Why Trump could surprise the world with an Iran deal

Any other day, any other week, and the revelation would have dominated headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. With leaders the world over preoccupied with the turmoil caused by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, however, the news that the United States had made overtures to Iran and that direct talks were to take place on Saturday had to take a much lower billing.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

It has to be stressed, nonetheless, how much of a departure this is. It represents a far bigger turn in recent US policy than Trump's first phone call to Vladimir Putin last month, which ended more than three years of isolating the Russian president following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It may not be quite "Nixon to China", but it has the potential to transform the politics of the region and beyond.

The United States and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, when student revolutionaries held US diplomats hostage in their Tehran embassy for 444 days. There have been almost no contacts since, with one exception: the nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which committed Iran to limiting its nuclear activity to civil energy in return for the lifting of sanctions.

The US was a party to this agreement as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, but it had little effect on bilateral relations, and Trump withdrew the US from the treaty in his first 18 months as president, accusing Iran of violations. There is then a particular irony that it should be Trump, at the start of his second term, who is broaching talks on a new Iran nuclear treaty.

There are, though, many reasons why such a move could make sense and might even have a chance of success.