Course Correction on Iran-This Time Trump is Right

President Trump’s decision to extend indefinitely the ceasefire with Iran is a welcome move, a retreat from insane and purposeless violence. While the Pakistani and perhaps other mediators can take some credit, this course correction from the Administration shows that, contrary to the narrative of many of my fellow progressives, Trump is of sound enough mind to assess reality and reverse a disastrous course of action. Equally to his credit, Trump has halted Israel’s aggression without limit in Lebanon.

Certainly, the Administration cannot be excused, and must eventually be held responsible, for civilian loss of life in Iran, targeting decisions that resulted in the bombing of schools and hospitals, and attacks on essential infrastructure. But today’s course correction matters-it will save lives, including the lives of our own servicemen and servicewomen.

More specifically, the indefinite ceasefire is a recognition of the complexity in the challenge of a negotiated solution. The idea that Iran is racing to the bomb is largely propaganda from Israel. It has never been accepted by our own intelligence services, This said, getting to an agreement that provides concrete guarantees against the possibility of weaponization, however phantom-like, involves many technical twists and turns. That goes especially for an agreement that would respect Iran’s sovereignty and its rights under international law to pursue civilian nuclear usages with appropriate safeguards. While I liked the JCPOA and regret Trump’s undermining of it, the JCPOA was a time-limited agreement. It’s expiration date was in 2025, so even if the JCPOA had lived a full lifetime, we would still have some of today’s challenges.

Unlike many critics of the Administration, I have great respect for the negotiating skills of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and I also think they are, genuinely, men of peace. But in the earlier talks, as commentators such as Laura Rozen rightly noted, they failed to bring in the experts needed to process all the complexities. I wonder, wouldn’t they bring engineers and architects into a complex real estate deal? But perhaps Trump’s own impatience, and notorious distrust of experts, influenced this basic mistake. Now this has changed, and having brought in the experts in the recent talks, the Administration seems to be much more fully grasping the truth that they need to give this time.

Another benefit of the indefinite ceasefire is that it puts pressure on the Iranians to halt irresponsible behavior in the region, and especially with respect to the Strait of Hormuz. With the U.S. holding its fire and patiently waiting for negotiations to open up again, Iran cannot deflect responsibility on the U.S. for the harms it is causing to others-indeed to the global economy generally.

The Administration has rightly stopped stopped short-albeit at times only by a hair-of declaring regime change as the explicit goal of aggression against Iran. This said, an indefinite ceasefire may be the best way of inducing regime change, even if the idea of influencing it from outside in some decisive way is an illusion. One of reasons that the Trump Administration has stated for an indefinite ceasefire is that the Iranian leadership is now deeply divided and may need so time to agree on a negotiating posture.

But the longer the ceasefire, the more that internal rifts may intensify. Just as the elites-and the society generally-held together against active attacks by the U.S., the prospect of a negotiated settlement could bring tensions to a head. If the U.S. is prepared to turn a corner, lift sanctions, engage economically and politically with Iran, the forces within Iranian politics and society that are unleashed will create a rupture with the status quo-a status quo from which the Revolutionary Guards on the one hand and the religious hardliners on the other both profit. If America is no longer the devil, all bets are off for these factions. An America that lies in wait with a different future for Iran is the biggest threat to regime coherence, whereas violence that challenges the population’s survival-the Israeli way-is most apt to reinforce unity.

Finally, if a negotiated solution is elusive-and it might well be given the powerful factions in Iran just mentioned and their investment in endless hostility toward America-an indefinite ceasefire is a path to an off-ramp. It constitutes an acceptance that there is a stand-off with Iran, that such a stand-off is better for us and for the world than open war, that the Administration has already done enough damage to avert any short-term nuclear threat (even if it existed, which it didn’t), and that we can wait until the regime either collapses or morphs in a way that opens the door to a fundamentally new and better relationship.