. In today’s Iran, the ground is ominously dry.
On the surface, social tensions have subsided since the height of nationwide protests over last autumn’s death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for violating rules governing the hijab, or headscarf, which Iranian women are required to wear in public. A combination of mass arrests and executions, some of them public, have moved most protesters off the streets in recent weeks.
But Iran’s conservative government now sees that it’s much easier to use tried-and-true methods to beat back demonstrators than to force all women and girls to wear the hijab in public. After all, many are simply ignoring the rules.
So, authorities have authored a new law and are using new tactics. Women who flout the state’s dress code can be kept out of school and denied services. Businesses that welcome them can be fined or shut down. Last month, cameras were installed in many city streets to boost enforcement. The next ugly confrontation ending in violence and public fury is all but inevitable.
Public frustration in Iran extends well beyond a repressive dress code. Adding fuel to the Mahsa Amini protests is an economy in terrible shape, thanks in part to Western sanctions and partly to Iran’s own policy incompetence. Inflation is probably still running well above 40%, though Iran’s government stopped publishing inflation stats two months ago. Iran’s currency is now at a record low against the dollar. The unemployment rate tops 10%. A return to the nuclear deal could slowly lift US and European sanctions, but Iran’s willingness to supply Russia’s military with drones used to attack Ukraine signals its government’s determination to reject Western terms.
If you live in Iran, it’s natural to wonder whether change is even possible. The economy has limped along for decades. The cycle of protest and repression continues. The choices available to Iran’s voters narrow further at each election.
Yet, with each passing year, the percentage of Iranians old enough to remember the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the forces that inspired it grows smaller. And each passing year brings Iran closer to the day when current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an 84-year-old cancer survivor sometimes rumored to be in poor health, will die. Only once has supreme power passed from one set of hands to another in the Islamic Republic’s history – and that was 34 years ago. Everyone with access to power and wealth within the regime must wonder what succession means for their futures and their families, and they must live with uncertainty.
With all these anxieties in mind, further disruption appears unavoidable.Open defiance will again meet determined repression. The Islamic Republic’s elite don’t want to back down on headscarves, and they fear, perhaps rightly, that concessions in one area would only ignite public demand for more. But the ground in Iran is dry, and the striking of matches there should have the world’s attention.The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina.
What We're Watching: US-China balloon fallout, Iranian "amnesty"
As US shoots down Chinese spy balloon, China cries foul
If we'd told you a week ago that the recent US-China thaw would be upended by X, you'd have probably guessed X had something to do with Taiwan, US semiconductor export controls, or perhaps China's covert profiteering from Russia's war in Ukraine. Nope. It was all over ... a balloon.
On Sunday, Beijing issued a strongly worded statement a day after US fighter jets shot down a Chinese spy balloon that entered American airspace last week. President Joe Biden waited until the balloon was over water just off the South Carolina coast to authorize the operation – officially to avoid putting US civilians and infrastructure at risk and perhaps to respond to pressure from Republicans who'd chided him for not shooting it down earlier.
The discovery of the snoop balloon made US Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancel his weekend trip to Beijing, which would have been the first by a top US diplomat in five years. And Biden’s decision to shoot it down throws a wrench into a US-China rapprochement that had been in the works since Biden and Xi Jinping had a nicer-than-expected chat at the G-20 summit in Bali last November. While certainly weird, this doesn't seem like a crisis that can't be overcome.
Why? For one thing, it's not in China's interest to escalate further over such a bizarre incident, which was, if we believe Beijing’s official explanation, accidental as the balloon veered off course due to strong winds. For another, if Xi was testing the US president to see how he’d respond, now he knows.
Still, the aerial drama does raise the stakes for future misunderstandings, miscalculations, and overreactions coming from both sides. As China expert Michael Hirson explains in this Twitter thread, it’s “simultaneously amusing and worrying because that’s the stage of the US-China relationship we’ve entered: absurd and also dangerous. Dr. Strangelove isn't here yet, but he's knocking."
Khamenei's (non) amnesty for Iranian protesters
To mark the 44th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on Sunday, Iran’s supreme leader reportedly pardoned and reduced the sentences of "tens of thousands" of people — including some arrested in ongoing anti-government protests that started last September. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for the first time acknowledged the scale of the demonstrations against the regime, perhaps the largest since the mullahs came to power. But just as there were big caveats to the supposed review of the country’s headscarf law two months ago, the same is true with the regime's "clemency": It excludes all dual nationals, Iranians convicted of the most serious offenses, and those accused of lesser crimes who refuse to admit and express regret. So most detainees will continue languishing in jail as they await trial. (Human rights groups say some 20,000 people have been arrested so far, four have been executed by hanging, and around 100 are on death row.) With his announcement, Khamenei is showing anything but mercy to those calling for the end of the regime.The high price of isolation
Think it’s good to be the king? Consider for a moment the predicaments facing the small group of men (virtually all of them are men) who rule Russia, China, and Iran. Vladimir Putin and his accomplices, Xi Jinping and his functionaries, and those who make rules in the Islamic Republic all contend with a basic set of problems that obstruct vital flows of information within their respective countries. That creates serious problems for them — and for the rest of us.
