The Iran Tipping Point: Why 2025 Could Bring a Deal or a War
As long as I have been covering this issue things have never been so uncertain.
I’ve been working on and following Iran for the past 15 years since the start of the Obama Administration. As the Trump Administration heads into indirect negotiations with Iran this weekend in Oman, I cannot recall a time where things were as unclear as they are today, and where both the likelihood of a deal and of a conflict seemed so high.
US-Iran relations are consistently in one of three modes:
In most moments, the chance that we’ll muddle through is probably 80% with 10% each for a war or a deal. But right now, I would put muddling through at 40% with each of the other two scenarios at 30%. Let’s look at why.
The first reason why we may have a deal is that President Trump keeps saying he wants one. He has made it clear time and time again, most recently in his press conference with Netanyahu when he said “I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with.” The desire for a deal isn’t in and of itself enough to get one, but as we’ve seen with the tariffs and with other issues, when Trump insists he wants to do something he should be taken seriously, and usually it means there is a strong chance he will try to find a way to do it. As he considers his options, Trump is likely to hear from at least some of his advisors – most notably those less inclined to direct military intervention such as Vice President JD Vance and some of the senior officials at the Pentagon – that the options when it comes to setting back Iran’s nuclear program are not very good. Some of the key facilities are deeply buried and any military option is likely to only temporarily set back the program and could lead Iran to double down in its determination to get a bomb while retaliating with strikes against US bases in the Gulf, and creating a very unstable scenario where the US and Israel need to repeatedly “mow the lawn” with new strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities every few months.
Second, Iran is as weak as it has been in a long time and may really need a deal. In the past few months, it has suffered a series of major setbacks in the region. The war last fall between Israel and Hezbollah went much better for Israel than anyone – including both Israeli and American officials – anticipated. Hezbollah – Iran’s strongest and most important non-state proxy in the Middle East – was decapitated and suffered serious setbacks on the ground. Add to that the collapse of the Assad regime – Iran’s closest Arab ally and a key conduit for rearming Hezbollah – and Iran’s position in the Levant and its ability to use it to pressure Israel militarily has been dramatically set back. Meanwhile, working together, the United States and Israel successfully defeated two Iranian ballistic missile attacks against Israel in April and October 2024 and the Israeli response, which decimated Iran’s air defenses, only further weakened Iran’s position. And in recent weeks the Trump Administration seems to be making moves to add military pressure on Iran to change its calculus – most notably sending a second carrier strike group to the Middle East and B-2s to the Indian Ocean base on Diego Garcia from where they can operate more easily in the Middle East. Add to that, that it has now been 7 years since Trump’s departure from the Iran Nuclear Deal and the reapplication of sanctions, which were maintained during the Biden Administration, and the cumulative economic effect on Iran has been profound.
A third reason we could see a deal is that there is a ticking clock that will put pressure on all of the parties to try to come to an arrangement by the fall. One of the key provisions of the JCPOA was that in October 2025, UN Security Council Sanctions on Iran would be lifted and Iran would no longer be on the agenda of the Security Council. However, there is also a mechanism where if Iran is in violation of the agreement, the other parties to the JCPOA can snapback UN sanctions. Since the US left the deal in 2018, it no longer has the option to snapback. But given how out of compliance Iran is with the agreement at this point, and the advances it has made in its nuclear program since Trump collapsed the JCPOA in 2018, the three European parties to the deal – the UK, France, and Germany – are very likely to snapback sanctions this summer or early fall if no deal is reached. Iranian officials have stated that they would leave the non-proliferation regime (NPT) potentially in response, resulting in the removal of nearly all nuclear inspection mechanisms in Iran and leaving no international visibility into a program on the precipice of a bomb. Neither side wants to see this highly escalatory scenario, which creates a ticking clock to get a deal over the next few months – something that is always useful in a negotiation.
Another one of the big differences from when the JCPOA was negotiated in 2015 is the position of the Gulf States – especially the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Back then, they were much more open and even in some cases willing to support a military strike or encourage greater US confrontation. But their position has changed. Their strong preference now is to avoid a war, which would threaten their number one priority of building up their economies and diversifying away from oil. This shift from confrontation to rapprochement with Iran will matter to Trump who is highly focused on major Gulf investment in the US and on a desire to get an Israel-Saudi normalization deal. Indeed, his first foreign trip will be to the Gulf next month – an indicator of how important these countries’ views may be in determining his policies.
