Inside the New U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks: What’s at Stake?

As new negotiations begin to tackle Iran’s nuclear program, missile development, and support for terror proxies, tensions are escalating. Jason Isaacson, AJC Chief Policy and Political Affairs Officer, joins us to unpack the legacy of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) and withdrawal in 2018, and Iran’s dangerous stockpiling of uranium, getting them closer to nuclear weapons capabilities. With U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff leading talks and key UN sanctions expiring soon, the stakes are higher than ever. Don’t miss Jason’s insights on what the U.S. is demanding, the potential for successful diplomacy, and the global risks posed by Iran.

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Transcript of Interview with Jason Isaacson:

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

Negotiations begin on Saturday to curtail Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment, infrastructure, missile program and support of Hezbollah Hamas and other terror proxies around the world. US Special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, will shepherd the talks. At the same time he's handling discussions around Gaza and Ukraine with us to discuss the potential of these negotiations and their impact is AJC Chief Policy and Political Affairs Officer, Jason Isaacson. Jason, welcome back to People of the Pod.

Jason Isaacson:  

Thanks, Manya. It's good to be back.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

So Jason, the Obama administration sealed the deal in 2015 to curtail Iran's nuclear program, which President Trump then withdrew from in 2018. What did that original deal look like? 

Jason Isaacson:  

Of course, the United States pulled out of the deal in 2018 as you said, whereupon, after a period of reflection and some uncertainty, the Iranians started violating the agreement. The original agreement that was called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action allowed the Iranians to enrich their uranium up to 3.67% purity of uranium. You need something like 90% in order to make a bomb. They were allowed to keep just 300 kilograms of that enriched uranium. The rest of their stockpile of uranium had to be shipped out of the country, which it was. 

There were other restrictions that were imposed on Iran. They had to disable a plutonium facility that also was a possible avenue toward a nuclear device. They had to allow intrusive inspections, not as intrusive as some had hoped, and they had to limit the degree of sophistication of their centrifuges. They had a very robust centrifuge production capacity, which had to be limited. They had to disable certain centrifuges that they already had, and they couldn't advance them further. 

There were a number of these other restrictions that were imposed in the return for which the Iranians were going to have sanctions removed, sanctions that had held back their economic growth, limited the degree to which they could ship their oil and gas to vendors, to customers around the world. It was a good trade for the Iranians, but from our perspective, it lacked certain things. It certainly lacked objectives that the administration, at that time, the Obama administration, we thought, had been pursuing, which was not only to limit the ability of the Iranians to produce a nuclear weapon, but to affect other aspects of Iranian behavior, their missile program, their advanced ballistic missile program, their support for proxies that endangered stability and security across the region and beyond. 

Those issues ended up getting dropped in the nuclear negotiations. They were just focused on nuclear program, which was a reason why AJC opposed the deal when it was announced in 2015 and why Donald Trump campaigning for president and then after he became president, after giving it a run to try to find a way to perhaps induce European partners to go back to the negotiating table and impose additional restrictions on the Iranians, including covering the missile program, lengthening the amount of time that would be held in check the nuclear program of Iran for maybe not just 15 years, but 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years. Those efforts were ultimately abandoned. Was impossible to reach an agreement between the United States and the European allies, and so in 2018 the president pulled out.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

So besides the man in charge, what has changed in the last decade since that time?

Jason Isaacson:  

Iran has serially and outrageously violated the terms that were agreed to 2015 they were initially allowed, as I said, to have 300 kilograms of low enriched uranium. They now have 8200 kilograms plus, according to the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and some of that is enriched up to a level of 60% which is really, frankly, just below the level needed for a nuclear device. So they're way out of alignment, way out of the agreement that they had reached in 2015 now, of course, in addition to that, the Iranian economy has suffered a decade of sanctions, high inflation, high unemployment, rolling. Blackouts in major cities, the brain drain. 

Smart Iranians realizing there's no economic future in their country and have left and of course, over the last year and a half, after the Hamas attacked on Israel of October 7, 2023 Iran, a supporter of Hamas, a funder and supplier of Hamas, after a few months, it posed its own attacks, fired missiles and drones at Israel in support of Hamas' activities and also in support of Hezbollah, the other Iranian proxy on Israel's northern border. So twice in the last year and a half, we've had attacks by Iran against Israel, which Israel responded to, and significantly weakened terrorists in Lebanon, Hezbollah. And of course, the Hamas, they decapitated Hezbollah, and they also struck back at Iran, after Iran fired missiles and drones that had mostly been intercepted by Israel's air defenses in cooperation with the United States, and frankly, some Arab partners and also France and the UK.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

So does Iran have as much leverage as it had in 2015?

