The Art of the Nuclear Deal

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W.J. Hennigan

The Art of the Nuclear Deal

April 25, 2026,

7:00 a.m. ET

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Kenny Holston/The New York Times

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By

W.J. Hennigan

Mr. Hennigan writes about national security, foreign policy and conflict for Times Opinion.

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If President Trump has maintained any consistency in his Iran policy over the years, it’s his conviction that the theocratic regime in Tehran should never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

He ran for president three times on that principle. As commander in chief, he has ordered two complex military operations that aimed to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Now he’s hoping his diplomatic team will be able to finally hammer out a deal at a second round of talks in Pakistan to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions for decades to come.

It’s an admirable goal. Restricting Iran’s ability to sprint for the bomb and curtailing its enrichment of uranium for the foreseeable future would be good not only for the United States, but for the globe. An agreement doing so would maintain a strategic balance in a volatile region where wars are a regular occurrence and reduce the chances of setting off an arms race there.

It’s also something that Mr. Trump owes to the world: The debt has been due since 2018, when he ripped up the landmark multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Signed in 2015 during the Obama administration, the agreement placed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sweeping relief from Western economic sanctions. After Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, Tehran aggressively pressed ahead with its program, installing thousands of advanced centrifuges in underground labs that generated an estimated 970-pound stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. The expansion put the nation just weeks away from having enough material, if further enriched, to build about 10 bombs.

Any new agreement Mr. Trump authorizes must achieve the earlier deal’s comparably rigid terms, or it will be widely and correctly dismissed as insufficient. The 20-year enrichment freeze that the administration has

proposed to Iran

is a worthwhile aim — even if it’s an unlikely one — but it must be accompanied by Iran consenting to allow international inspectors back into its facilities and a guarantee that it will hand over its current stockpile to the United States or another nuclear power.

Anything short of this will be a step back from the 2015 nuclear agreement. Under that deal, Iran’s uranium enrichment was limited to a purity of 3.67 percent, and the International Atomic Energy Agency monitored the program through sweeping on-site inspections, surveillance cameras and the verification of seals on critical equipment at the nation’s known nuclear facilities.

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