Not-so-secret Iran talks could trigger world's next great crisis
Nothing is more sensitive in Iran than the prospect of direct negotiations with the United States, particularly when the president in question is called Donald Trump.
This is the same Donald Trump who in 2018 wrecked the first nuclear deal by imposing 'maximum pressure' on Iran even though the regime had, contrary to habit, been keeping the agreement. Then Mr Trump authorised the killing of Qassem Soleimani, a brutal Iranian general who the Ayatollahs were busily promoting as a national hero.
So you can be sure that Iran's leaders did not want Mr Trump to tell the world that direct talks will begin on Saturday, let alone to make that revelation alongside their arch enemy, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
Thanks to Mr Trump's customary contempt for discretion, America's new effort to settle the confrontation over Iran's nuclear ambitions has got off to the worst possible start.
In any case, the chances of success are low. Today Iran would need only weeks to produce enough weapons grade uranium for one nuclear bomb. Turning this into a warhead for delivery on a missile would take another year or so, but Iran is already a threshold nuclear state.
So America's objective in the negotiations will not be to limit Iran's nuclear programme; instead the US will seek the swift and verifiable roll-back of Iran's progress. If that proves impossible, then Mr Netanyahu says that Israel will destroy Iran's nuclear facilities with precision strikes, made all the more devastating if America were to join in.
Hence the clock is ticking: Mr Trump has set a deadline of just two months to resolve the issue. Securing the first nuclear agreement in 2015, by contrast, required 12 years of negotiation. Now America has embarked on the diplomatic version of a sprint to achieve a tougher version of the same deal that Mr Trump casually sabotaged in his first term.
The one glimmer of hope is that Iran's regime is weaker today than at any time since the end of its ruinous war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1988. Israel has eviscerated Iran's client militias across the Middle East, pulverising first Hamas in Gaza and then Hezbollah in Lebanon, while also triggering the downfall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, previously Tehran's only Arab ally.
Suddenly, Iran is isolated and intensely vulnerable. Last October, Israel retaliated for an Iranian missile attack by dispatching over 100 jet fighters to strike targets across Iran, destroying air defences and one nuclear installation, known as Parchin, where the regime had been suspected of testing triggers for warheads.
Iran never hit back for that raid. Alone, embargoed and seemingly helpless in the face of Israeli assault, Iran badly needs an agreement that would see American sanctions lifted in return for rolling back its nuclear programme.
But is the regime capable of taking the momentous decision to settle its confrontation with America? Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, will turn 86 on 19 April. A hidden struggle for the succession is underway, with his son, Mojtaba, believed to be a contender.
Amid this uncertainty, would the weak and ineffectual president, Masoud Pezeshkian, risk proposing another nuclear agreement with the 'Great Satan'?
Mr Netanyahu will doubtless insist that America sets the toughest terms for any deal, while threatening military strikes if he finds the outcome unacceptable.
Perhaps Ayatollah Khamenei, at his moment of maximum weakness, will give way and allow an agreement that both America and Israel could live with. Barring that unlikely outcome, this could be the world's next great crisis.
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