Jason Isaacson:  

It must be said that Iran is weakened. It's weakened economically, it's weakened militarily, its air defenses have been exposed and significantly damaged, and it has seen that its attempts to strike at Israel are deflected. By a combination of us and and especially Israeli forces, and also with the support of some regional allies and European allies as well. 

So Iran goes into this negotiation with the Trump administration in a poorer position to make its demands heard and enforced, except for the fact that Iran is proud and it has shown under enormous economic duress, they have continued to advance their nuclear program. They clearly believe that this is part of their right and necessity if they are going to provide some kind of a defense for themselves against what they see as a US led us in cooperation, in partnership with Israel, led effort to weaken them and drive them away from their power in the Gulf, to limit their ability to exert influence across the region. So they may be in a poorer position. Whether that will be evident in the negotiating table is another question.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

President Trump criticized the Obama administration for not walking away when Iran didn't meet America's demands. Do you see this negotiation unfolding quite differently than that one did?

Jason Isaacson:  

Well, there are a couple of factors here. One the Iranians are famous negotiators, famous for being exacting and excruciating and insistent on certain points in the texts that they discuss. They have their own interpretations for texts. This was an issue in the past. And the pain that is exerted on their counterparts in negotiations, I have heard people talk about, both from the Gulf and from US officials, how difficult it is to actually have the negotiation with the Iranians. 

They will insist on going again and again and again through every codicil, every agreement, every annex, to a point that will sort of drive people up a wall until they, according to, I think the Iranians calculation, give up and say, Okay, fine, we'll concede you on that point. I'm concerned that they are so practiced at this negotiating style, which I suppose you have to say they've been practicing for thousands of years. I am not sure that in this kind of rushed effort to move into negotiations with, frankly, a very capable negotiator in Steve Witkoff, who certainly has the trust of the President. And he was successful in helping move forward hostage negotiations very early on. 

In fact, frankly, the day before the inauguration of President Trump, Steve Witkoff was instrumental in advancing that cease fire and hostage release deal. But there's a lot on Steve Witkoff's shoulders. He's also involved in the Ukraine, Russia negotiations. He is not and I'm sure he would say this himself, an expert on the Iranian nuclear file and all the details of the nuclear enrichment and the capabilities of the Iranians to deceive their negotiators. So I am hopeful that we will have something to celebrate after these negotiations get off the ground. But I think it's also fair to say that it's with some trepidation that we look ahead to the possibility of sitting down with practiced negotiators who have been doing this for decades.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

Is there a sense of urgency here? How long do you anticipate these negotiations taking?

Jason Isaacson:  

Frankly, the negotiation over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action took something like two years. We had a preliminary agreement in 2014 the final agreement in 2015 then the Biden administration, after the Trump administration, pulled out of the deal. When the Biden administration came in, in 2021 there was an effort for about two years to go back to the negotiating table with the Iranians. Very complicated, very difficult. Ultimately unsuccessful. It is not easy to negotiate with these guys. I'm hopeful that this administration have taken lessons from the experience of the past. Have experts around them who know the Iranian file, who have actually sat across the table from Iranians and can work with them to a successful conclusion. 

The other issue that must be put on the table here is that come October, one key point of leverage in this entire process, the ability to snap back the United Nations sanctions that were put in place years ago and that were then suspended when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action took effect, with the support of the United Nations. The ability to snap back those very heavy UN sanctions, which don't only apply to oil, energy sector applies to transportation and banking and other aspects of Iranian behavior, would really be crippling sanctions. The ability to snap those back, put those back in place, will expire on October 18 of this year, which means that we have just a few months to come up with some kind of agreement with Iran that is better than what we had in 2015. If we don't, all bets off. 

Then we're back to a place where we have lost the ability to have the entire international community, all UN member states, comply with a renewed set of sanctions. And then it'll be a whole process of trying to get other countries on board. If we're going to try to exert maximum pressure, really maximum pressure. That means not just us pressure, but maximum pressure applied by the international community at large. We're going to lose that if we don't reach some kind of an agreement or snap back before October 18. So the clock is ticking. The pressure is on. 

