The supreme leader’s quote harkened back to his blessing for President Hassan Rouhani in November 2013 to engage in negotiations with the Obama administration over the nuclear issue.
The Trump administration walked out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, leading Iran to ramp up its uranium enrichment.
US intelligence has concluded that Khamenei has not yet decided to authorize the creation of a nuclear weapon. Iran canceled its nuclear weapons research program in 2003 and has not resumed it, US intelligence assesses. But Iranian officials over the past year have increasingly spoken openly about the possibility, and continued enrichment since the collapse of the JCPOA has significantly reduced Iran's so-called break-out time.
A return to the original 2015 JCPOA agreement is almost certainly out of the question, seeing that many of its provisions expire in October of this year.
A formal, single-package-agreement focused on one area of concern, such as Iran's nuclear enrichment or ballistic missiles, "is no longer realistic," said Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group.
That means Washington could have more luck with a series of partial agreements designed to curtail a variety of Iranian strategic endeavors in exchange for piecemeal economic relief.
“Everything is interlinked, and it's just unavoidable that Iran and the US would have to address other issues as well,” Vaez told Security Briefing. The approach has already seen some results, but the steps toward rapprochement were all but halted — and quite nearly reversed — by Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel and the resulting war that has devastated the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s response to Oct. 7 has also proved something of a wild card, as its top security echelons have ordered increasingly bold strikes against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah and Hamas figures in neighboring countries to chip away at the leadership that has knitted together Iran’s strategic network of proxy militias.
Israeli leaders have in several cases authorized the strikes without forewarning Washington, US officials claim.
If the next US administration wants to make progress in talks with Pezeshkian’s government, it may have to take steps to demonstrate to hard-liners that the US does not pose an immediate threat to Iran’s core strategic interests, including its bulwark of proxy militias.
That may entail the US distancing itself from Israel’s campaign of strikes, regardless of shared interests. That may prove a difficult task, given the massive US military buildup in the region.
But there are other spoilers ahead. Yemen’s Houthi rebels continue to wreak havoc on international shipping in the Red Sea, and the United States believes Iran remains poised to stage its own retaliation for the surprise assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month, a move US officials have attributed to Israel.
The Biden administration may have to take steps to ease concerns among Tehran’s hard-liners that the United States poses an immediate threat to Tehran, Vaez and others have previously argued. That may prove a difficult task.
Pezeshkian’s government will also need to make significant compromises. While his government may be willing to build on the commitments not to ship ballistic missiles to Russia and to prevent Iraq's militias from attacking US troops, the IRGC is unlikely to compromise on core red lines, such as an Israeli military presence at bases in Gulf states.
