President Trump said on Monday that the United States would engage in “direct” negotiations with Iran next Saturday in a last-ditch effort to rein in the country’s nuclear program, saying Tehran would be “in great danger” if it failed to reach an accord.
If direct talks take place, they would be the first official face-to-face negotiations between the two countries since Mr. Trump abandoned the Obama-era nuclear accord seven years ago. But they would come at a perilous moment, as Iran has lost the air defenses around its key nuclear sites because of precise Israeli strikes last October. And Iran can no longer rely on its proxy forces in the Middle East — Hamas, Hezbollah and the now-ousted Assad government in Syria — to threaten Israel with retaliation.
On the order of its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has refused to sit down with American officials in direct nuclear negotiations since Mr. Trump pulled out of the last accord. So any face-to-face talks would in themselves represent great progress, though Iran is almost certain to resist dismantling its entire nuclear infrastructure, which has given it a “threshold” capability to make the fuel for a bomb in a matter of weeks — and perhaps a full weapon in months. Many Iranians have begun to talk openly about the need for the country to build a weapon since it has proved fairly defenseless in a series of missile exchanges with Israel last year.
Sitting beside Mr. Trump on Monday during a visit to the United States, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, insisted that any resulting deal must follow what he called the “Libya model,” meaning that Iran would have to dismantle and ship out of the country its entire nuclear infrastructure. But much of Libya’s nuclear enrichment equipment had never been uncrated before it was turned over to the United States in 2003; Iran’s nuclear infrastructure has been operating for decades, and is spread around the country, much of it deep underground.
Mr. Netanyahu was strangely quiet during a lengthy question-and-answer session with reporters, a sharp contrast to his last visit to Washington, two months ago. After a few introductory remarks, he was largely a spectator as Mr. Trump railed against European nations that he said had “screwed” the United States, and threatened even more punishing tariffs against China unless it reversed its threat of retaliatory tariffs by Tuesday. He further muddied the waters about whether his tariff structure was intended to be a permanent source of revenue for the United States or whether it would just be leverage for negotiations.
Mr. Netanyahu left the Oval Office without a public commitment from Mr. Trump to wipe out the 17 percent tariff he had placed on Israel, one of America’s closest allies. Getting such a commitment had been one of the key objectives of his trip, along with securing even more weapons for the war against Hamas in Gaza and for Israeli military action in the West Bank. If the two men discussed Israeli or joint Israel-U. S. military options against the main Iranian nuclear sites, they gave no indication of having done so during their public comments.