When Mohammad Javad Zarif, the architect of the 2015 nuclear deal, publishes a detailed peace framework in Foreign Affairs in the middle of an active war, it is not an op-ed. It is a signal — and probably not one he sent without clearance. Zarif, who previously helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal and is now a professor at the University of Tehran, has been described as an ally of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian — and according to the Associated Press, he would not have been able to publish the proposal without consulting senior Iranian leadership. The proposal is therefore as close to a backchannel offer as Iran is likely to make publicly while the bombs are still falling.
The plan’s architecture is more generous than Tehran’s official posture suggests. Zarif proposed that Iran commit to never pursuing nuclear weapons and reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium to below 3.67%, the level set under the 2015 agreement. The plan also calls for the creation of a regional uranium enrichment facility involving China and Russia, where Iran would transfer its enriched materials and related equipment. In return, the US and its allies would lift all sanctions and allow Iran to fully re-enter the global economy. Additional measures include reopening the Strait of Hormuz while ensuring Iran retains access to the waterway, and the signing of a nonaggression pact committing both sides to refrain from future attacks.
Why Washington Will Resist
The proposal lands in an environment shaped by Trump’s maximalism. The United States developed a 15-point proposal aimed at ending the war, which, according to several Middle Eastern officials, offered extensive sanctions relief to Iran in return for the removal of all its enriched uranium material and abandonment of enrichment processing capabilities, limits to Tehran’s ballistic missile program, and cessation of support to militant groups including Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas. That gap — between Iran’s offer to cap enrichment below 3.67% and Washington’s demand for zero — is exactly where the JCPOA died once before.
Trump withdrew from the 2015 deal stating that “the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction,” and the US also contended that the agreement was inadequate because it did not impose limitations on Iran’s ballistic missile program and failed to curb its backing of proxy groups. Zarif’s new proposal addresses neither missiles nor proxies in any binding way — a deliberate omission that Iranian hardliners would demand, but one that Washington will immediately flag. Iran’s own demands for any negotiation reportedly include allowing Iran to collect fees from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, guarantees that strikes against Iran will stop, lifting all sanctions, and allowing Iran to retain its missile program. Iran said it would also seek reparations and closure of US bases in the Persian Gulf — demands that exceed what Iran asked for before the war, suggesting its positions have hardened.
The diplomatic picture is made murkier by Trump’s contradictory signals. Trump has said Washington and Tehran have had “very good and productive conversations” aimed at ending the war, but Iran has consistently denied holding talks with the US — with Iranian leaders saying the US is “negotiating with itself.” Meanwhile, Trump’s comments on a possible deal came even as thousands of US Marines and the commander of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division headed to the region — and NPR confirmed that the Israeli military wants to keep fighting Iran for several more weeks to achieve its war aims.
The Ghost of the JCPOA
Zarif’s framework is essentially an upgraded JCPOA — one that adds a nonaggression pact and a regional security dimension to what the 2015 deal left out. But the JCPOA’s ghost haunts both sides in different ways. Some Middle Eastern powers, such as Saudi Arabia, said they should have been consulted or included in the 2015 talks because they would be most affected by a nuclear-armed Iran. Israel explicitly opposed that agreement, calling it too lenient. Both concerns remain unresolved — and both are louder after five weeks of Gulf missile strikes and Israeli bombardment.
Foreign Policy’s analysis characterizes Zarif’s essay as an attempt to convert Iran’s battlefield position into a narrow US-Iran bargain: nuclear limits and maritime access in exchange for sanctions relief and regional reintegration. That framing matters, because it exposes a structural gap in the proposal: the Gulf states. Because Iran retaliated directly against Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, any durable settlement must go beyond enrichment caps and sanctions relief to include Gulf security as part of the deal itself.
Zarif does include a regional security framework in his plan — proposing the creation of a regional nuclear fuel consortium involving Gulf states and major powers, and calling for a wider regional security framework including Gulf countries to guarantee nonaggression and freedom of navigation. But the Gulf monarchies are unlikely to accept a deal designed primarily to rehabilitate Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz while their own ports, airports, and desalination plants are still nursing strike damage.
The Hardliner Problem Zarif Can’t Solve
The proposal’s greatest vulnerability is internal to Iran. Zarif himself conceded that Iran’s nuclear program did not deter the attack — an extraordinary admission from the man who negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal, one that tells us more about Tehran’s position than his claims of victory. That concession opens a wound that hardliners inside the Revolutionary Guards will exploit aggressively. If nuclear deterrence failed to prevent an American-Israeli assault, the argument for actually building a bomb — rather than perpetually negotiating over enrichment caps — becomes harder to rebut. Despite Trump’s claim that the US has won the war, several goals he laid out as justification remain unmet. Although Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the strikes, the regime remains intact, with his son Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader.
The succession is itself a complication. Mojtaba Khamenei’s relationship with the Guards is deeper than his father’s, and his political base is built on continuity, not accommodation. Any settlement Zarif brokers — even with presidential blessing — would require Guard acquiescence that his reformist profile makes difficult to secure. The Trump administration has increasingly demanded that Iran abandon uranium enrichment, and the elder Khamenei had rejected that demand, dismissing it as “excessive and outrageous” and accusing Trump of lying about seeking peace. The new supreme leader is unlikely to open with greater flexibility.
What Zarif’s Blueprint Gets Right
Despite all of this, Zarif’s framework contains something genuinely new: reciprocity built into the mechanics rather than bolted on as a promise. Iran’s own demands include allowing Iran to collect fees from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, guarantees that strikes will stop, lifting all sanctions, and retaining its missile program. Zarif’s offer is more restrained — but it acknowledges the same structural reality: that a deal where one side disarms while the other maintains coercive capacity is not a settlement. It is a postponement of the next war.
The proposal also draws a sharp lesson from the JCPOA’s collapse. Under the original nuclear deal, many US sanctions unrelated to the nuclear issue — targeting Iran’s missile program, support for militant groups, and human rights record — remained in place, limiting the economic effect of sanctions relief. Zarif explicitly calls for the elimination of all sanctions, not just nuclear-related ones — a condition that makes the economic incentive real rather than symbolic. He also argued that the United States should help finance reconstruction of damages caused by the wars in 2025 and 2026, saying such costs would likely be lower than the cost of continuing a long and unpopular war.
Whether Zarif’s framework becomes a genuine negotiating baseline or simply expires as the war grinds on depends less on its diplomatic craftsmanship than on timing. Although several states including Pakistan have offered to mediate, Tehran has denied any engagement with the Trump administration, with Iran’s parliamentary speaker stating that “no negotiations have been held.” A proposal this detailed, published this publicly, by a figure this connected to Iran’s reformist leadership, does not emerge in a vacuum. Whether the hardliners let it breathe long enough to matter is the question that will ultimately determine whether this war ends with a deal — or simply exhaustion.
You can read the Original article by M. Javad Zarif from Foreign Affairs.