As for PM Netanyahu, the most likely instigator of a military confrontation with Iran, he has a long track record of being risk-averse when it comes to the use of military force. And, Trump has tremendous leverage over him given Trump’s popularity in Israel – especially with Bibi’s right-wing base. It is hard to imagine Netanyahu will openly and directly defy Trump if Trump tells him not to do it.
Despite the rosy picture I just painted, a number of the factors laid out above could also mean that in the next few months, Israel – perhaps on its own or perhaps with direct intervention from the United States – strikes Iran’s nuclear program triggering a significant escalation in the region. First, while Trump really wants a deal, most of the decision makers in the administration have traditionally been much more hawkish on Iran, including Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, and many of the political appointees who work for them. They and Netanyahu may convince Trump to pursue unrealistic terms such as the complete dismantlement of the nuclear program, which could lead to the collapse in negotiations. Indeed, in his press conference with Netanyahu Trump specifically mentioned the Libya model, whereby in the early 2000s Moammar Qaddafi agreed to complete dismantlement. What is left unsaid is that only years later during the Arab Spring, Qhadaffi’s lack of a nuclear deterrent likely played a role in the US decision to support a revolution that ultimately toppled him. The lesson for Iran’s regime? Don’t totally give up your nuclear capability if you want to stay in power. If Trump keeps these absolutist demands a deal is unlikely.
Moreover, an effective nuclear agreement with Iran requires deep technical analysis and a team of scientists and sanctions experts, deeply versed in the nitty gritty of the Iran nuclear issue. Those people exist in the US government, but the Trump Administration has still not put that team together and it’s unclear if they have the will and capacity to do so or would even listen to the experts you need to make something like this happen.
Another factor is Trump’s very brash style and threats he regularly issues towards Iran. The Iranians are a proud nation that is more likely to respond to constant threats by getting their backs up. Trump’s very public threats against Iran could go over quite badly and reduce the chance of a deal. His inability to keep anything quiet in a delicate negotiation, such as his inaccurate statements earlier this week that the US and Iran would begin direct talks, were a case in point, causing Iran to come out and strongly deny that direct negotiations were underway.
On top of that, Iran’s historic weakness in the region, which I described above, not only increases the likelihood of a deal but also increases the likelihood of conflict. Israel may calculate that this moment of Iranian weakness is the ideal time to strike the nuclear program because of Iran’s inability to effectively respond, with so many of its proxies unable to fight back meaningfully, its missile capabilities less effective than expected, and its air defenses dramatically degraded. As risk averse as Netanyahu has been over the years about the use of military force, in the past six months he has seen real successes against Iran that could certainly lead him to conclude that now is the time to strike. And who knows, he might be right that at this moment of Iranian weakness it will be restrained in retaliating. But that is a significant risk to take and just one Iranian missile getting through and causing a mass casualty event in Israel, the Gulf, or an American military base could send us off to the races.
Iran’s weakness combined with how close it is to getting a bomb, might also trigger an Iranian decision to dash for a nuclear weapon if it concludes that it is so vulnerable now that it needs a bomb for deterrence. This could also cause a US or Israeli military strike as we seek to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Finally, the same ticking clock of impending sanctions, snapback, and potential Iranian NPT withdrawal that might create the pressure for a deal, could also generate the conditions for a significant escalation. It does not currently appear that either side is in a rush to make a deal, and especially if the negotiations in Oman remain indirect, they will be painfully slow and inefficient. The US and Iran might not want a war, but if time expires and the Europeans snapback, and the Iranians feel compelled to follow through on their threat to leave the NPT, the US and Iran may inadvertently stumble into a war that neither wants.
Despite all the reasons for either a war or a deal, muddling through without either is still most likely. It is highly plausible that for all reasons outlined above, it will be too hard to get a new nuclear agreement. Trump won’t want a risky war and the Gulf, the Europeans, Russia, and China will all push for restraint. Netanyahu’s risk aversion and unwillingness to go directly against President Trump will keep him from striking. Iran’s weakened position in the region will mean it is not spoiling for a fight, so even in the event of snapback it will find a way to avoid the most provocative of actions such as leaving the NPT or kicking out inspectors. Perhaps the P5+1 and Iran will even find a way to kick the can down the road on snapback.
And so, the bottom line is this. Muddling through is still, as it almost always is, most likely. But the chances of a nuclear agreement or a war are both much higher in 2025 than they’ve been in a while.