TEHRAN - In a May 1 article for Foreign Affairs, former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Pickering; conflict resolution expert Gabrielle Rifkind; and nuclear policy specialist Paul Ingram argued that the U.S. “must be willing to make uncomfortable concessions to Iran” to end the hostilities between Washington and Tehran.

The following is an excerpt of the article titled “The price of peace with Iran”: 

Despite days of both indirect and direct negotiations, including a dramatic, 21-hour high-level summit in Islamabad, a lasting deal between Iran and the U.S. remains far away.

Part of this failure has to do with Washington’s misplaced expectations. President Trump believes that the United States holds all the cards and can force Tehran into buckling, regardless of months of evidence to the contrary. But part of the problem is mutual mistrust. This deep wariness has not just persisted; it has deepened. Washington has now spurned Tehran repeatedly in negotiations. It forged a nuclear deal in 2015, only to abandon it three years later. It entered new talks with Iran in 2025, and then bombed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. And when talks picked up again at the beginning of this year, the United States launched its latest military campaign. As a result, most Iranians have little faith that the current negotiations will work or that the cease-fire will hold. 

To overcome this mistrust, the United States will need to prove that the current negotiations are fundamentally different from past ones—which is to say that they will result in a viable and durable agreement. That can begin by Washington finally accepting that Iran has fundamental rights as a sovereign state, including to enrich uranium for civilian, peaceful purposes. The United States will also need to help Iran reconstruct by letting states along the Persian Gulf, Iran included, impose surcharges for certain petroleum-related goods that depart from ports in the Persian Gulf and transit south through the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has proven it can choke off. The resulting funds can help finance the region’s reconstruction in accordance with needs, and Iran, obviously, requires the broadest support. Finally, the United States needs to ensure that Israel will refrain from attacking Iran and help the two countries forge stable, if still unfriendly, relations. Tehran, in turn, will have to agree to new limits and severe oversight of its nuclear program so that Washington can be sure it will never build a nuclear weapon. Iran will also need to accept that it cannot extract funds for the very passage of ships through the strait, in contravention of international law.

Such a comprehensive deal would provide both Tehran and Washington with what diplomats call a “golden bridge”—or an arrangement that allows adversaries to retreat from maximalist positions while still claiming victory. It would inevitably disappoint the United States’ many Iran hawks, who are averse to letting Tehran notch any kind of win. But the reality is that coercive diplomacy is not effective. It hardens resistance, constrains room for compromise, and increases the risk that disputes repeatedly escalate into more violent conflicts. It is thus time for U.S. and Iranian officials to shift their language and strategy away from maximalism and embrace compromise instead.

The road to U.S.-Iranian peace begins with some on-the-ground basics—such as a pledge to maintain the present cease-fire and not attack critical infrastructure. That means the two countries must agree to a carefully defined extension of the cease-fire, one that explicitly prohibits such strikes.

Next, the two sides will need to resolve some of their deeper disputes—particularly over Iran’s nuclear program. That clearly remains a central challenge for Americans who want the Iranians to give up any technology that could enable the development of a nuclear weapon. Iran could blend down its nearly 1,000 pounds of 60 percent enriched uranium to below 3.67 percent of U-235 and place strict limits on the introduction and the number of more efficient centrifuge technology. The United States and the UN Security Council could devise and employ a regional monitoring and control regime to make sure that Tehran makes good on its word. As part of doing so, Iran might ratify the Additional Protocol to the NPT and again subject itself to intensive IAEA inspections, as it did after ratifying the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

But for Iran to agree to such measures, the U.S. will have to acknowledge that Tehran is entitled to develop nuclear technology for energy, health care, and other peaceful purposes. Its right to do so is supported by the NPT, which it has ratified. So far, however, the Trump administration has refused to make this concession. Instead, it has stuck to demands that Iran forgo all enrichment.