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

Well, certainly the scope of what the Trump administration is pursuing with Iran is much broader. The Obama era agreement, for example, limited Iran's stockpiles of nuclear material. The Trump administration wants to take it all apart, completely dismantle the country's nuclear infrastructure, dismantle its missile program, its longtime support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Certainly, that's what everyone wants. But is it realistic?

Jason Isaacson:  

What we've heard from President Trump and from Mike Waltz, the national security adviser and Secretary Rubio others who have commented on this in recent days, they are insisting that the Iranians dismantle, fully dismantle, in the words of the National Security Advisor, their ability to enrich uranium to have the stockpile necessary for an eventual nuclear bomb. You know, countries can have a nuclear program, but they don't have to enrich their own uranium. They can buy uranium for their nuclear reactors, for energy purposes and research and medical purposes. The Iranians want the full nuclear cycle. They basically got that in the negotiations a decade ago. 

This administration clearly wants to remove that ability for the Iranians. That's going to be a very hard thing to sell to the Iranians. And in addition to that, the administration has made it clear that preventing the Iranians from advancing a military nuclear program is just one of their objectives. It's a main objective, but the other objectives are eliminating their ability to advance their ballistic missile program, which was really designed for the sole purpose of being able to carry a nuclear warhead to Europe, to the United States, to Israel, other neighbors, other enemies of the Iranians. And then also, very clearly that this administration wants to negotiate an end to Iranian support for its proxy network, for the militias in Iraq and Syria. Used to be in Syria for Hezbollah, for Hamas, for other terrorist groups. 

That's a very tall order. You're basically saying, Iran, get down on your knees and give up all of the weapons that you have assiduously assembled over the last decades to protect yourself against the depredations of the horrible West and of your longtime neighbors who have maybe some designs on your territory, you might think. And they're not going to do that. So it's going to be very difficult. We have sanctions, we have influence, we have pressure that we can put on the Iranians, and there are two aircraft carrier battle groups that are stationed not very far away that will exert military pressure on the Iranians. So very complicated negotiations, a lot of assets, a lot of equities at play here, I wish the administration well. It will be a very difficult road to get the Iranians to see ground on all of these points.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

It is hard to believe that a hostile country, especially, that supports terrorism around the world, would agree to become essentially defenseless. But there is a history of it, right? I mean, in the early aughts, Libya, they agreed to dismantle their nuclear program under the Bush administration in 2003. Could something similar happen here? Or does the United States just not have that same leverage?

Jason Isaacson:  

Look, we've heard the reference to Libya. In fact, it was made by the administration just in recent days as well. And yes, it's true that in 2003 the Libyans did relinquish their nuclear weapons program. There were, I think, 10 sites across Libya that international inspectors were allowed to visit. And dismantle the program that had been going on for a number of years. But then, of course, we all know, eight years later, Muammar Gaddafi was toppled, was overthrown and hunted down and later killed. Another example in 1994 is the Budapest Memorandum in which Ukraine and Belarus and Kazakhstan gave up their nuclear weapons that were part of the arsenals that have been kept there by the former Soviet Union. Relinquished those weapons, those warheads were sent back to Russia. It was a very complicated negotiation. 

The United States and the United Kingdom and Russia all agreed at that time, 1994, that they would never attack Ukraine and Belarus and Kazakhstan. They would not use military force, they would not use economic coercion unless an act of self defense. But the agreement very controversial in Ukraine at the time, to give up what had been the world's third largest nuclear stockpile was relying on these assurances from the West that they would not be attacked if they gave up their nuclear deterrent and turned it back to now, what was Russia, which is the seat of power of the Soviet Union. 

Two decades later, Russia comes along and annexes Crimea and attacks in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. And now, of course, you know, here we are a decade after that, where Russia is seizing a significant portion of Ukrainian territory and killing 1000s of Ukrainians. So the lesson, yes, is that you can negotiate away a nuclear program. But the other lesson that follows from that is, yes, you can negotiate it away, and you can find yourself facing terrible dangers, having lost that deterrent capacity.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

Okay, so the US did previously hammer out a deal in 2015. Are there any details of that deal that are worth bringing back to the table, or is the Trump administration starting from scratch?