Rulers in Russia, China, and Iran can’t know what their people really think. There are no reliable polls to help them measure the frustrations and fears that led, for example, to hundreds of thousands of young men fleeing Russia to avoid military service in Ukraine. Likewise, Beijing couldn’t predict the large numbers of Chinese who took to the streets last autumn to directly challenge China’s zero-COVID policy, and Iranian leaders have been surprised by how many have challenged the right of police and the government to control their personal behavior and appearance.
These rulers can’t know whom to trust. In authoritarian systems, those hoping to earn and protect their privileges know that pleasing their betters is the shortest path to success. The good news that subordinates provide — we will win the war, everyone loves you, and the situation is fully under control — can never be fully trusted.
They can’t know whether their orders have been carried out. Powerful leaders often take actions that create new sets of winners and losers within the state bureaucracy. Losers within the chain of command may not pass along all of their superiors’ directives and may not invest all the money where it was intended to go (see the Russian military). They have no independent sources of information, whether from a free press or genuine opposition parties, to provide accurate information about what is and isn’t happening.
Their people don’t trust the information they receive. Many Russians, Chinese, and Iranians know their governments are not accurate sources of information. Putin says there is no new plan to conscript more soldiers, but he also said there would be no war and that the “special military operation” in Ukraine was going to plan. Many Chinese are aware that their government's actual COVID containment actions don’t match the official message. Many Iranians know that Israelis, Americans, and Europeans are not the source of their largest problems and that Iran’s government either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what the country’s young people want. In all three countries, dangerous rumors can fill the vacuum created by the state’s lack of credibility.
The rest of the world can’t trust these governments in a crisis. The daily barrage of transparently false information from Russia’s government makes it much harder to contemplate peace talks with Moscow. Why should Ukraine (or anyone else) believe any Kremlin pledge made during negotiations? Official Chinese secrecy over the impact of COVID inside China makes it much more difficult for scientists and other governments to correctly assess global risks from the virus.
Their problems can quickly become our problems. Putin’s total inability to accurately predict responses in Ukraine and the West began a war with impacts on food and fuel prices that are inflicting pain all over the world. The Chinese Communist Party’s compulsion to control flows of information within the country’s borders may well have triggered the entire pandemic and could allow for the emergence of new COVID variants that again cross borders. Iran’s rulers could spark conflict in the Middle East if secrecy around its nuclear program triggers confrontation with Israel, the US, or any of its neighbors.
The bottom line: Yes, democratic governments lie every day. Those who lead them have no monopoly on honesty and virtue. But the presence in these countries of independent media, of genuine opposition parties, and of laws that protect the rights of citizens to speak their mind all provide hope that the harm these governments and their lies can impose on others might be much more easily exposed and contained than in places where a few powerful people call almost all the shots.
Masih Alinejad lives in Brooklyn. Iran wants to kill her.
Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad has long been in Tehran's crosshairs, accused of being an agent of the United States.
She denies it. "I'm not an American agent. I have agency," Alinejad tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
But the regime has continued to look for ways to target her, even from her home in Brooklyn.
"In front of the eyes of free world, the Islamic Republic sent people here in New York to kill you, to assassinate you, to kidnap you. This is scary," she says. Alinejad has been living in safe houses, here in New York, for months.
"It seems that even America is not safe."
Watch the GZERO World episode: Iran v. the Islamic Republic: Fighting Iran’s gender apartheid regime
Iran v. the Islamic Republic: Fighting Iran’s gender apartheid regime
Woman, life, freedom. Those three words have filled the streets of Iran since the ongoing women-led protests against the regime, the biggest since 2009, began last September.
How did Iranian women get here? How has the theocracy responded so far? And what might come next?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks to Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, a sworn enemy of the Supreme Leader; it's widely believed that Iranian spies have tried to kidnap and assassinate her here in New York.
From Alinejad's perspective, the regime is afraid like never before because the protests have achieved unity among Iranians for the first time. And many even cheered the national soccer team's elimination at the World Cup because some players were seen as puppets of the regime.
Her message to the West: If you want to help, don't go back to the 2015 nuclear deal and let Iranians bring about regime change on their own.
- Iran nuclear deal is dead ›
- Great Satan on the pitch, big troubles at home — Iran's World Cup dilemma ›
- What We're Watching: Iran protests spread, Putin mobilizes, NY sues Trumps, China faces slow growth ›
- Why Iran’s protests are different this time ›
- Podcast: After Mahsa Amini: Iran’s fight for freedom, with Masih Alinejad ›
Podcast: After Mahsa Amini: Iran’s fight for freedom, with Masih Alinejad
Listen: Iran is being rocked by its most significant protests since the Green Movement of 2009. Since September, hundreds of thousands of young and mostly female demonstrators have filled the streets of nearly every major city from Tehran to Tabriz, many discarding their headscarves at great personal risk to protest draconian societal rules and restrictions. The backlash from security forces has been brutal, though (except in the Kurdish region) the government has yet to send in the Revolutionary Guard.
