This Is How Trump Can Salvage a Deal With Iran

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Opinion

Supported by

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Guest Essay

This Is How Trump Can Salvage a Deal With Iran

April 24, 2026,

5:04 a.m. ET

Credit...

Ioulex for The New York Times

Listen

· 5:47 min

Share full article

By

William J. Burns

Mr. Burns, a career diplomat, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from March 2021 to January 2025.

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda.

Add The New York Times on Google

Agrega The New York Times en Google

The Islamic Republic of Iran and its violent disruptions have hung over my entire career. I took the Foreign Service exam as the regime seized U.S. Embassy hostages in late 1979 and grappled with the horrific bombing of our embassy in Beirut in 1983. I led secret nuclear talks with Iran three decades later and countered its proxies across the Middle East after Oct. 7. I have learned many lessons over many years about dealing with Iran, often the hard way.

President Trump’s war of choice with Iran has paid little attention to our past mistakes and added many of his own. He assumed that bombs and assassinations could bring about regime change. He misread tactical military success as a workable strategy. He made policy choices based on Presidential Id and court politics. He negotiated on the fly with little forethought or planning.

These unforced errors have already done a great deal of strategic damage. But, with a fragile cease-fire extension in place and the flickering potential for resumed negotiations, there is a chance to limit the harm. Three essential lessons from the past eight weeks can help Mr. Trump salvage America’s interests.

First, managing difficult foreign policy problems well takes time and patience. This lesson is not about fatalism or avoiding tough choices. It’s about what you can accomplish at an acceptable cost to other priorities, both foreign and domestic. Perfect is rarely on the menu in diplomacy, especially with a ruthless, ideological and entrenched regime. Decapitating leadership can seem like an appealing shortcut, but as this administration quickly discovered in Iran, it can be an illusion.

President Barack Obama’s logic in pursuing direct diplomacy with Iran was to play a longer game, curbing the worst risk posed by Tehran — the potential for nuclear weaponization — and blunting other threats over time, while supporting political freedoms for the Iranian people. Like his predecessor, George W. Bush, Mr. Obama looked carefully at the risks and second- and third-order consequences of war and concluded they far outweighed the likely benefits.

Mr. Trump, emboldened by his sense of success in the June 2025 war and last winter’s Venezuela operation, made a different and tragic choice. There is no redo in statecraft. There is still, however, an outside possibility of addressing the most acute dangers that Iran poses against its neighbors, the United States and the world if the administration can prioritize, focus and overcome its addiction to quick fixes.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and

log into

your Times account, or

subscribe

for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?

Log in

.

Want all of The Times?

Subscribe

.

Related Content

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT