Iran and various European powers are meeting in Geneva on Monday and Tuesday in last-minute nuclear talks right before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
The E3 powers – England, France, and Germany – are trying to get new concessions from Iran before Trump enters the arena and throws his own aggressive style into the standoff. Tehran is trying to insulate itself from Trump’s most bombastic possible moves by positioning itself as open to cooperation.
After the sides spoke in December, however, if there had been some potential anticipation of significant moves or even a new interim understanding before Trump entered office, that possibility seems to be receding with only a week left.
Rather, it appears both sides are merely trying to feel out each other to best position themselves once Trump takes office, including threats from France to restore full sanctions on the ayatollahs if there is no deal in the near future.
The negotiations also come against the backdrop of increased discussion, in concrete terms, of a potential Israeli airstrike on Iran’s nuclear sites. The IAF already destroyed Iran’s best air defenses this past April and October, and there are escalating hints that the Trump administration may provide the Jewish state with weapons to carry out the attack, which the US had refused to provide until now.
On November 22, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) condemned Iran for its nuclear violations for the second time in 2024, following a condemnation in June and another in 2022.
This came shortly after Israel’s October 26 attack, which disabled most of Tehran’s key anti-aircraft systems that protect its nuclear facilities, after Trump emerged as the new president-elect and as the E3 were about to meet with Iran about renewing nuclear negotiations.
There are additional reasons why the West may be ready for confrontation with Tehran. Not only have Iran’s nuclear violations continued and escalated since 2019, and in a very dangerous way since 2021, but around October 2025, the ability for the West to use the UN global snapback sanctions weapon against Iran will finally expire.
The sanctions weapon was a part of the 2015 nuclear deal. Even though it has been reduced to being on life support, it still has a provision that allows the US or the E3 to snap back full global sanctions on Tehran with no chance for a veto by Russia or China.
At the same time, invoking the snapback sanctions could lead Iran to take more aggressive moves with its nuclear program in retaliation.
In November, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi explicitly said his country could decide to cross the 90%-weaponized-uranium threshold or even cross the entire nuclear-weapons threshold if the West tried to use the snapback mechanism against it.
And this might be no idle threat.
When the IAEA condemned Iran in June, Tehran increased its uranium-enrichment program, and it did so again after the November 22 condemnation.
IN FACT, since Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal and reimposed American sanctions in 2018, Tehran has continually matched any penalty or condemnation with moving its nuclear program forward.
It is exactly for this reason that the E3 and the outgoing Biden administration have been reluctant to initiate a showdown with Iran any sooner than the October 2025 expiration date might require.
But this dynamic may have changed lately.
Israel’s attack on 20 Iranian sites on October 26 (following the ayatollahs’ attack on the Jewish state on October 1) both disabled the country’s defenses of its nuclear facilities and destroyed one of its secret weapons-group activities for potential nuclear detonation at Parchin.
Trump entering office means the ayatollahs face an impending campaign of economic and diplomatic maximum pressure and less maneuvering room than they have had under US President Joe Biden.
Some were even worried that Iran would try to break out to a nuclear weapon before the election, but The Jerusalem Post has received no indications from top Israeli defense officials that this is realistically in the works.This would seem to have pushed Iran to reach a deal with the E3 and the Biden administration before Trump takes office.
It would not bind Trump, who already exited the 2015 nuclear deal, but it would to some degree limit the effectiveness of any new pressure campaign he might try.
As all of this is happening, Iran is also in the process of a broader rethinking of its regional strategy, having lost Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Assad regime in Syria as three major proxies that could deter Israel from striking its nuclear program.
One sign that Tehran may try to cut a deal in the near future is that Araghchi explicitly said the regime was still open to talks even after he felt that IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi and the E3 betrayed a small initial deal he thought had been made.
Days before the IAEA condemned Iran, Grossi revealed he had offered Tehran to avoid a condemnation if it agreed to freeze its 60% uranium enrichment and started the process of bringing back some of the nuclear inspectors it expelled in early 2023.
Tehran agreed and thought it had dodged a condemnation and already would have Trump a bit cornered with a positive diplomatic process.
It turned out that Grossi could not “deliver the goods,” and the E3 stuck to the condemnation, saying Iran would need to do more to return to a more positive standing with them.
After all of these zigzags, the Post understands that the E3 is still open to a deal with Tehran that could help them deal with Trump, and that Israel’s successful attack on Iran and Trump’s election has not brought them to be steadfastly opposed to talks or to feeling overconfident.
Rather, sources have indicated that the E3 countries are still concerned that Israel or Trump may only push Iran over the nuclear-weapons threshold.