Last week's assessment of the state of the war between the United States and Israel, on one side, and Iran on the other, ("Who's Winning?) concluded that the answer to that question would depend to a very large extent on the negotiations between the two sides.
In that context, I mentioned that the United States must be careful to not repeat the mistakes of the 2015 JCPOA, which President Trump once labelled the worst agreement ever negotiated. Those mistakes took two forms: tactical and substantive. On the tactical level, the Obama administration repeatedly made clear that it was more desperate for an agreement than were the Iranians. As a consequence, it retreated over and over again from its announced red lines, when the Iranians balked, just as it did not act on Obama's red line to the Assad regime against using chemical weapons on its own people.
And on the substantive level the JCPOA had three glaring weaknesses. First, it did not address Iran's ballistic missiles. And that effectively allowed Iran to build up its offensive missile capacity to the point that even if it breached the agreement and returned to nuclear enrichment prematurely its large numbers of ballistic missiles would serve to deter any American response.
Secondly, the JCPOA furnished the Islamic Regime with tens of billions of dollars in the form of pallets of cash and sanctions relief. Those monies had two consequences. They allowed Iran to continue its role as the world's "largest state sponsor of terrorism" and to maintain its ring of fire around Israel – including, Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Shiite militias in Iraq. And they allowed the regime to prevent the economic situation in Iran from deteriorating even further, and thereby increasing the chances of a popular revolution, which remains the only full solution to the threats posed by the current regime.
Finally, the JCPOA allowed Iran to resume its nuclear enrichment a decade hence, with the full blessing of the United States. The US even agreed to defend Iran's nuclear program from Israel. As mentioned last week, the clock in Teheran's Palestine Square counting down to Israel's annihilation was set to coincide with the expiration of the JCPOA's restrictions on enrichment.
Apart from all these difficulties, there are also the questions of verifiability and enforceability of any agreements with Iran. To put it bluntly, Iran always lies and has repeatedly done so over the years as it continued to work clandestinely on projects it had previously abjured. That was a large part of the value of the tons of records of Iran's nuclear program that the Mossad spirited out of Iran, and which Prime Minister Netanyahu subsequently shared with President Trump.
Given Iran's long track record of deception, what is the value of an Iranian promise to open the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, if Iran still retains the means to close the Strait at will? Elliot Kaufman points out in the April 20, Wall Street Journal ("The Iranians Take Trump for a Sucker") that the Iranians have already changed the terms three times since Trump announced a two-week ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait on April 7. The Strait of Hormuz did not open subsequent to April 7. Nor did it do so, after Iran placed a new condition on its opening – the cessation of Israeli attacks on Lebanon -- a promise which Trump secured from Bibi. And at present, Iran has placed a new condition of the opening of the Strait of Hormuz: the end of the US naval blockade.
AMIT SEGAL, a leading Israeli journalist known to be close to the circles around Netanyahu, released on April 20 a six-point outline of points currently under discussion, said to be confirmed by a senior Israel official. Segal himself offered the proviso that "nothing is agreed to" so it is possible that if there is a final agreement it will be substantially different.
According to the proposed framework, Iran would agree to convert all its 435 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium into uranium gas, and to refrain from all uranium enrichment for 15 years. All of Iran's nuclear facilities would be open to inspection by the US. In addition, Iran would open the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial traffic, without charging any tolls on that traffic.
In return, Iran would receive a phased lifting of economic sanctions, a declaration of a formal end to the war and guarantees against further hostilities. In another version, published by Park Macdougald in Tablet, the US would also pay Iran $20 billion dollars for its 60 percent enriched uranium.
An agreement along these lines would be viewed with horror by almost all Israelis. As Segal writes, the Israeli consensus is that "a prolonged state of 'no war, no peace,' with US military forces remaining on standby in the Persian Gulf, strangling the Iranian economy" is vastly preferable to the six-point outline. Were the US to agree to something of the sort, it would at the very least deal a blow to the oft-repeated canard that Netanyahu has been controlling Trump and not vice versa.
The six-points make no mention of ballistic missiles, despite Secretary of State Rubio's justification for the war in terms of the "overmatch" between the number of ballistic missiles being developed by Iran and America's ability to produce interceptors.
