What Trump would have to achieve to better Obama's Iran nuclear deal

The Trump administration has been very vocal about how much it believes its peace agreement with Iran will achieve over the course of negotiations, including claims it will be better than the deal former president Barack Obama's team struck more than 10 years ago.

That deal has set the bar, and for Mr Trump to clear it, he would need to secure compromises Iran has not made before and has said it would not make in the future.

Negotiations got underway in Switzerland this week, with both sides sending high-level representatives to a luxury resort on Lake Lucerne to talk about how to end the war permanently and who gets what if they do.

That is different from the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that both sides have already signed, which sets out the scope of negotiations, addresses the Strait of Hormuz, lifts the US blockade of Iranian ports, and halts fighting for now.

The goal, according to the White House, is a long-term and comprehensive peace agreement.

The Obama-era deal was called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the JCPOA. Signed between Iran, the US and five other world powers, it restricted Iran's nuclear program.

The terms of the deal prevented the regime from building a nuclear weapon at a time when analysts believed there was a real threat of one.

These are the conditions Mr Trump and his team would have to win in negotiations with Iran's regime for any new deal to achieve the president's lofty ambitions and be better than the one the US already had.

Enrichment, monitors and Iran's stockpile

In 2013, what would become a multi-country, multi-year effort to reach a deal with Iran over its nuclear program started with a phone call.

Hassan Rouhani had been newly installed as the Iranian president and told the UN General Assembly his nation was considering a compromise on its nuclear program.

It was an opening that led to a historic conversation.

Rouhani would speak directly to Barack Obama at the White House. It was the first official contact between the nations' leaders since the Islamic Revolution took hold in 1979.

It kicked off years of negotiations across regions and with the world's biggest powers, eventually delivering the JCPOA.

That deal was focused on Iran's nuclear program and did not delve into other regional issues.

Over more than 150 pages, the Obama-era agreement goes into great technical detail and explains the fundamental bargain: restrictions on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for economic relief.

Iran agreed to limits on its research and development, a reduction in its rate of uranium enrichment and the size of its stockpile. It agreed to have those commitments monitored and, in exchange, gained relief from some sanctions.

Some of the technical details included:

Enrichment of uranium capped at 3.67 per cent purity and restricted to the Natanz facility only

Reduction of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium to 300 kilograms

Reduction in the use of centrifuges

In exchange, US and European sanctions relating to Iran's nuclear program were lifted, and some assets unfrozen.

Sanctions relating to other issues, such as Iran's missile development, terrorism and human rights abuses, stayed in place.

These terms had time limits too; for example, the cap on enrichment rates and stockpiling would have expired in 2031.

But all parties were holding up their ends of the JCPOA before the US withdrew from it during Mr Trump's first term.

"The restrictions started to fray in 2019 after Iran began to breach its nuclear commitments following the US leaving the deal in 2018," said senior Iran analyst at Crisis Group Naysan Rafati.

"It began to bring new, advanced centrifuges online. It began to build up its stockpile, first from 3.67 per cent, to 4.5 per cent, then to 20 per cent, and then ultimately to 60 per cent.

"And for the International Atomic Energy Agency … they've been allowed access to a couple of facilities over the past year, but there are major gaps in our knowledge of Iran's centrifuge production, how many they had, how many they might still have accessible, and obviously the fissile material, [or the stockpile]."

JCPOA negotiated outside wartime

Unlike the JCPOA, this week's negotiations did not begin with a phone call and a resetting of the relationship, but in the wake of two wars, in which two nuclear-armed nations struck Iran.

"From the Iranian point of view, Trump cannot be trusted," said director of the Middle East Studies Forum at Deakin University Shahram Akbarzadeh.

"They continue to ask: 'How do we know you're not going to violate your own agreement? Or how do we know if the successor president will not violate the agreement, just the way you did to Obama's agreement?'

"This atmosphere of mistrust makes it so much harder."

The current negotiations are being brokered by Pakistan and Qatar, with support from other regional actors, but they are between the US and Iran, with no other nations party to them.

Under Obama, the US brought together a group of nations referred to as "P5 + 1", all permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as Germany, to bring Iran to the table on its nuclear program.

China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, the US and Germany spent years on the task and, when Mr Trump pulled out in 2018, the Europeans attempted to keep the deal together.

"As the European powers failed to salvage the agreement and failed to bring the US back into the agreement, Iran announced that it was gradually moving away from JCPOA," Dr Akbarzadeh said.

"So Iran started expanding [and] enhancing the enrichment program and announced to the international committee that it was doing so."

There are differences, too, in the scope and ambition of the negotiations.

The JCPOA only dealt with Iran's nuclear program.

