No More Deals with Iran, Mr. President

Envoy Steve Witkoff’s handling of negotiations with Hamas is a troubling sign.

By Noah Rothman

In the week leading up to Donald Trump’s inauguration, a brief but sloppy food fight broke out between the Trump team and the outgoing Biden administration over who deserves credit for finalizing a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip. With the benefit of additional reporting, we can now safely conclude that the agreement was truly a joint venture. The deal likely would not have happened in the absence of the Trump administration’s pressure on all regional actors — Israel as well as Hamas and its benefactors. But that pressure only helped cement the framework that Joe Biden’s administration devised.

Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, admitted as much. “We had nothing to do with the mathematics behind the prisoner release and the hostage release,” he told Fox News Channel hosts Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer on Wednesday. Those terms, Witkoff added, were set “months ago in the so-called May 27 protocol that was agreed to by Hamas, by the Israelis, and monitored by the United States under the Biden administration.”

“So that set the mathematics around how many Palestinians in Israeli jails would be released for each hostage who was coming out,” Witkoff continued. For reference, the terms of that 42-day multi-stage process compel Hamas to return just 33 of the 90-plus hostages still in Hamas’s hands, some of whom are likely already deceased. In exchange, Israel will be forced to release a staggering 1,904 Palestinian prisoners and detainees — some of whom are considered terror threats — back into Palestinian and even Israeli society.

“Twenty-one of the prisoners with Israeli citizenship or residency are terrorists serving life sentences for killing people,” Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reported. “Though murderers are supposed to be deported in the framework of the deal — likely to Qatar or Turkey — eight of them will be able to live freely in Israel.” That’s quite a sacrifice on Israel’s part. Acceding to an agreement that gives Hamas a new lease on life and an opportunity to retain power on the Strip — in direct contravention of Trump officials’ assurances that the terrorist group will not have a future in Gaza — was not something to which the Israeli government was amenable prior to team Trump’s intervention.

But the terms of the deal seemed less crucial to Witkoff (and, presumably, his bosses) than getting to an agreement — any agreement, even if it was Biden’s. “Our job was to speed up the process because it felt like it had bogged down,” he concluded. “So, that was the job, and we were able to get it done.” That they did. But the terms are unsatisfying, and Hamas is already declining to observe them. The headline may read “deal” in bold print, but the details matter.

This disheartening affair could have implications ahead of what might be one of if not the foremost foreign policy challenge facing this administration: the prospect of a nuclear Iran.

Iran is “pressing the gas pedal,” the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, warned this week. He warned that Iran had amassed a 200-kilogram stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — short of the 90 percent purity needed for weapons-grade material, but that threshold can be crossed quickly. In theory, Iran already possesses the materials necessary for about five fissionable devices.

The Iranian regime cannot be allowed to achieve threshold nuclear status. It is a millenarian regime organized around eschatological principles. It has proven many times over that its stated desire to eradicate the world’s only Jewish state isn’t just talk. The October 7 massacre and the subsequent wars in the region, in which Iran’s proxy militias were the aggressor, demonstrated that Iran has the will to act on its threats. Its ballistic-missile bombardment of Israel in April and October last year showed that it has the means to deliver a nuclear weapon over Israeli skies. An Iranian nuclear breakout would be a prelude to catastrophe.

So what does the Trump administration plan to do about it? That’s hard to say. But Witkoff’s handling of negotiations with Hamas is a troubling sign. He appeared unconflicted about America’s semi-direct negotiations with that Iran-backed terrorist group. He gushed over the Qataris and their prime minister, whose “communications skills with Hamas were indispensable here.” Indeed, Iran’s allies in Doha could be instrumental in inking further deals, not just with Iran’s proxies but Tehran itself.

“It would be nice if the issues with Iran could be resolved without Israel attacking its military facilities,” the President Trump said on Thursday. Those remarks could be construed as an ultimatum, but they could just as easily suggest a window of diplomatic opportunity. After all, “there are ways that you can make it absolutely certain, if you make a deal,” Trump continued, although you’d have to “verify times ten.”

We’ve been through this game before. Iran never fully complied with the JCPOA’s inspection regime, and the Democrats’ eagerness to preserve the deal for the deal’s sake led them to look the other way. Iran would probably jump at the opportunity to strike another bargain that provides it with sanctions relief and access to international markets in exchange for empty promises. Even a nuclear-deal-style arrangement that temporarily mothballs some showpiece aspects of its nuclear program would only postpone the inevitable confrontation with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

It is not a stretch to say that the Islamic Republic has not occupied such a precarious position since the earliest days of the revolution. Now is the time for the Trump administration to press its advantages. But if the shaky cease-fire deal in Gaza is indicative of future performance, Team Trump may be more inclined toward concordance than conflict.

Noah Rothmanis a senior writer atNational Review. He is the author ofThe Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back against Progressives’ War on FunandUnjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.@NoahCRothman