Commentary: Forget another big US-Iran deal. They need to start small

Every new Trump threat reinforces the hardliners’ scepticism about negotiating, while making a diplomatic solution harder for Pezeshkian to defend at home.

From Washington’s perspective, the war has made Iran easier to hurt and harder to negotiate, let alone settle, with.

SMALL STEPS RATHER THAN A GRAND BARGAIN

If there is a way forward, it will probably not be another high-level goal-setting exercise like the June memorandum. Any deal would need to proceed in smaller steps: limited agreements that can be checked and, if necessary, reversed – each one testing whether anyone in Tehran can deliver.

Iran’s seven-day roadmap points in that direction, with Hormuz reopening on day six. But it frontloads American concessions and leaves open who in Tehran would guarantee that the sides ever get to day six. 

Safe passage through the strait remains the obvious first test. It is easy to observe and hard to fake. 

And it matters to the Gulf states and China, both of which have leverage in Tehran that Washington lacks. When he hosted his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the White House last week, Trump asked for China’s help in isolating Iran and reopening the strait. Xi urged both sides to return to the Islamabad memorandum instead, which is precisely what Tehran has been asking for.

Pakistan, Qatar and Oman, the mediators, could verify each step. A commitment kept would show who in Iran actually commands, while one broken would expose the spoilers without bringing down the whole framework.