Next, an Iran nuclear deal with Chinese characteristics

Pope Leo XIV and Giorgia Meloni should take comfort from the fact that the main thrust of Donald Trump’s attack on them contains a clue as to how peace can be restored between Iran and the United States.

By alleging that their opposition to his war means that the Pope and Meloni must be happy for Iran to possess a nuclear weapon (and even to attack Italy with one) Trump has shown that he is now reframing the war’s purpose as being chiefly about nukes rather than regime change or anything else.

Moreover, this retrospective reframing, made at the risk of alienating many of America’s estimated 53 million Catholic voters, indicates that he hopes that Iran can now be forced to agree to constraints on its nuclear program, allowing him to declare a sort of victory.

This outcome is possible, but to achieve it he will probably have to get help from China. And his negotiators will have to borrow from the work of some of the people he hates most: Barack Obama and the governments of Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

Nuclear weapons will not be the only determinant of whether Iran and the United States can renew their ceasefire which expires on April 21^st and come to a peace agreement. Other issues on which the two sides remain apart include

• the terms by which the Strait of Hormuz can be managed in future;
• the American, European and other western sanctions on Iranian exports, foreign assets and financial institutions;
• Iranian support for the violent militant groups of Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen; and
• the future of Iran’s ballistic missiles program.

But Trump’s recent highlighting of nukes suggests that this may be the key that can unlock the rest of the deal, at least from his point of view.

Let us be clear: no one is in favor of more countries than the current nine – America, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Britain, France, Israel and North Korea – possessing nuclear weapons. The question is: What can and should be done to prevent anyone else from joining the nuclear club?

The historic answer has been the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, under which both nuclear and non-nuclear states made commitments to prevent the further spread of weapons technology while allowing and managing the sharing of peaceful nuclear-energy technology.

Since that treaty was signed, however, three new nuclear-weapons states have emerged, in India, Pakistan and North Korea, while Israel has also developed a nuclear capability that it has never officially acknowledged. While this proliferation may simply have arisen through espionage, it is also likely that some of the existing nuclear-weapons states provided a helping hand.

That spread of weapons is worrying, but that worry has been mitigated by the belief that with the possible exception of North Korea all the nuclear-weapons states would be deterred by the knowledge that any use of atomic bombs would lead to immediate and equally destructive retaliation. Only a suicidal regime would ever use them.

The real nuclear danger is of such weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups that might not be deterred by the notion of “mutually assured destruction.”

Ever since evidence first emerged a quarter-century ago that Iran had developed a quite advanced covert program for enriching uranium, America and other governments have sought non-military ways to ensure that that program can be used only for civilian nuclear power and not for weapons.

The culmination of that process came in more than two years of diplomacy in which six countries collaborated to persuade Iran to accept constraints, in a deal signed in 2015. The six were America, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and China.

That deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA)², placed limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment programme in return for phased relief from European and American sanctions, with an agreed process of inspection and verification by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Although the three European governments had done a lot of the diplomatic heavy lifting, this Iran nuclear deal was seen as one of the main foreign-policy achievements of President Obama’s administration. Remarkably, even China and Russia were persuaded to sign up to it – which is why Donald Trump attacked the deal during his 2016 election campaign and then as president withdrew America from it in 2018.

Israel never trusted the JCPOA. Part of the problem was that Israel knew very well that Iran conducts a lot of secret weapons programs, so was not inclined to rely upon official Iranian promises, especially while it was under frequent attack by the Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Hamas. While other countries might ultimately feel reassured that if Iran obtained an atomic bomb it would be deterred by the threat of Israeli or American retaliation, Israel would rather not see that proposition tested.

So, the irony is that now, if serious talks between Iranian and American negotiators do resume, what will be on the table will essentially be an updated version of the 2015 agreement, the JCPOA.

Thanks to the June 2025 bombings by America and Israel, the new deal would begin with Iran having a greatly reduced capacity for uranium enrichment. A big new element will be that Iran is believed to possess 400 kg of enriched uranium, partly buried under rubble. A way will have to be found to deal with that stock of probably partially damaged but still potent material.

Iran will never agree to renounce its sovereign right to have a program of uranium enrichment, just as Israel will never believe that Iran has permanently given up ambitions to become a nuclear-weapons state. If Trump does want to secure a nuclear agreement so as to end the war and get the US Navy out of the Middle East, his negotiators will have to find ways to overcome these problems.

China and the mechanisms agreed upon in the JCPOA both offer obvious answers. China, having been a signatory to the JCPOA and as a country that is already helping Iran with weapons and finance, could be asked to lead a consortium to handle the stock of enriched uranium and even to help oversee Iran’s civilian nuclear-power program.

China has no strategic interest in Iran’s becoming a nuclear-weapons state so might even be trusted in this role by Israel, Europe and America. China has reportedly already been involved behind the scenes in encouraging a peace deal, and with Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping due to meet in Beijing on May 14-15 the potential for a solution agreed between these two superpowers is clear.

European governments can offer their experience during the JCPOA negotiations, and the IAEA stands ready to resume its role of verification.

Will Iran accept this? Most likely, if economic sanctions are lifted, even in a phased way, it will, especially if the result is deeper, economically beneficial relations with China. The big question, however, will be whether Trump can accept it.

Bill Emmott is a former longtime editor in chief of The Economist.

First published in Italian translation by La Stampa and republished with permission, this article is among the offerings that are available on the author’s Substack newsletter, Bill Emmott’s Global View.