The election of Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian, who will be officially sworn in tomorrow as the ninth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, opens up the possibility of an improvement—however slight—in Iran’s relations with the United States. That relationship, and any future nuclear agreement with Iran, hinges in part on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November.
Pezeshkian comes to office at a crucial time for Iran, as it faces multiple domestic and regional challenges, from a sluggish and sanctions-wracked economy to rising internal discontent, a deepening confrontation with Israel, the ongoing standoff with the United States over its nuclear program, and the advanced age of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a looming succession crisis. Taking into account the many challenges he faces, and the fact that he will have to balance against hardliners elsewhere in government, Pezeshkian is unlikely to make significant policy changes, since the Supreme Leader sets the overall direction of Iran’s foreign policy.
On the most important issue, stalled international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, Pezeshkian faces significant domestic obstacles. While there may be openings for a nuclear deal that includes concessions from Iran, the odds of Pezeshkian managing a major breakthrough are slim, and suggest scope for a deal that will fall far short of the original 2015 nuclear agreement.
More Continuity than Change
Iran’s security strategy is set by Supreme Leader Khamenei and managed through the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), where Khamenei and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) maintain dominance. There are strong elements of continuity built into Iran’s strategic posture that presidents have rarely attempted to influence. The posture of “defense in depth,” whereby Iran supports proxies and allies outside of its borders to compensate for its conventional military weakness, has endured through reformist, moderate, and hardliner governments. The doctrine of “strategic patience” connected to Khamenei is likely to persist for as long as Khamenei remains Supreme Leader and likely beyond, given its significance to the nation’s defense-in-depth strategy.
Though he is a member of the reformist faction, Pezeshkian ran a fairly conservative campaign and is likely to keep his agenda modest. It is unlikely he will attempt to push for any significant changes in either Iran’s security posture or in the institutions that manage that posture, as he’ll need support from relevant actors—particularly the Supreme Leader and the IRGC—to accomplish his policy goals. .
Nuclear Concessions: An Uphill Battle
Pezeshkian is likely to engage the United States and push for new talks aimed at delivering sanctions relief for Iran’s battered economy. However, to achieve his goal, Pezeshkian will have to deliver concessions on Iran’s nuclear program. Any attempt to do so will face considerable obstacles.
In short, the circumstances that produced the original agreement have fundamentally changed. Before the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran’s nuclear program was advanced but not capable of quickly producing a weapon. Since the nuclear deal collapsed following the U.S. withdrawal in 2018, Iran’s program has advanced to the point that Iran is now a nuclear threshold state. Since 2021, Iran has stockpiled uranium enriched to 60% levels (a small technical step away from 90%) and experimented with enriching past 80% in early 2023. With existing centrifuge cascades, Iran could produce sufficient fissile material for several nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks, dramatically shortening its “breakout” time – the time required to amass sufficient fissile material for a bomb, though producing and testing a weapon could take up to a year.
The nuclear build-out managed since 2018 has increased the importance of the program within Iran’s security strategy. When negotiations over a return to the JCPOA reached their conclusion in August 2022, Iran opted to reject the U.S. offer, on the grounds that surrendering technical advances were not worth the benefits of sanctions relief. Since the confrontation with Israel in April 2024 – where Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles directly at Israel in response to the bombing of its consulate in Damascus and the death of several high-ranking IRGC officers –multiple officials have publicly implied Iran may build a bomb if it comes under attack.
Moreover, a sizable segment of Iran’s security establishment and political elite view the benefit of sanctions relief as a chimera, are critical of any accord with the United States (which, they argue, cannot be trusted to abide by any deal, given the JCPOA experience), and believe economic outlets outside the scope of U.S. sanctions are sufficient to ensuring Iran’s future prosperity. Iran’s disdain for a deal would likely only harden if Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election, given that the Trump administration was responsible for withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 and enacting a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.
Despite these obstacles, there are signs within the regime of support for renewing diplomacy with the West. Khamenei reportedly cleared such talks in September 2023, and there have been rounds of indirect talks with the United States since early 2022. Pezeshkian will appoint Abbas Araghchi, a former nuclear negotiator who worked on the original 2015 deal, as his foreign minister. Pezeshkian might also draw from other changes in Iran’s strategic posture that could conceivably create space—albeit limited—for concessions on the nuclear program.
There are two shifts that create this limited bargaining space. First, Iran’s strategic posture is stronger than it was in 2015. Russia and China, which both signed on to the U.S.-led effort toward a nuclear deal before 2015, have now moved much closer to Iran, with the former serving as a strategic partner while the latter buys millions of barrels of sanctioned Iranian oil. Second, Iran’s regional position has strengthened. The Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7 triggered a war that has undermined Israel and threatened its military with a long-term quagmire. Iran’s demonstration of its ballistic missile capabilities on April 14 proved Israel is vulnerable to attack, while the ascendance of the Houthis in Yemen into a more assertive regional player post-Oct. 7 suggests an expansion of Iran’s capabilities via its regional alliance network.
The United States, while still the dominant military power in the region, has emphasized a new regional security infrastructure supported by an Israeli-Saudi axis, where its own role can slowly diminish. Riyadh’s current interest in normalizing relations with Tehran and preserving stability benefits Iran, as does the idea—if not yet the reality—of a U.S. pivot away from the Persian Gulf.
Potential Pathways to a “Less for Less” Agreement
Iran’s strengthened regional deterrence posture creates potential space for concessions on the nuclear front. However, such concessions are likely to be smaller than what was included in the JCPOA. Similarly, the United States is unlikely to expand sanctions relief to the extent present in the 2015 agreement, while the scope for diplomacy narrows considerably in the event of a second Trump administration.
There are several steps Iran could take now to create some bargaining room. Iran could improve its relationship with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by expanding inspectors’ access to facilities, resolving outstanding questions regarding past nuclear activities (the so-called “safeguards” issue), and turning over material covering gaps in the agency’s monitoring program. Iran could also agree to limit its enrichment and stockpiling of uranium enriched to 60%. It has shown flexibility on this point in the past, reducing both the pace of enrichment and the overall size of the stockpile.
In exchange, the United States could relax certain oil and gas sanctions on Iran, while leaving most others in place. An obvious area is Iran’s oil exports, which have already recovered thanks to China’s willingness to buy Iran’s crude and U.S. reluctance to sanction Chinese entities involved in the transactions. The United States could grant waivers covering oil purchases, allowing Iran to sell at market prices, delivering a significant fiscal windfall. The United States could also provide waivers for individual energy projects, including a planned gas pipeline to Pakistan, that would deliver limited economic relief while doing little to change the existing sanctions policy. Waivers would be contingent on Iran abiding by the terms of the agreement and could be quickly withdrawn in the event of Iranian non-compliance. The United States likely wouldn’t repeal existing executive orders or sanctions actions targeting specific Iranian actors, nor is it likely to reverse the Trump-era designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization.
There are significant barriers to facilitating even a limited arrangement, including the political outlook in the United States and the high level of mistrust toward such negotiations in Iran. Neither side views the concept of increased engagement with any degree of enthusiasm, and a deal that does not meet the demands of either party is a non-starter. Yet inaction threatens a far worse outcome for the United States and its allies, as Iran moves ever closer to producing a nuclear weapon. In the absence of adequate military solutions, a renewed push toward diplomacy is essential, even if prospects for a new deal remain dim.