While the eyes of the international community, particularly in the Middle East, were focusing on the nuclear negotiations in Vienna, a mystery blast hit the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran. Whether this explosion was the doing of a foreign force or an accident, when considered in conjunction with talks that are hanging by the thinnest of threads, it highlights a situation that will remain fragile until the issue of ensuring that Iran doesn’t develop nuclear military capability is once and for all laid to rest. Logically speaking, both sides desperately need the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal to avoid further confrontations. The question is, who will blink first? Iran’s dire economic circumstances make it necessary for it to show sufficient flexibility that will allow the West to remove sanctions that are threatening to weaken the regime and lead to domestic social and political unrest. On the other hand, world powers must demonstrate assertiveness in making it clear that they won’t tolerate an Iran that possesses nuclear weapons, but without humiliating it – rather they must coax it away from bringing a calamity on itself. However, after two terms of a relatively pragmatic Iranian presidency, the election of Ebrahim Raisi means that all centers of power in Iran are now dominated by more radical elements, which means that though its negotiators understand the need for an agreement, and that the survival of the regime could hang upon one, they are ready to take the negotiations right down to the wire, which increases the danger of miscalculation and with it possible military confrontation. Only Iran knows how close it is to the nuclear threshold, but it believes that keeping the international community guessing serves as a lever to pressurise the P5+1 negotiators into making concessions as time increasingly becomes more precious. This seems to have led Tehran to, wrongly, believe that in these delicate negotiations it holds most if not all of the cards, and therefore would prefer to dictate its terms, including that of not directly negotiating with the US. There is a sense among Iranians that they also occupy the high moral ground, since it was the US that withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018; consequently they are calling for America to first lift all sanctions imposed by the previous administration before proceeding with direct negotiations. The folly of former President Trump in unilaterally withdrawing from the deal is well documented, enabling Iran to hide behind it in order to press on with enriching uranium and bring itself closer than ever to developing a nuclear military capability; not to mention harming the credibility that Washington possesses when there is continuity between administrations, especially as far as international agreements are concerned. However, the credibility argument is fast approaching its sell-by date; it may impress some people back at home and Iran’s proxies in the region, but it is becoming a case of Iran cutting off its nose to spite its face. There is currently a different president in the White House, and President Biden is genuinely interested in returning to the nuclear agreement, despite criticism at home and vocal opposition from its close ally Israel. Because time is of the essence, Tehran’s delaying tactics and attempts to extract more concessions, mainly from the US, and to play Moscow and Beijing against Washington, especially considering the growing tensions between the West and Beijing and Moscow, may backfire. If the point is reached when the intelligence community concludes that Iran is capable of building warheads, there will be a mounting sense of urgency and the need to take action, either through tightening economic sanctions, or as a last resort to consider a military option. While there have been some positive signs of progress from the two weeks of talks this month, the participating Western powers are showing signs of growing impatience with Iranian intransigence and obstructiveness in resuming the 2015 deal. One hopes that the Trump experiment in American politics was a one-off aberration in US history, and there is a limit to how much political capital Tehran can gain from it without harming its own interests. If there is one country that doesn’t mince its words about Iran’s nuclear program it is Israel, which continues to maintain that it has a military option. In the transition from Benjamin Netanyahu to the current administration led by Naftali Bennett, the country’s official approach hasn’t changed much beyond the style in which it is expressed. Israel is highly critical not only of the possibility of the US returning to the nuclear deal and lifting the sanctions, but also of the possibility that Washington would be ready to accept a “less-for-less” deal that entailed a more limited scaling back of the Iranian nuclear program in return for a partial removal of sanctions. The latter represents the worst of all options for Israel’s decision makers, as it doesn’t stop Iran from advancing toward nuclear military capability and concurrently it provides the regime with the necessary resources to achieve this and also to sustain itself, limiting Israel’s room to operate and stop an Iran that is complying with an internationally approved agreement. Consequently, leading Israeli ministers are raising the stakes while negotiations are taking place, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz made it known during a recent visit to the US that he had ordered the Israeli army to prepare for the eventuality of a military strike against Iran. That raises the question of whether such an action is a viable option for Israel, and, if so, whether it could be carried out in a manner that was worth the risks associated with what would be a very complicated operation. Israel has a credibility deficit when it comes to executing such an operation, following years of revelations of disagreements among its decision makers over whether such an attack is feasible, in terms of inflicting the necessary damage on the Iranian nuclear program and of risking a retaliation by Tehran that would rattle the entire region. It leaves the option of a negotiated settlement with stringent inspections as the most viable one, even if it doesn’t resolve Iran’s destabilizing foreign policy elsewhere in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Those issues are not part of the negotiations in Vienna, but an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program could and should create some momentum toward engaging with Tehran over its policies in the region – respectfully, but while drawing clear red lines that it should not cross. If those issues are not confronted, the region will remain volatile and susceptible to conflict at any given time. Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. He is a regular contributor to the international written and electronic media. Twitter: @YMekelberg Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view