"What President Trump needs to achieve to top the JCPOA is, I believe, adding additional components to the agreement that go beyond the nuclear issue," Dr Akbarzadeh said.

"That would typically involve Iran's missile program, which has been very problematic for Israeli security … [and] it would need to address proxies."

It's worth noting that when Mr Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA in 2018, part of the reason he gave was that it "fails to address the regime's development of ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear warheads".

He also said "the deal does nothing to constrain Iran's destabilising activities, including its support for terrorism," referring to the regime's support of its regional proxy groups.

The MOU that has been signed signals that any comprehensive peace deal would consider a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon, which does bring Iran's regional proxies, such as the militant group Hezbollah, into play.

"In a way, the JCPOA succeeded because it was a nuclear-related issue and once you siloed it from other things, it made it easier to focus on that one big thing," Mr Rafati said.

"Whereas now, the potential of [negotiating over] regional and nuclear issues is potentially both the strength of the MOU and what becomes of it, but also shows that there are potential weak links and spoilers that could disrupt the process."

In that sense, the current negotiations have greater ambitions than the JCPOA, propose a shorter time frame and kick off from a war footing riddled with mistrust.

In terms of Iran's missile program, analysts agree it is a red line for the regime.

Before the official text of the MOU had been made public, a version was published in Iranian state media that included a line now missing from the document.

The line said: "Discussions about Iran's missile program and support for resistance groups have been definitively removed from the agenda."

In a diplomatic dance, this type of line published in an unofficial capacity can be a signal to what one side really wants or intends to seek.

Mr Trump has changed his position on Iran's missile capability over the course of the war, initially saying destroying it was a goal of the operation before conceding, after the G7 summit, that it would be "a little bit unfair for them not to have some" if other nations do.

"Iran will never compromise its missile program," said honorary senior lecturer in Iranian studies at the Australian National University, Alam Saleh.

He said the war had helped reinforce missile capability as a core pillar of Iran's regional deterrence power. He also noted the conflict had added the potential to close the Strait of Hormuz as a new pillar.

"Iran voluntarily has limited its missile range up to 2,000 kilometres only. They can agree on this because Iran doesn't want anything beyond that," Dr Saleh said.

"Iran's threat comes regionally, even if the United States wants to attack Iran, they need to come to the region."

Trump's criticism of the JCPOA

Iran's nuclear program is in a very different state today than it was more than a decade ago when the JCPOA was signed.

Back then, the Iranian program was actively enriching uranium and "exceptional in the threat that it posed," according to Mr Rafati.

"Now we are in a different place," he said.

Last year, during the 12-day war, the US dropped its so-called bunker buster bombs on the regime's facilities.

"Right now, Iran is not enriching. As far as we know, based on publicly available information, statements from the US government and the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], Iran is at zero enrichment involuntarily and has been since last June," Mr Rafati said.

The US wants zero enrichment, and Iran wants "some kind of recognition of its right to enrich" as a sovereign nation, according to Mr Rafati.

"There are also disputes over what to do with the fissile material. Iran wants to keep it in the country. The US would ideally like to see it shipped out."

After the first week of negotiations, US Vice-President JD Vance said Iran had agreed to allow nuclear inspectors in the country, but Tehran pushed back, saying no new commitments had been made.

Under the JCPOA, Iran was complying with the monitoring arrangement.

Mr Trump has long had a very robust opposition to the JCPOA, and one of his most-loved lines of criticism was that the Obama-era deal delivered planes stocked with cash to Iran.

What happened was that, as the agreement came into effect, Iranian assets were unfrozen and debts were agreed to be repaid, but in some cases, cash was the only option.

"It was really difficult to actually transfer large amounts of funds from European or American banks to Iranian banks, and that resulted in a large amount of cash in hard copy being loaded onto planes and then sent over," Dr Akbarzadeh said.

"That proved to be very, very controversial, and it still haunts President Obama for delivering cash to the mullahs of Iran."

The issue for Mr Trump now is that transferring funds to the regime has not got much easier, and his MOU also suggests Iranian assets will be unfrozen.

"President Trump is facing a very similar problem that President Obama faced. Money still needs to be transferred to Iran, and there are no banks with the institutional linkages and facilities to make it happen," Dr Akbarzadeh said.

The JCPOA delivered sanctions relief only once there was an agreement on nuclear restrictions.

But the current negotiations are taking place after months of war and shifting leverage.

The MOU that was signed lifted sanctions on the sale of Iran's oil and other commodities as the regime agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz, but before negotiations over the nation's nuclear capabilities had really begun.

"It provides a lot of reward and gains to the Iranian side, even before we have started talking about Iran's nuclear program,"

Dr Akbarzadeh said.