Security Experts Concerned With Reports of Russia’s Interest in Mediating U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks

Days after President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance clashed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, the Trump administration took another step closer to normalizing Moscow’s role on the world stage, with a Bloomberg News report on Tuesday indicating that Russia agreed to work with Trump as a negotiator in nuclear talks with Iran that will also focus on mitigating Iranian proxies.

The announcement was met with skepticism from foreign policy experts, who approached the news with two key questions. First, will Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has grown closer to Tehran in recent years and relied on Iranian weapons in his war against Ukraine, be an honest broker and an advocate for Washington’s demands? Second, what kind of nuclear agreement would Trump be able to achieve with Russia as a mediator?

“Trump thinks that he’ll have a Russian partner at the table,” rather than Russia as an adversary, said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Trump has sought to get closer to Putin and rebuild ties with Russia, a goal he furthered after cutting U.S. military aid to Kyiv this week — so he might think Russia will be a useful partner in negotiating with Iran.

“He’ll have Russia helping us not only bring the Iranians to the table, but helping persuade the Iranians, reading them the riot act, so they have no choice but to give up their entire nuclear infrastructure, or they’ll be facing not only punishing American pressure and Israeli pressure, but they’re not going to have the Russians in their corner,” Dubowitz continued.

That’s the hope, anyway; whether Russia cooperates on any of those goals is an open question.

Trump raised the issue directly with Putin in a phone call in February, and the matter was discussed between senior administration officials and Russian counterparts during a meeting in Saudi Arabia soon after, Bloomberg reported. It was Russia that made the offer to assist with Iran, a source familiar with the discussions told Jewish Insider.

“Trusting the Russians to negotiate or mediate a nuclear agreement doesn’t make much sense considering the width and the breadth and the depth of the Iran-Russia relationship, and how Russia has enabled many of Iran’s worst destabilizing tools,” said Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “At the same time, Iran has worked to support Russia’s malign activity, including its lethal support to Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said the U.S. will talk to Iran from a “position of strength.”

“The Trump administration will talk to our adversaries and allies alike, but he will always do so from a position of strength to defend our national security,” Hughes told JI. “President Trump made clear by renewing his ‘maximum pressure’ order just days into his second term, the United States will not tolerate Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon or their support of terror in the Middle East and around the world.”

Still, despite the rhetoric from Hughes, it’s not clear what Trump’s endgame is for Iran. He did sign an executive order reinstating “maximum pressure” sanctions, but he said at the time that he felt “torn” about doing so and that he hoped the sanctions would not be used frequently.

Throughout last year’s election campaign, Trump said he wanted to reach a deal with Iran. But he has not always used the same hard-line language he used in his first term, when he left the 2015 Iran nuclear deal because he said it did not go far enough in stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Trump has also poured cold water on the notion that the U.S. is working with Israel on a military strike against Iran.

“The success that Trump had in the first term, I don’t think the conditions right now are being laid to have a similar level of success,” said Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, which has advocated for a strike against Iran’s nuclear program. “At this moment, I think the maximum pressure, as it’s currently being applied, is by itself insufficient.”

Russia’s modus operandi for getting involved with the U.S. and Iran is also not obvious, and until that becomes clear, the question of whether Russia’s involvement will make a difference will remain a mystery.

“We need to know what Putin is really providing here, or if it is just a way for Iran to play for time until they can rebuild their air defenses [and] their ballistic missile manufacturing capabilities,” said David Makovsky, the Ziegler distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We just don’t know.”

After progress on talks with the Biden administration stalled, Iran has continued to accelerate its nuclear program. The country has increased its enrichment of uranium to 60%, getting closer to the level needed to make a nuclear weapon. The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, warned in January that Iran was “pressing the gas pedal” on its uranium enrichment, and yesterday called on Trump to begin negotiating with Tehran.

After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s February visit to Washington, he said he supports Trump’s efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran so long as Israel maintains a credible military option. But Israeli leaders have remained quiet about the news of Russia’s involvement in talks with Iran.

Originally published by Jewish Insider.