A successful diplomatic agreement does not merely survive its enemies. It is designed with its enemies in mind.
That is what makes the emerging contours of President Donald Trump’s Iran diplomacy so perplexing.
Even if one accepts the administration’s stated goal of preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon through negotiation rather than military action, the strategy appears to contain within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
The problem is not merely the reported substance of the deal. It is the strategic environment Trump is creating around it.
According to public reporting and Trump’s own comments, the proposed arrangement may permit Iran to continue low-level uranium enrichment while imposing restrictions for a finite period, reportedly in the range of 15 to 20 years.
Agreement outcomes similar to JCPOA
If accurate, that would place the agreement on a trajectory remarkably similar to the sunset structure that Trump himself denounced when criticizing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The central objection to the JCPOA was never simply that it failed to stop Iran immediately. It was that it legitimized a pathway under which Iran could emerge years later with an internationally recognized industrial nuclear infrastructure and a shortened route to a bomb.
If that justly harsh criticism was valid then, it remains valid now.
Indeed, the most alarming possibility is that observers may eventually struggle to decide which is more dangerous: the deal’s architecture or the strategic incentives being created around it.
Trump has publicly invested substantial political capital in preventing a wider regional war and in restraining Israeli military action against Lebanon. Whatever the wisdom of that objective, it has consequences.
By repeated public signaling of opposition to “excessive” Israeli self-defense and to defensive escalation, Washington communicates not only with Jerusalem but also with Tehran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and every other hostile actor watching closely for opportunities.
Those actors do not view diplomacy as a shared project to be protected. They view it as a target.
This is where three strategic concepts converge: the wedge, the spoiler, and the poison pill.
A wedge strategy seeks to drive allies apart. A spoiler seeks to sabotage a political process. A poison pill creates circumstances in which every available response imposes severe costs, thus creating self-imposed restrictions on maneuverability.
All three are being given to America’s and Israel’s common mortal enemies on a silver platter, and Hezbollah and Iran have every incentive to employ all three simultaneously.
Imagine a significant Hezbollah attack from Lebanon. The military damage itself might be secondary. The political effects would be far more valuable to them because the attack’s real value would lie in triggering a much larger strategic crisis.
If Israel responds forcefully, particularly against Beirut or the Dahiyeh stronghold that serves as Hezbollah’s center of gravity, Washington faces the prospect of watching a diplomatic initiative unravel with likely grave economic and political repercussions for the world but particularly for the Trump administration and the Republican Party in a midterm election season.
Public friction between the United States and Israel would instantly intensify. Headlines would focus on disagreement between two close allies rather than aggression by Hezbollah.
Trump would be portrayed, and likely see himself, as being out-maneuvered and stymied by Netanyahu. The diplomatic process would be endangered and American-Israeli relations wounded.
Alternatively, if Israel exercises restraint under American leverage, Hezbollah achieves a different victory. Deterrence is weakened. Israeli citizens and Hezbollah alike absorb the lesson that attacks can be launched under the shelter of American pressure for de-escalation.
Hezbollah demonstrates that it can shape Israeli decision-making indirectly through Washington, which has at that point morphed itself into the dog being wagged by the Islamist tail.
Either outcome serves Iranian interests.
Such an attack functions as a wedge by creating tension between Jerusalem and Washington. It functions as a spoiler by threatening the diplomatic process over which it wields a trump card. And it functions as a poison pill by forcing policymakers to choose between alternatives that are all strategically costly.
The astonishing and alarming aspect of the current situation is that the United States appears to be helping construct this framework in advance.
Deterrence works best when adversaries fear uncertainty. When red lines are deliberately obscured, opponents must assume the worst. Publicly limiting the responses available to an ally has the opposite effect. It reduces uncertainty. It tells hostile actors which escalatory ladders are likely to remain unused.
The result is certainly not peace when the significantly more likely path is temptation.
For Hezbollah, the attraction is obvious. For Iran, it is even greater. Tehran does not need to destroy a diplomatic process directly if it can create conditions under which others destroy it for them. Nor does it need to choose between diplomacy and pressure. It can pursue both simultaneously.
That reality exposes a deeper contradiction in the administration’s approach.
If the objective is preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, then preserving deterrence against Iran’s regional proxies should be an essential component of the strategy rather than a competing concern.
Weakening deterrence in supposed pursuit of diplomacy risks creating exactly the crises that make diplomacy unpredictable and unsustainable – and therefore uncontrollable.
More fundamentally, a successful agreement should seek to deny America’s adversaries leverage. This approach risks granting them supraordinate leverage at every critical juncture. It gives Hezbollah the perennial ability to trigger a crisis.
It gives Iran the pernicious but plausibly deniable ability to threaten the diplomatic process indirectly. It gives both actors opportunities to exploit publicly aired differences between Washington and Jerusalem.
Rather than insulating diplomacy from its enemies, it risks making diplomacy dependent upon their restraint and therefore critically vulnerable to their ideological caprices.
That is a curious foundation upon which to build a lasting agreement. Hezbollah’s interests are not America’s interests. Iran’s interests are not America’s interests. Yet a strategy that depends upon their choosing not to exploit obvious incentives is a strategy resting on assumptions that history does not encourage.
The irony is difficult to miss. A president who built his political reputation on rejecting what he viewed as the strategic naivety of the Obama-era Iran deal now appears in danger of reproducing two of its most controversial features: a sunset pathway that may leave Iran closer to nuclear threshold status in the future, and a regional framework that places disproportionate leverage in the hands of bad actors who have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to exploit adversaries’ restraint for strategic gain.
America’s enemies do not need to defeat this agreement.
They merely need to understand it.
And if they conclude that a carefully calibrated provocation can split allies, derail diplomacy, weaken deterrence, and shift blame onto Israel, they may discover that Washington has handed them something far more valuable than a concession.
It has handed them the keys.
The writer is an American-Israeli marriage therapist, trainer of therapists, lecturer, author, and volunteers in the IDF reserves, as a MDA medic, in ZAKA, and in the Israel Police Search and Rescue Team.