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President Trump says weekend negotiations for a new nuclear deal with Iran were, in his words, very good. Key U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf States want Trump to make a deal, as the president heard during his tour of the region earlier this month. NPR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam has this report.
JACKIE NORTHAM, BYLINE: President Trump was welcomed with plenty of pomp during his four-day swing through Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, where he mixed business deals with diplomacy. The one topic that came up again and again was Iran.
ALI VAEZ: My understanding is that every leader that President Trump met in his visit to the Gulf Region urged him to do a deal with Iran and resolve the standoff with the Iranians diplomatically.
NORTHAM: Ali Vaez directs the Iran project at the International Crisis Group. He says this is a far cry from Trump's first term in office when the Gulf nations were adamantly against a deal with Iran. But the conflicts across the region since then have put the wealthy Gulf states on edge.
VAEZ: This time is very different. And the reason is they know that if there is no deal with Iran and the nuclear standoff comes to a head that they would become collateral damage in any serious confrontation between Iran and the United States.
NORTHAM: Trump has said he wants to give negotiations with Iran a chance but has warned he'll back military action if an agreement isn't reached soon. Wendy Sherman was lead U.S. negotiator for the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran under President Obama. She says it's unclear what Trump's goal is for Iran, to completely give up its nuclear program - something Tehran says it will never do - or allow Iran to enrich just enough uranium for civilian use. Sherman says that's facing opposition from senior administration officials and Congress.
WENDY SHERMAN: Virtually every Republican senator has sent a letter saying it must be complete dismantlement of the program, but I don't think that's where President Trump is. I think he wants a deal, but this constant changing the goalpost is not helpful.
NORTHAM: Trump has already crossed a red line with Congress. While in Riyadh, he held a surprising meeting with Syria's new president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, formerly on the U.S. terror list, and vowed to end nearly five decades of sanctions on Syria. Esfandyar Batmanghelidj is the CEO of Bourse & Bazaar, a London-based economic think tank. He says Trump's move could give Tehran hope despite Shara's antipathy to Iran.
ESFANDYAR BATMANGHELIDJ: The fact that Trump would be willing to take that stance very publicly and say we're going to lift these sanctions shows that he's willing to put his own political capital on the line to make transformative moves in the region.
NORTHAM: Batmanghelidj says Iran likely wants to make a deal. Its economy is crumbling under the weight of sanctions. There are energy shortages, and proxies in the region have been decimated by Israel. After years of no interaction, the U.S. and Iran have now held four meetings in just over a month. Batmanghelidj says the pace is striking.
BATMANGHELIDJ: The Iranians seem to understand that you need to keep Trump's attention, and you need to keep the feeling that the negotiations are moving forward. We also see the Iranian administration being very kind of proactive in signaling their willingness to have a very new relationship with the United States.
NORTHAM: The International Crisis Group's Ali Vaez says one way Iran could sweeten the deal for a transactional president would be to offer Iran as a possible destination for U.S. investors.
VAEZ: Resource-rich authoritarian states are attractive for President Trump. And you see Iranian foreign minister reiterating the concept of opening the Iranian market to American companies as means of basically attracting President Trump's attention.
NORTHAM: But like everything else in the negotiations, that would require a level of compromise, and there's no guarantee that will happen.
Jackie Northam, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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