WaPo: Turkiye, Arab States Press Trump to Limit Iran Talks to Nuclear Weapons

Ahem. Didn’t the US already try this approach? Twice?

Perhaps one cannot blame Turkiye and the Arab states for attempting to get the old Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) gang back together. The question is whether Donald Trump is a fan of that approach, especially after watching the terror regime massacre tens of thousands of its own subjects to cling to power. Nonetheless, the Washington Post reports that they’re giving it the college try, so to speak, pushed by Iran:

Trump has said since his first term, when he pulled out of a 2015 deal negotiated by the Obama administration to scale back and limit Iran’s nuclear activities, that Tehran must never have a nuclear weapon. But Trump has also been maximalist in his demands on other things, like support for regional proxy groups and militias. …

One U.S. official said there was “still a lot of work” to be done before the Istanbul meeting is confirmed. A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei, did not confirm that a meeting has been scheduled, but said Tehran is studying the “framework” for possible talks.

The two regional officials said Washington’s Arab and Turkish allies are seeking to limit the scope of the talks to Iran’s nuclear program in order to get Iran to “yes.”

“If the talks happen, they will stay focused on Iran’s nuclear program,” said one. “And then we will try to find innovative ways to address Washington’s nonnuclear demands.”

Double ahem. This is precisely what Barack Obama said when signing off on the JCPOA. Obama’s “Iran deal” freed $1.4 billion in frozen assets and a pallet containing $400 million in cash in exchange for a freeze on enrichment that never happened, in the hope of normalizing relations enough to “address Washington’s non-nuclear demands” in 2016. The Iranians continued to refine uranium, hide their nuclear development sites from inspectors, and poured most of the freed assets and cash into their proxy armies. The 2023 war against Israel likely got funded, at least indirectly, by Obama’s pay-now-maybe-get-benefits-later arrangement. 

That approach might have made sense while Iran had an active nuclear-weapons development program, although not without ironclad commitments and guarantees on compliance, which the JCPOA lacked entirely. However, Iran’s nuclear-development programs are dead in the water. It will be years before they can reconstitute them. The strategic risks from Iran come from the risks that the JCPOA ignored: Iran’s ballistic-missile program, its operation of proxy terror networks such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, the IRGC’s military-industrial complex, and most of all the murderous oppression of 90 million Iranians. 

The scenes from the last three weeks alone demand intervention of some sort, not a kick of that can down the road on what has now become a secondary or tertiary risk in the moment. 

Even a deal on terrorism and ballistic missiles no longer meets the moment, the WSJ editorial board writes. With oil prices low and the body count in Tehran high, it’s time to set the conditions for the collapse of the mullahs:

The U.S. has also been demanding limits on Iran’s missile program and an end to its support for terrorist proxies. Both are fine ideas, but they would amount to paper promises that the ayatollah would be unlikely to honor. As Iranians know, this regime is willing to impoverish and endanger its own country to pursue a “death to America” and “death to Israel” foreign policy. It is a regime bent on spreading revolution, not on living peacefully with its neighbors.

Any sanctions relief now would break faith with the protesters, who relied on Mr. Trump’s promises, and extend their regime a lifeline while it totters on the brink of becoming a failed state. It would also tell the region that the U.S. President blinked, which would have damaging implications for the next three years of Mr. Trump’s Presidency.

Ask Barack Obama about the red line against chemical-weapons use in Syria that he failed to enforce. Russia jumped into the vacuum the U.S. left in Syria, then moved into Ukraine, and the result was more bloodshed and tragedy as U.S. deterrence was seen as feckless.

There is a better way for President Trump: Help the protesters topple the ayatollah and his enforcers. Don’t crush the Iranian people’s hopes; give them the confidence to keep pushing against a regime that has no answer but bullets to any of their problems. If Iran’s revolutionary regime falls, the whole region gets better. China and Russia lose the third spoke in their axis of U.S. adversaries.

The red line point should sting the White House. Trump rightly ripped Obama for that show of impotence, then twice reversed it. The first time was when Trump ordered the strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, and the second time was last June when Trump destroyed Iran’s nuclear-development facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Backing down now just to get a rehash of Obama’s impotent JCPOA will send a very bad signal, and perhaps refresh the TACO claims. 

In fact, it’s not clear what purpose these meetings have after that red-line declaration last month. Iran already flaunted it with massacres in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities. The only sensible explanation is that Trump is checking boxes for reluctant Arab allies, giving Iran one last chance for capitulation on all of its strategic threats before striking. That allows for the US to keep building its ballistic missile defenses this week, which is exactly what has been happening ever since Trump set that red line. 

2/3 AM Air Defense Deployment Update

Overnight, we began seeing flights out of Biggs AAF at Fort Bliss, TX. Bliss is home to the US Army’s 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade who operate PATRIOTs and the 32nd Army Air & Missile Defense Command.

Flights from Japan continue to… pic.twitter.com/kNagBdZ8at

— TheIntelFrog (@TheIntelFrog) February 3, 2026

In other words … stay tuned. With the streets cleared, the need for speed has lessened, but not the need for consequences and change. And a rehashed JCPOA will provide neither, as Marc Thiessen points out today as well. 

If we cut a WMD deal with Iran with Russia as intermediary/guarantor after not enforcing a red line, that would be an EXACT repeat of what Obama did when he failed to enforce his Syria redline and then cut a Russia guaranteed chem weapons deal – and then violated it. https://t.co/Qy9sGcXsQ6

— Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦🇹🇼🇮🇱 (@marcthiessen) February 3, 2026

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.

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