Yet Washington might be willing to budge if Tehran agreed to embed its enrichment in a multinational commission featuring U.S. partners in the region. The UN Security Council would also revise, freeze, suspend, or end resolutions levied against Iran for its nuclear program. 

TAKING CHARGE

Should Tehran and Washington agree to a nuclear deal, the path to durable peace would get easier. But Iran’s nuclear program is not the only point of dispute. The two governments are also locked in a battle over whether Iran should control the Strait of Hormuz—a battle that is perhaps just as essential. And resolution of that issue is closely related to resolving the nuclear one.

To resolve the issue, the two sides will need to get creative. What the U.S. can do is have exporting states in the Persian Gulf levy a transportation surcharge on petroleum-based goods—oil, gas, and fertilizer—that are departing from their ports and transiting southbound through the strait. Such a surcharge might, for example, include $5 per barrel of oil, 20 cents per 1,000 cubic feet of gas, $25 per ton of sulphur, and $30 per ton of urea and anhydrous ammonia. These products form a heavy percentage of the trade that goes through the waterway and affect the world’s current price of commerce. Such surcharges are distinct from tolls because they are imposed by the exporting states at the port of origin, rather than by a single state for passage through an internationally guaranteed open waterway. The surcharges could raise similar revenues to tolls, an estimated $80 billion a year, according to the best estimates. The surcharge revenue would, in turn, go to a new UN agency that would be in charge of distributing the funds.

The resulting funds would be earmarked, in part, for the purpose of rebuilding Iran, helping fulfill Tehran’s demand for wartime reparations. The remainder of the money could go to repairing civilian war damage in regional Arab states. The funds could meet the region’s immediate humanitarian relief needs and repair broader, wartime damage. The money could also go to helping the region address its environmental challenges. The funds would complement whatever the United States, the European Union, and affluent Arab states and others contribute to reconstruction. The fund’s duration would be open-ended. But it would be subject to periodic review and, if needed, renewed by the parties: the states levying export surcharges, as well as Oman, which has suffered damage from the war. 

A deal on the strait would first be worked out between Iran and the United States. The two countries should, in fact, set up a working group dedicated to the issue. (They should also set up a working group to handle nuclear challenges.) But the United Nations would have an essential role to play, as well. A fee arrangement would need explicit UN Security Council support and broader UN monitoring to ensure that the surcharges are not used for unauthorized purposes. The Security Council would have to set up the new UN organization, perhaps called the Persian Gulf Cooperation Agency, that would be charged with distributing the funds and tracking them. It must be run by effective and competent personnel appointed by the UN secretary-general under a careful and appropriate process of evaluating and approving candidates. In addition to Iran and the regional Arab states, the UN Security Council’s permanent members—China, France, Russia, the UK, and the U.S.—would participate in the agency by providing a nexus of a board of directors, as would Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Malaysia. These countries might also provide funds, training, and personnel. The UN General Assembly would settle disputes involving the agency using a majority vote. The agency could also coordinate other international assistance in rebuilding Iran and other Persian Gulf states.

Such measures would not totally resolve Tehran’s and Washington’s underlying disputes. But they would help stabilize ties and pave the way for negotiations that could eventually normalize relations. The two sides would need to engage in careful sequencing. 

Despite weeks of attacks, Iran remains open to negotiations. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has repeatedly reaffirmed Iran’s right to uranium enrichment and control the Strait of Hormuz. Yet he has also said that Iran is open to talking further about how it can assure the world that it will not develop a nuclear weapon and called for a new regime to govern the strait. 

Tehran, after all, has demonstrated that it can resist two nuclear-armed states of significantly superior military capability in part by using the strait as leverage.

In parlous times, unexpected ideas emerge that open the door for diplomacy. This is one of those times. Coercion or bombings will not resolve the conflict between Iran and the United States. Instead, the two countries need a golden bridge so that the outcome of negotiations is not one of humiliation but cooperation and thus success.