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U.S. efforts to force an end to the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz by attempting to escort a few U.S.-flagged ships through the Iranian closure will not only fail to relieve the worsening global fuel crisis and disruption of supply chains, it risks a resumption of full-scale war. The Trump administration has rejected Iran’s suggestion for negotiating an end to the blockade followed by a resumption of talks on other outstanding issues, insisting that Iran first agree to eliminate its nuclear program.

In February 2019, I sat in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, along with a small delegation of American peace activists, with Javad Zarif, the U.S.-educated foreign minister. He described how the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was a result of many months of intense direct negotiations, during which he met with then-Secretary of State John Kerry no less than 50 times, going over the agreement line by line.

Indeed, the talks took nearly two years, and involved five other nations (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China) as well as the support of the European Union and the United Nations, before finally reaching the agreement formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Those negotiations took the best efforts of scores of veteran diplomats, skilled mediators, and technical experts. The result was a deal which, in return for the lifting of sanctions, made it physically impossible for Iran to build even a single nuclear weapon and included a rigorous inspections regime to ensure Iran’s compliance.

During his first administration, Donald Trump famously tossed that deal, insisting he could negotiate a better one. And now, instead of mobilizing the human and material resources to negotiate a political agreement with staying power to end the war, Trump is insisting that his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his real estate buddy Steve Witkoff, and his novice vice president JD Vance — none of whom have significant diplomatic experience or technical expertise regarding nuclear issues — could simply fly into Pakistan and, after no more than a few days, force Iran to capitulate.

Indeed, it was Kushner and Witkoff’s lack of understanding of how nuclear enrichment and related issues work that prevented them from appreciating Iran’s major concessions in talks early this year. Such ignorance likely contributed to Witkoff’s misleading assessments regarding the progress in negotiations which may have prompted Trump’s decision to go to war.

In New Escalation, US Attempts to Force Open Strait as Iran Fires on Boats

Trump has continued claiming the JCPOA was a one-sided deal favoring Iran, when in fact it was just the opposite. Iran had agreed to strictly limit its nuclear program without any reciprocity from nuclear-armed states nearby — Israel, Pakistan, and India — even though all three have also been in violation of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear programs which, unlike Iran, have actually produced nuclear........

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