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News Analysis
The president now confronts the reality that stopping Iran’s drive toward a bomb may require letting it continue to make some nuclear fuel.
By David E. Sanger and Farnaz Fassihi
David E. Sanger, who reported from Washington, and Farnaz Fassihi, who reported from New York, have written extensively about Iran’s nuclear program.
June 10, 2025Updated 9:22 p.m. ET
The standoff between President Trump’s negotiating team and Iran boils down to this: whether the United States is willing to risk allowing Iran to continue producing nuclear fuel if the alternative is no deal and the possibility of another war in the Middle East.
To Mr. Trump and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, the negotiations with Iran are a new experience, and Iran’s insistence that it will never surrender its ability to enrich uranium on its soil threatens to scuttle an agreement that the president only a few weeks ago confidently predicted was within reach.
But it is almost exactly the same vexing dilemma that President Barack Obama faced a decade ago. Reluctantly, Mr. Obama and his aides concluded that the only pathway to an accord was allowing Iran to continue producing small amounts of nuclear fuel, keeping its nuclear centrifuges spinning and its scientists working.
The deal — an agreement that every Republican in Congress voted against, along with some Democrats — contained Iran’s ambitions for three years until Mr. Trump pulled out of it. Iran had been compliant with the terms of the accord.
Mr. Trump is now facing essentially the same choices that confronted his first predecessor. And, like Mr. Obama, he is facing likely opposition from Iran hawks in the United States and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who went before a joint session of Congress a decade ago and urged lawmakers to reject the deal Mr. Obama had been negotiating. In recent months, Mr. Netanyahu has been pushing for a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
“There is a bit of déjà vu here,” said Wendy Sherman, who was the chief negotiator of the 2015 accord for the Obama administration. “Clearly there are U.S. senators, members of Congress and Israeli officials who are insisting on complete dismantlement of Iran’s facilities, and zero enrichment. We faced the same challenges.”