Jason Isaacson:  

Well, look, if they're able to, in these negotiations, come to an agreement on the dismantling, really the destruction, of the capacity of the Iranians to with any centrifuges advanced or otherwise, to enrich uranium, to create a stockpile from which they could later secretly advance a military nuclear program. If that's what we agree to, there have to be very comprehensive and intrusive and unannounced inspections by the IAEA, perhaps by other national agencies as well. If the Iranians could agree to that the United States overseeing the destruction of these facilities, that would pick up on sort of the inspection aspect of the 2015 agreement. And go, of course, significantly farther. 

If they're able to provide other assurances on other research facilities that the Iranians have, making sure that any research is unearthed, is exposed, is destroyed, ceases to present the possibility that the Iranians could actually advance the military nuclear program if all those steps could be put in place, which again, would be taking what happened in 2015 and JCPOA, and just magnifying it, intensifying it way beyond what was possible to negotiate at that time, according to those who tried very hard to negotiate a stronger agreement, but we're left with what they actually were able to accomplish in 2015. Let's hope that's possible. I don't know if it will be possible. 

But there would be, of course, in any agreement going forward, there would be certain elements that are related to and are outgrowths of and are really expansions on what happened in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, except that this administration has set a very high bar, and there will be many critics in the United States and Congress, around the world, in Israel but elsewhere in the region, if the administration rushes to a deal that falls short of its very ambitious expectations.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

You mentioned Israel, if President Trump follows through on his threats of military strikes on Iran, if negotiations don't go as he has planned, could that put Israel at more risk than it already is.

Jason Isaacson:  

It could. I think there is really no one in the region who wants a war, as everyone knows, as everyone has seen in successive military conflicts, the outcome of war is unpredictable, usually worse than what is expected. I think Israel does not want a war, but Israel cannot live with an Iranian nuclear threat, and if there is not the possibility of negotiating away this nuclear threat, I think that everyone would understand that a small country that has already been attacked twice in the last year by Iran, which had demonstrated its intention to strangle and destroy Israel again and again, and says it at every opportunity that it gets, everyone would understand if Israel had to take certain action, and if Israel and the United States were to act together. 

Are providing a greater chance of success, I think that would be understandable and, frankly, laudable. The best possible option is a negotiation in which the Iranian nuclear program is forever put out of business. Let's hope we can get to that. Let's hope that the Trump administration is successful in these efforts.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

And also, speaking of Israel, how much did or should Israel be contributing to these negotiations?

Jason Isaacson:  

Well, let's hope that, unlike in 2014 2015 when the United States negotiated with Iran, alongwith France and Germany and Great Britain and the European Union and Russia and China. Let's hope that the neighbors of Iran, those who were most affected by Iranian threats, are involved in this process in a much more serious way. 

There was a great deal of complaining in the Gulf, in Israel, justifiably, in 2015 that the JCPOA, which really was designed to make the region safer. And of course, American security interests of being advanced took place in the absence of real input on the part of those who would be most affected. And let's hope that this goes in a very different direction.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

In other words, not just Israel, but all of their neighbors in the Gulf.

Jason Isaacson:  

Not just Israel, but the neighbors in the GCC who themselves have been attacked from time to time by Iran and by Iran's proxies, the Houthis, which I did not mention before, of course, in Yemen, have attacked their neighbors on the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Aramco was attacked by Iranian missiles a number of years ago. Ships on their way to and from the UAE have been attacked. So they all have an interest in limiting the ability of Iran to project force and to threaten the region, particularly with the nuclear capability. 

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

Jason, thank you so much for your time and expertise on this matter. I suspect we will be talking again soon as this develops. 

Jason Isaacson:  

I look forward to it, Manya, thank you very much.

Manya Brachear Pashman:  

Be sure to tune in for my conversation with journalist Yardena Schwartz about her first book, Ghosts of a Holy War, the 1929 Massacre in Palestine that ignited the Arab Israeli conflict. Yardena shared how history repeated itself on October 7, 2023 and why understanding the past is essential to making sense of the present. 

From April 27 to 29th we will be at AJC Global Forum in New York City, join American Jewish Committee and over 2000 committed activists at the premier global Jewish advocacy conference of the year after the horrific attack on October 7, 2023 and in this fraught moment for the global Jewish community, escalating threats worldwide underscore the importance of our mission. All who care about the fate of the Jewish people Israel and the values of the civilized world must respond now with action, urgency and resolve. 

If ever there was a time to stand up and be counted, that time is now. Your voice is needed now more than ever. If you won't be with us in person, you can tune in to the webcast at AJC.org/GlobalForum2025.