Ending US-Iran impasse rests only on face-to-face negotiations

Even under the harsh sanctions, Iran still is maintaining and further augmenting its presence in Syria by establishing permanent military bases and a strong foothold in the country, as they see it as central to their geostrategic objective to maintain a direct land corridor from Tehran to Lebanon. The Iraqi government still feels indebted to Tehran for providing a refuge to many Iraqi political leaders when they belonged to opposition groups fighting Saddam Hussein. At the present, no Iraqi politician can become prime minister without Iran's consent, and successive Iraqi governments have done nothing to reduce Tehran's influence in the country.

The desire for containment remains elusive at best. Other than imposing increasingly severe sanctions, and recent talks about a prospective US-Israel mutual defense treaty which could conceivably inhibit Iran from attacking Israel directly, there are no articulate plans for containing Iran in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or Lebanon. The effort to contain is certainly not foolproof, as one single major miscalculation could lead to regional war. Thus, the inability to contain Iran has serious pitfalls as Tehran feels free to destabilize the region to advance its national interests.

Face-to-face negotiations: The fifth and the only practical option that will spare blood and treasure by all sides is direct good-faith negotiations between the US and Iran. By now, both Israelis in the know as well as Americans have concluded that it was a bad mistake to withdraw from the JCPOA. Nearly a year and a half later, Iran has not been cowed; instead, it became increasingly aggressive while openly and purposely violating certain elements of the original deal in retaliation against the US withdrawal.

French and German efforts to arrange for new negotiations between the US and Iran have not borne much fruit. An EU diplomat noted in November that any window to bring Iran and the US back to the table is now very small, stating "We're now entering a phase where Iran's actions have a serious impact on the breakout time". But then, however small the prospect is to bring the US and Iran to the negotiating table, it must be continued.

The original Iran deal must still form the basis of new negotiations. The idea here is to build on that deal by addressing especially the sunset clauses, which were troublesome for Israel, and with which Trump agrees. In the search for a solution to the conflict, all major players must recognize the indisputable reality on the ground and make a realistic assessment of the assets that each player can bring.

The fact that the enmity and distrust between the US and Iran has lasted nearly two generations, and the fact that the US after more than two years of arduous negotiations withdrew from the JCPOA, makes the search for and reaching a new agreement all the more difficult and complex. But then, there is no other sane and practical option.

A new deal with Iran would inhibit proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region, pave the way for finding a solution to the war in Yemen, and generally create a new positive atmosphere conducive to settling other regional conflicts.