Iranian-American journalist and activist Masih Alinejad joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast to discuss. Where will these protests lead, and what are the geopolitical implications for the region, and for the West? Alinejad shares her views on the unprecedented unity among the Iranian protesters, her personal experience being targeted by the Iranian government even after moving to the United States, and why the Iranian men's World Cup team does not deserve sympathy.
Iran's morality police: not disbanded
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. There's plenty to talk about around the world but I wanted to focus a little bit on Iran. We've had over two months of demonstrations across the entire country, grassroots, mostly young people, led by women in opposition to the morality police and the incredibly oppressive treatment that women in particular have in that country, not least of which, the forced wearing of the hijab under penalty of arrest.
Now, it's very interesting that over the course of the weekend, there was all sorts of headlines put out that the Iranian government announced that they were abolishing the morality police, and if that were true, it would be a big deal. Remember, Iran, for over two months, the only response to the demonstrations has been repression, and the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, came out just a week ago and said that he would not listen to the voice of the people. He absolutely rejected that, and instead, what we've seen is more arrests and increasingly, we're seeing harsh sentences being put against those people that have been involved in demonstrations. In some cases, even the death sentence.
If the morality police were actually abolished, that would be a big deal and there were major headlines in the New York Times and the BBC and Reuters and others that indeed made that announcement. Unfortunately, that's not what actually is happening. This was one government official who said that it was closed in response to a press conference question, the morality police, as opposed to suspended or abolished. And in that regard, it doesn't mean that it was disbanded.
Indeed, when this what they call guidance force, that's the literal term of the morality police, became a part of the law enforcement force under then President Ahmadinejad, you remember the Member's Only jacket guy with the beard, it was then renamed as a police force for social security. So for all we know, the statements that were made could literally be made that they don't have guidance police/morality police anymore because they've already used that name change. In other words, there's nothing thus far that shows that there is any change in actual policy or enforcement on the ground in Iran, and certainly just even today, we've seen more harsh repression against demonstrations. There's no reason to believe that.
Now, I pointed that out to the New York Times yesterday and asked them to clarify or take down their headline. They have thus far refused to do so. It feels too cute by half. It makes it seem as if the Iranian government is responding to the demands of the demonstrators, that the demonstrators are winning. That's not at all the case on the ground. I wish it were but we need the major newspapers and media outlets in the world to be honest, and when they make a mistake, admit that they make a mistake.
And I'm quite disturbed actually that this has been handled this way, especially because there are all sorts of bad actors and political actors that are willing to take a mistake like this and run with it and say that these media organizations are no good at anything. And of course, the mainstream media across the board, whether it tilts left like the New York Times or it tilts right like Fox or the Wall Street Journal, have been losing a lot of credibility over the course of the last years, especially given the preponderance of social media actors, and so this doesn't help, doesn't help at all. So we don't know about what's happened, if anything, to these police.
There is an open question as to whether or not there will be any shift as to behaviors that are tolerated, specifically the hijab. And as of right now, harassing women on the streets is an important way, a critical way that the theocratic regime in Iran exhibits its power and I think giving that up permanently will be incredibly difficult for the Iranian government to do. Now, if they were to do that, that would be a big deal. That would be an enormous win. It would weaken the theocracy significantly and it would create much more capacity for rank and file Iranians, especially women, to live their lives in a normal way, but I personally doubt it, especially in a systematic way.
I think the question of the hijab goes well beyond the morality police and it's actually turned into a barometer, a quick way of understanding who is a believer, an insider, and who is a nonbeliever, an outsider. It's a tool through which the citizen's willingness to submit to the practices that it finds oppressive and abhorrent is tested every day and imposed, from getting a driver's license to a passport to entering government buildings, women have to practice the ritual of a correctly donned hijab, and I think that that level of imposed ritual is incredibly important to the perceived legitimacy and power of the theocracy.
It is the core of what they are fighting over right now, even if that's not what they're saying on the streets, and as a consequence, I will be enormously impressed, you'll hear it from me, I'll be very happy and the outpouring of emotion that we see around the world in sympathy and alignment with these women on the streets that are taking their lives in their own hands by yelling and screaming for freedom and taking off their hijab, I think it's a huge deal. But so far, no reason to believe that the Iranian government is changing its behavior and I will believe it when I see it.
So that is where we are right now on the Iranian situation on the ground. We'll do our best to continue to get you everything we know and analyze those things we're not certain of, and we'll talk to y'all real soon. Thanks and be good.