In 2016, when Donald Trump was running for president and pressed for details on how he would handle some of the world's most thorny security issues, he had a simple formula for curbing Iran's nuclear program, which he summed up by saying then-President Barack Obama's negotiating team should have gotten up from the table and left in a huff. "The Iranians would have come begging," Trump told New York Times reporters at the time. "It's a deal that would have been much better if they had walked away twice." "They negotiated very badly."

Now, the newspaper argues, at a time when the Iranians are much closer to being able to produce a weapon than they were when the last agreement was negotiated—in part because Trump himself upended the agreement in 2018—the president has an opportunity to demonstrate how it should have been done.

According to reports, so far, the gap between the two sides appears enormous. The Iranians appear to be seeking an updated version of the Obama-era nuclear deal, which limited Iran's stockpile of nuclear material. The Americans, meanwhile, want to dismantle Iran's massive nuclear fuel enrichment infrastructure, its missile program, and Tehran's longstanding support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other proxy forces.

What is missing is time.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, who called Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal (May 2028) a "grave mistake," said Tuesday that "it is imperative that we reach an agreement quickly." She added, "Iran's nuclear program is advancing every day, and with the expiration of the snapback sanctions, we are at risk of losing one of our most important points of leverage."

It's worth noting that the so-called "snapback" sanctions, which quickly reimpose UN sanctions on Iran, are set to expire on October 18.

Pressure is now mounting on Trump to reach a tougher deal on Iran than the one agreed upon under the Obama administration, which will be the benchmark for determining whether President Trump has achieved his goals. To add to the pressure, his administration is already threatening the possibility of military strikes if the talks do not go well, although it leaves unclear whether the United States, Israel, or a joint force would carry out those strikes.

White House spokeswoman Caroline Levitt threatened on Tuesday that there would be "hell to pay" if the Iranians did not negotiate with Trump.

"The Iranians will be surprised when they discover they're not dealing with Barack Obama or John Kerry," said Senator Jim Risch, R-Idaho, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, referring to former Secretary of State John Kerry, who oversaw the negotiations for the first agreement in 2015. "This is a completely different ball game" under Trump.

Negotiations begin on Saturday, led by Steve Witkoff, the president's friend and fellow New York real estate developer, who is said to be leading the US team. Witkoff, who is also handling negotiations on Gaza and Ukraine, has no known background in the complex technology of nuclear fuel enrichment or the many steps involved in making a nuclear bomb.

The newspaper says that the first question Witkoff will face is the scope of the negotiations. The deal concluded under Obama addressed only the nuclear program. It did not address Iran's missile program—which was subject to separate UN restrictions, which Tehran ignored—or its support for movements designated by the US as terrorist organizations (such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis).

On this point, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz stated that any new agreement with the Trump administration must address everything, and that Iran's massive nuclear facilities must be completely dismantled—not simply left in place, operating at a very slow pace, as they were in the 2015 agreement.

"Iran has to abandon its program in a way that the whole world can see," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation" last March. He spoke of "total dismantling," a situation that would leave Iran largely defenseless: no missiles, no proxy forces, and no path to a nuclear bomb.

Trump stated on Monday that talks with Iran would be "direct," meaning that American negotiators would interact with their Iranian counterparts. It's worth noting that, so far, the Iranians have a different narrative: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi published an op-ed in the Washington Post on Tuesday in which he said his country was "prepared for indirect negotiations with the United States." Araghchi said that the United States must first pledge to take the military option against Iran off the table.

“They (the Iranians) clearly say they want to talk,” Jim Walsh, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program, told the newspaper. “But there’s negotiation, and then there’s surrender. Is this a list of demands, or are we going to get attacked (from the Iranian perspective)? That won’t work.” The negotiating environment is higher stakes than it was during the Obama administration. Iran’s nuclear program has advanced since Trump withdrew from the previous agreement (May 2018); today, Iran is producing uranium enriched to 60% purity, just short of bomb-grade. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran is exploring a faster, if more primitive, approach to developing a nuclear weapon that could take months, rather than a year or two, if its leadership decides to race to a bomb.

But in other respects, according to the newspaper, Iran's negotiating position is weaker.

Israel claims to have destroyed nearly all of Iran's air defenses protecting its nuclear facilities last October, and that Iran's regional proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are significantly weakened and unable to threaten Israel with retaliation if Iranian facilities are attacked.