Is There Still a Deal to Be Done with Iran?
① The United States stepped right 恰好up to the brink of striking 在打擊的邊緣Iran over 因?yàn)?/u>a downed American drone被擊落的美國無人機(jī)—and then abruptly stepped back.
② Now that the two countries have traveled so far down the road to war, is there any realistic off-ramp 匝道to the negotiations?
③ On the surface, that path is nowhere to be found.
④ Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s position is that he “will consider further negotiations” only when the United States resumes 中斷后）重新開始complying with 遵守the terms of the nuclear deal.
⑤ But for now 當(dāng)下the Trump administration appears wholly focused on squeezing Iran economically, deterring 遏制Iranian aggression, and preparing for a possible military conflict—not laying the groundwork for serious negotiations.
⑥ It’s unlikely 是不可能的Iran’s leaders want a full-fledged成熟的玉锌，全面的；羽翼豐滿的 military 全面戰(zhàn)爭confrontation with沖突the United States, but they do want to extract a cost 付出代價(jià)from the United States for the sanctions it has reimposed.
⑦ Jake Sullivan, a former Iran negotiator in the Obama administration, thinks it’s at least conceivable能夠想象得到的 they could talk to each other. “We have a very wide distribution of possible outcomes多種可能的結(jié)果—from actual war to sitting at the table soon.”
