How Iran could save its nuclear deal

As recently as last winter, US President Donald Trump was threatening North Korea with nuclear missile strikes. The world shivered at the possibility of a confrontation in the Korean Peninsula between two countries armed with the deadliest of weapons. 

Now it has emerged that Mike Pompeo, confirmed last week as the new US Secretary of State, visited North Korea this month (when he was still director of the CIA), and met the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to prepare the ground for a meeting between Trump and Kim next month. 

Then the world watched as the leaders of North and South Korea joined hands and raised them aloft in a gesture of peace and reconciliation after more than six decades of hostility. 

Now the spotlight will turn on Iran, and the 2015 nuclear deal that curbed its nuclear program after 12 years of negotiations with Tehran. 

Trump has called the deal a disaster, and threatened to withdraw from it unless his concerns are met by May 12. On a state visit to Washington last week, the French president Emmanuel Macron used all his charm to try to dissuade Trump from doing so. Macron said France and other European countries shared Trump’s concerns over Iran’s ballistic missile program and its destabilization of the region by spending money from Lebanon to Syria, Iraq and Yemen to support its allies and expand its influence. They would remain committed to the accord while pushing Iran for further talks and changes in its behavior. Tehran, however, will not countenance any amendments to the nuclear deal, and has shown no interest in regional talks. 

What other countries in the region are asking for is no more than a friendly neighbor with whom they can genuinely engage. Iran and Saudi Arabia have had no diplomatic ties since the Saudi missions in Tehran and Mashhad were attacked in January 2016, and relations are at an all-time low. At this point, no one in the region cares what happens to the nuclear deal while Iran remains hostile and arrogant, and shows no sign of making peace with its neighbors. 

European countries are making every effort to persuade Trump to remain committed to the nuclear deal, but none of these efforts are really needed — the future of the deal is in Iran’s own hands.

First, it should stop threatening Israel, a sovereign state. Second, if Iran really cares about Palestinian rights, it should cooperate with the international community and other Muslim countries to address the issue, instead of funding radicalization and hatred. Third, it should withdraw from Syria, where the presence of Hezbollah and other Iranian-funded militias is a concern not only to Israel, but to other countries in the region who view it as an unacceptable interference in Arab affairs. Finally, Iran should tell the world that even after the nuclear deal expires in 2025 it has no intention of resuming nuclear enrichment to weapons grade because it is not interested in the provocation of making a nuclear bomb.

If Iran took these simple measures, none of which would damage its prestige in any way, we can see the day when the US president meets the Iranian president on the same basis that Donald Trump is about to meet Kim Jong Un. It is up to Tehran, pure and simple, and the choices the regime makes.

• Camelia Entekhabifard is an Iranian-American journalist, political commentator and author of Camelia: Save Yourself By Telling the Truth (Seven Stories Press, 2008).

  Twitter: @CameliaFard