Iran International
Washington has outsourced its Iran policy to Israel following the 12-day war, former Obama-era negotiator Alan Eyre told Iran International, warning that the Trump administration now sees Iran's nuclear issue as resolved despite the remaining risks.
On June 22, the United States joined Israel’s campaign against Iran and carried out airstrikes on its key nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
"President Trump said the [Iranian] nuclear program is obliterated. They seem to have put it in the ‘mission accomplished’ category,” Eyre told Iran International's podcast, Eye for Iran.
Under Obama, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman worked closely with world powers to keep the 2015 nuclear deal alive, balancing many interests through complex diplomacy — a sharp contrast to today’s one-track coordination with Israel, Eyre said.
"There’s pretty much one person in the foreign affairs who he is coordinating with, and that’s Prime Minister Netanyahu," Eyre said, "The gentleman in charge, Mr. Witkoff, has a lot of other stuff on his plate to include Gaza and Ukraine. We’re really not paying any attention to the Iran portfolio. We have sort of outsourced it to Israel.”
Signals of a renewed fight
Tehran’s decision to revive its Supreme Defense Council — a wartime command body not convened since the Iran–Iraq War — is widely seen as a signal it expects the ceasefire with Israel to be temporary.
The move suggests Iranian leaders are bracing for renewed conflict and working to reestablish what Eyre described as “some type of strategic deterrence,” from rebuilding air defenses to restoring missile and nuclear capabilities.
Tehran at a crossroads
Weakened by war and diplomatic deadlock, Iran’s clerical elite faces a stark choice: defy pressure to halt its nuclear activity and risk further Israeli and US attack or concede and risk a leadership fracture.
A fragile ceasefire ended the 12-day war in June. Both sides claimed victory, but the war exposed vulnerabilities and punctured Iran’s image of deterrence.
Three Iranian insiders told Reuters the political establishment now views nuclear negotiations with Washington as the only way to avoid further escalation and existential peril. The Israeli strikes began just a day before a planned sixth round of talks with the US.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iran’s political leadership have agreed in principle to resume nuclear talks with Washington, seeing diplomacy as essential to preventing further US–Israeli strikes.
E3 Snapback Threat Adds Pressure
Britain, France, and Germany have warned they are prepared to trigger the UN’s “snapback” sanctions mechanism if Iran does not return to talks by the end of August.
Eyre said that even after the attacks, Iran retains the industrial capacity, enriched uranium, and technical knowledge to produce a nuclear weapon if it chooses.
“The fork in the road now is — does it try to reconstitute what it had before, or does it try something else… like moving toward a nuclear weapon?” he said.
You can watch the full episode of Eye for Iran on YouTube or listen on any major podcast platform like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, or Castbox.
