Trump's Trials - President Trump seeks new nuclear deal with Iran

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

President Trump said weekend negotiations for a new nuclear deal with Iran were, in his words, "very good." NPR reports on the latest on the talks and what it might take to reach an agreement.Support ...NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm Scott Detro and this is Trump's terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things nobody ever thought was even possible. President Trump has brought back strength to the White House. We can't just ignore the president's desires. This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. Every episode we bring you one of NPR's latest stories about the 47th president and how he is trying to remake the federal government. Today's story starts right after this.
Starting point is 00:00:28 Keeping up with the news can feel like a 24-hour job. Luckily, it is our job. Every hour on the NPR News Now podcast, we take the latest, most important stories happening and we package them into five-minute episodes. So you can easily squeeze them in between meetings and on your way to that thing. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast now. Great conversation makes for a great party.
Starting point is 00:00:57 But how do you ask the questions that really make the room come alive? Well, you're at LifeKit. We've got you. What is a path you almost took but didn't? On our latest episode, how to ask the magical questions that'll make your party sparkle. Listen to the Life Kit podcast from NPR. Now, Michelle Martin, President Trump says weekend negotiations for a new nuclear deal with Iran were, in his words, very good.
Starting point is 00:01:26 Key U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf states want Trump to make a deal, as the president heard during his tour of the region earlier this month. And PR's international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam has this report. President Trump was welcomed with plenty of palm during his four-day swing through Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, where he mixed business deals with diplomacy. The one topic that came up again and again was Iran. My understanding is that every leader that President Trump met in his visit to the Gulf region urged him to do a deal with Iran and resolve the standoff with the Iranians diplomatically.
Starting point is 00:02:02 Ali Vyas directs the Iran project at the International Crisis Group. He says this is a far cry from Trump's first term in office when the Gulf nations were adamantly against a deal with Iran. But the conflicts across the region since then have put the wealthy Gulf states on edge. This time is very different, and the reason is they know that if there is no deal with Iran and the nuclear standoff comes to a head, that they would become collateral damage in any serious confrontation between Iran and the United States. Trump has said he wants to give negotiations with Iran a chance, but has warned he'll
Starting point is 00:02:39 back military action if an agreement isn't reached soon. Wendy Sherman was lead US negotiator for the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran under President Obama. She says it's unclear what Trump's goal is for Iran to completely give up its nuclear program, something Tehran says it will never do, or allow Iran to enrich just enough uranium for civilian use. Sherman says that's facing opposition from senior administration officials and Congress. Virtually every Republican senator has sent a letter saying it must be complete dismantlement of the program, but I don't think that's where
Starting point is 00:03:17 President Trump is. I think he wants a deal, but this constant changing the goalposts is not helpful. Trump has already crossed a red line with Congress. While in Riyadh, he held a surprising meeting with Syria's new president, Ahmed al-Sharah, formerly on the U.S. terror list, and vowed to end nearly five decades of sanctions on Syria. His founder, Batman Ghalij, is the CEO of Boursin Bazaar, a London-based economic think tank. He says Trump's move could give Tehran hope, despite Shiraz's antipathy to Iran.
Starting point is 00:03:52 The fact that Trump would be willing to take that stance very publicly and say, we're going to lift these sanctions, shows that he's willing to put his own political capital on the line to make transformative moves in the region. Batman-Gellige says Iran likely wants to make a deal. Its economy is crumbling under the weight of sanctions. There are energy shortages, and proxies in the region have been decimated by Israel. After years of no interaction,
Starting point is 00:04:21 the U.S. and Iran have now held four meetings in just over a month. Batman Ghalij says the pace is striking. The Iranians seem to understand that you need to keep Trump's attention and you need to keep the feeling that the negotiations are moving forward. We also see the Iranian administration being very kind of proactive in signaling their willingness to have a very new relationship with the United States. The international crisis groups, Elie Vyas, says one way Iran could sweeten the deal for a transactional president would be to offer Iran as a possible destination for U.S. investors.
Starting point is 00:04:58 Resource-rich, authoritarian states are attractive for President Trump and you see Iranian foreign minister reiterating the concept of opening the Iranian market to American companies as means of basically attracting President Trump's attention. But like everything else in the negotiations, that would require a level of compromise and there's no guarantee that will happen. Jackie Northam, NPR News. Before we wrap up a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon.
Starting point is 00:05:44 And thanks as always to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detro. Thanks for listening to Trump'shost of the NPR Politics Podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:06:31 Conductor Robert Fron says a good melody captures our attention. And then it moves you through time. Music is architecture in time. If you engage in the moment with what you're listening to, you do lose a sense of the time around you. How we experience time. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.