By removing the current chokehold on Iran's economy, and providing Iran with tens of billions in direct payments and sanctions relief, the proposed framework would surely lessen the pressure for regime change and strengthen Iran's terror proxies. That is just repeating the mistakes of the JCPOA.
Time limits on Iranian enrichment, rather than a permanent end to that enrichment, virtually assures that Iran will one day resume nuclear enrichment. Israel's enemies operate on a much longer time-scale than does the United States.
While nothing in the six-point framework mentions Israel's ability to continue its attacks on Hezbollah until the security of northern residents can be assured, it is a virtual lock that Iran would interpret the agreement to encompass a cessation of Israeli attacks, just as it interpreted the original ceasefire as including Hezbollah.
So much for the substantive weaknesses in the agreement. As far as negotiating tactics goes, it is hard to gainsay Macdougald's conclusion that President Trump's indefinite extension of the cease-fire "will communicate weakness to Tehran, which already appears to believe that Trump is desperate for a deal."
EMINENT ECONOMIC HISTORIAN Niall Ferguson has been writing for weeks that wars invariably bring in their wake a multitude of unanticipated consequences, quite apart from battlefield wins and losses. And that would certainly be true for any agreement along the lines described by Segal.
It would, I think, virtually guarantee a massive Democratic victory in 2026, and likely in the 2028 presidential year. The war with Iran has never been popular. It has been costly to the national treasury, while also hitting almost every citizen in the pocketbook due to increased fuel costs. If all that Trump gained through the war was a more robust JCPOA, he should have quit with the bombing of the Fordow reactor and maintaining biting sanctions.
That is not to say that Trump and Netanyahu have not set back Iran's nuclear ambitions far further than the JCPOA could ever have done. Or that the current round of bombing has not greatly added to the destruction of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. Under the JCPOA, says Andrea Stricker, a non-proliferation expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, by January 2031, Iran would have been guaranteed a "near zero breakout time" to develop a nuclear weapon.
The June 2025 war and the present one have demolished Iran's manufacturing plants for advanced centrifuges, as well as its enrichment facilities, according to David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security. In addition, Iran's ability to make uranium hexafluoride, an important precursor to enrichment, has been destroyed. Under the JCPOA, limitations on Iran's production of advanced centrifuges would have already "sunsetted," and it was allowed to retain its enrichment facilities intact. Israel has also killed several of Iran's top nuclear scientists and engineers, thereby eliminating much of Iran's nuclear know-how.
Nevertheless, selling the differences to the JCPOA, given the number of similarities, will be a difficult matter, which makes the current fighting a major electoral liability. And that is bad news for Israel. Trump is quite likely the most pro-Israel president that we will see in the foreseeable future. The possibility of a pro-Israel Democrat winning the 2028 nomination is remote, as the recent overwhelming support of Democratic senators for cutting off military aid to Israel makes clear. At most Israel had two and a half more years to work with Trump, and if he is politically neutered even less than that.
Nor would Trump be the only loser. Netanyahu would be as well, particularly if Hezbollah remains in position to threaten residents of Israel's North. Operation Roaring Lion, which began with such high hopes of removing the threat of Iran and its proxies once and for all, will be seen as a failure.
Recent polls have shown the Opposition with a narrow majority in the upcoming elections, even without the Arab parties. Were Israel forced to accept the bitter pill of an agreement along the lines presented by Amit Segal, the tide against Netanyahu would only strengthen.
The main issue upon which the opposition parties agree is the need to induct far more chareidim into the army. Naftali Bennett, currently the figure most likely to replace Netanyahu, gave a taste of things to come when he charged last week that the failure of chareidim to enlist had cost many soldiers their lives because they were forced to serve too long in high pressure positions, which cost them their operational efficiency.
AS OF NOW, the Israel's best hope is that our enemies continue to fulfill Shimon Peres's curse of "never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity" and continue to refuse to negotiate with the US, out of overconfidence that they are winning the war. That would leave in place the preferred outcome for most Israelis: a continued American economic chokehold on the Islamic regime, with American and Israeli bombers still at the ready.