If US President Donald Trump is willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, perhaps Iranian President Hassan Rouhani could be next. 

The notion of a Trump-Rouhani meeting at first seems a long shot. Trump has labeled Iran a “murderous regime” and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as a deeply flawed agreement to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But there is precedent. Trump, who has a flair for the dramatic, actually sought a meeting with Rouhani on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, via French President Emmanuel Macron, but the Iranian delegation turned down the request. 

There is a question of what could be the model or standard for an agreement with North Korea that actually rolls back Pyongyang’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and nuclear weapons programs, especially if the JCPOA is perceived as so deeply flawed by the Trump administration. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who has been nominated to succeed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, said March 11 that the United States will negotiate with North Korea from a “position of enormous strength,” in contrast with how the Obama administration handled the JCPOA, and that any agreement with North Korea would seek to avoid leaving North Korea with a nuclear weapons “breakout capacity,” as happened with Iran. 

Unlike in the Iran nuclear negotiations, the United States would be seeking to compel North Korea to give up what it already has, which is a far more difficult ask than the JCPOA. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons or an intercontinental ballistic missile program. Kim, in contrast, has both, and has threatened the United States with nuclear attack. The US intelligence community has assessed that “Pyongyang is committed to developing a long-range, nuclear-armed missile that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States.” Mark Fitzpatrick and Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies wrote earlier this month that “none of the missiles Iran has under development come close to being able to hit the United States. Nor can they reach much of Europe beyond its southeastern corner.”