The newest rounds of nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran are going smartly sufficient for now, consistent with the stable drip of public statements from the primary events concerned.
“I think they want to make a deal,” stated U.S. President Donald Trump at the eve of the most recent spherical of discussions held in Geneva on Feb. 17, 2026. Iran’s international minister, Abbas Araghchi, famous development over the “guiding principles” of the talks.
Such optimism used to be in a similar way on show throughout preliminary talks in Oman previous within the month.
However as any person who has researched nonproliferation and U.S. nationwide safety for 20 years and used to be inquisitive about State Division nuclear international relations, I do know now we have been right here earlier than.
Optimism additionally existed in spring 2025, throughout 5 rounds of oblique talks that preceded the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure as a part of a broader Israeli assault. Pointedly, Iran famous in February {that a} local weather of distrust created by way of that assault hangs over the efforts for a negotiated deal now.
And underpinning any pessimism over a deal now’s the truth that talks are happening with a backdrop of U.S. army buildup within the Persian Gulf area and counteraction from Iran, together with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz for a live-fire drill.
Purple traces
However it’s greater than distrust that may wish to be triumph over. The positions of each the U.S. authorities and Iran have ossified since Would possibly 8, 2018 – the date when the primary Trump management withdrew the US from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.
Iran remains to be unwilling to even speak about its ballistic missile program. This can be a purple line for them.
But the US continues to call for limits to Iran’s ballistic missiles and the finishing of Iran’s beef up of proxy combatants within the area be integrated within the nuclear talks, along with having Iran totally abandon enriching uranium – together with on the low civilian-use degree agreed on below the 2015 nuclear deal.
The talks are happening amid a much broader development towards the top of what may also be known as the “arms control era.” The expiration of New START – which till Feb. 5, 2026, restricted each the dimensions and standing of U.S. and Russian nuclear guns and maintained powerful verification mechanisms – at the side of the expanding willingness to interact in army movements to succeed in political targets heightens the demanding situations for international relations.
Army brinkmanship
So why the obvious public optimism from the U.S. authorities?
Trump believes that Iran is in a weaker place than throughout his first time period, following the in large part a hit Israeli assaults on Iran’s regional proxies in addition to on Iran itself. The strategic features of Tehran’s two major subsidized teams, Hamas and Hezbollah, are obviously lowered because of Israeli motion.
The U.S. might also nonetheless really feel it has the higher hand following the June 2025 Operation Emerging Lion, wherein Iran’s nuclear infrastructure used to be attacked in line with an Global Atomic Power Company’s file that Iran’s stockpile of near-weapons grade enriched uranium surged by way of over 50% within the spring.
The aftermath of an Israeli strike in Tehran on June 23, 2025.
Elyas/Heart East Photographs/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs
The reopening of talks now additionally comes within the instant aftermath of Iran’s bloody crackdown on anti-government protests, leaving hundreds of protesters lifeless.
The usAbraham Lincoln service team used to be deployed close to Iranian waters in January as a sign to the protesters of U.S beef up. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated that a hit talks should come with subjects past Iran’s nuclear program, together with the “treatment of (its) own people.”
Trump continues to believe army choices towards Iran, caution that “if they don’t make a deal, the consequences are very steep.”
But there’s a threat that Washington is also overestimating its place.
Whilst the US maintains that Iranian nuclear websites have been “obliterated” within the June assault, satellite tv for pc imagery signifies that Iran is operating to revive its nuclear program. And whilst Tehran’s proxies in Gaza and Lebanon are critically degraded, Iranian-supported militias in Iraq, together with the Kataib Hezbollah, have renewed pressing arrangements for battle – doubtlessly towards the U.S. – and the Houthi rebels have threatened to withdraw from a ceasefire handle the US.
Additionally, Iran’s dedication to its ballistic missile program is more potent than ever earlier than, with a lot of the infrastructure already rebuilt from Operation Emerging Lion.
No returning to the 2015 deal
Iran maintains that the talks should be confined handiest to promises concerning the civilian objective of its nuclear program, no longer its missile program, its beef up of regional proxy teams or its personal human rights abuses.
And that’s incompatible with the U.S.’s long-held place.
This confrontation in the end avoided the U.S. and Iran from renewing the now-defunct 2015 political deal throughout the Biden management. Signed by way of China, France, Germany, Russia, the U.Okay., the US and Iran, the Joint Complete Plan of Motion (JCPOA) halted Iran’s construction of nuclear generation and stockpiling of nuclear subject matter in change for lifting a couple of world financial sanctions put on Iran. Ballistic missile generation and Iran’s proxy beef up for regional militias weren’t integrated within the unique settlement because of Iran’s unwillingness to incorporate the ones measures.
The events to the Iran deal in the end determined {that a} nuclear deal used to be higher than the opposite of no deal in any respect.
There used to be a window for this sort of deal to be resumed in between the 2 Trump administrations. And the Biden management publicly pledged to reinforce and renew the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2021.
However by way of then, Iran had considerably greater its nuclear technical capacity throughout the 4 years that has handed for the reason that JCPOA collapsed.
That greater the trouble: Simply to go back to the former deal would have required Iran to surrender the brand new technical capacity it had completed for no new advantages.
The window closed in 2022 after Iran got rid of all the Global Atomic Power Company’s surveillance and tracking below the deal and began enriching uranium to close guns ranges and stockpiling enough quantities for a number of nuclear guns.
The IAEA, the U.N’s nuclear watchdog, these days maintains handiest standard safeguards Iran had agreed to earlier than the JCPOA.
Even with the 2025 U.S. moves, Iran these days has the power to supply sufficient fissile subject matter for a nuclear bomb inside weeks to a number of months. That is up from over a 12 months below the 2015 deal.
The airplane service USS Abraham Lincoln and different vessels sail in formation within the Arabian Sea on Feb. 6, 2026.
Jesse Monford/U.S. Army by the use of Getty Photographs
US and Iran talks these days
Even though maximum analysts doubt that Iran has evolved the weaponization wisdom vital to construct a nuclear bomb – estimates range from a number of months to about two years because of the loss of get entry to to and proof on Iran’s weaponization analysis – Iran’s technical advances scale back the worth for the U.S. authorities of returning to the 2015 deal. Iran’s wisdom can’t be put again into Pandora’s field.
However talks don’t essentially want an finish level – within the form of a deal – for them to have objective.
With the greater army brinkmanship, talks may just assist the U.S. and Iran step again from the brink, construct agree with and most likely increase higher political family members. Each side would get pleasure from this stabilization: Iran economically, from being reintegrated into the world machine, and the U.S. from a verifiable lengthening of the time it will take Iran to damage out.
None of that is assured.
After I labored in multilateral nuclear international relations for the U.S. State Division, we noticed talks fail in 2009 referring to North Korea’s nuclear guns program, after six years of on-and-off development. The end result of that failure is a extra volatile East Asia and renewed hobby by way of South Korea in creating nuclear guns.
Sadly, the similar dynamic seems right here. The form of a possible new deal is unclear. As time passes without a deal, all sides harden their negotiating beginning issues, creating a deal much less most likely.
Army escalations would possibly result in a brand new willingness to compromise at the a part of Iran or precipitate its resolution to construct nuclear guns.
However even will have to the talks end up a failure, the trouble to hose down the confrontational responses and heightening tensions would nonetheless be precious in decreasing the opportunity of regional battle.
