Iran looks to Trump and nuclear talks as escape hatch as attacks intensify

With Iran’s air defenses shredded, allies sidelined and arsenal of missiles running down, the country’s theocratic leaders face the prospect of having to submit to a tougher negotiation on their nuclear program as their only way out of a worsening situation.

Iran’s next steps could determine whether the theocratic regime will overcome what is arguably its gravest crisis since its war with Iraq in the 1980s. Tehran is looking to talks as a possible escape hatch, a way of saving face and preserving its theocracy, said diplomats and analysts.

Iran canceled talks with the U.S. on a nuclear deal scheduled for Sunday, but as Israeli attacks intensify, Tehran is signaling it is open to diplomacy. President Trump also has said he wants a deal and the war to end. He confirmed Monday that Iran had reached out through intermediaries.

“They’d like to talk, but they should have done that before,” Trump said at a Group of Seven summit of industrial countries in Canada.

Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, worried about a possible regional war, have been lobbying Trump to pressure the Israelis to halt their campaign. Iran says it is ready to return to the negotiating table if Israel pauses its attacks.

“In the future, if the aggression stops, it is obvious that the ground will be prepared for a return to diplomacy,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told foreign diplomats Sunday in Tehran.

A poster in Tehran of Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who was among top officials killed in the Israeli strikes.

But an Israeli official said Monday that Trump hadn’t pressured the Israelis to halt their military campaign. “Trump isn’t telling us to stop,” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

While Iran has been weakened by the attacks, it remains unclear how much it is willing to compromise on the circumstances or substance of negotiations.

Senior Iranian officials have publicly expressed mistrust of Trump and rejected his claims that the U.S. wasn’t involved in Israel’s attack on Iran. Yet, they have also been careful not to harshly attack the Trump administration as they denounce Israel, wary of taking any measures that could provoke the U.S. into confrontation.

“They have no choice but to keep the door open to a diplomatic solution,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. “Whether they like it or not, it involves the United States and the Trump administration. They have to be quite careful, not too inflammatory.”

Israel, too, needs to be cautious about unexpected consequences from its military campaign, such as potentially emboldening hard-liners in Iran who favor nuclear parity with Israel as the only deterrence against future attacks. That could set off a race to build a nuclear bomb once Iran has the opportunity, provided its nuclear facilities survive the Israeli attacks.

Since Friday, Israeli warplanes and missiles have damaged the Iranian regime’s infrastructure, striking Iranian nuclear sites, missile launchers, oil and energy facilities and government buildings. Israel has assassinated top Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists.

Smoke rose Monday from an oil depot northwest of Tehran as Israel sent a barrage of missiles to targets in Iran.

The regime has appeared increasingly vulnerable. The roads out of Tehran have been clogged with people fleeing the city. On Monday, the blasts could be heard live on Iranian state TV as Israel expanded its targets to include buildings in Tehran belonging to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

“Iran isn’t going to be able to match Israel from a military standpoint,” said Michael Singh, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “So it’s going to look for other advantages.”

Four months ago, senior Iranian officials handed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a white paper that predicted a frightening future for the country.

The document envisioned a scenario where Israel would conduct airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear program, while Washington would implement “maximum, maximum pressure” in the form of sanctions. Yet, it envisioned negotiations with the U.S. on a nuclear deal would also unfold at some point, according to people who have seen the white paper.

Khamenei and his top advisers never expected Israel to launch airstrikes on the scale they have seen in recent days while they were negotiating with the Americans. Araghchi told diplomats that they had been played by Trump and U.S. Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, into thinking negotiations would prevent a strike, according to European and Arab officials.

The Iranians have said privately that they could be open to resume negotiations, as long as Trump publicly says he doesn’t support the Israeli strikes. “A private message is not enough; the U.S. government needs to condemn the attack on nuclear facilities and explicitly withdraw from this conflict to prove its good intentions,” Araghchi told the foreign diplomats on Sunday.

Araghchi said Iran would only accept a deal that allows it to enrich uranium. He accused Israel of striking Iran to prevent the nuclear talks going forward.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the strikes were necessary to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Most Western experts agree Iran wasn’t constructing a bomb, but was pushing forward and could have created one in a few months. It is unlikely that Israel would accept any resumption of talks if enrichment of uranium remained on the table.

Some Israeli analysts see Iran’s willingness to return to the negotiating table as a stalling tactic. Trump should wait until Israel gets a decisive victory, giving him more leverage, they said.

“They are trying to put a wedge between the U.S. and Israel,” said Avner Golov, former senior director for foreign policy at Israel’s National Security Council. “They are trying to push America to push Israel to stop and buy time for diplomacy.”

The longer Israel’s attacks continue, the more the Iranian regime will be debilitated militarily and economically. The regime could also face dissent within its own ranks for miscalculating Israel’s strategy and its capabilities.

If diplomacy doesn’t end the war soon, Iran could decide to expand the war regionally, said Singh and other analysts. Blockading the Strait of Hormuz, for example, would likely trigger a major oil supply crisis, a surge in prices and a drop in global stock markets.

That could “create more pressure” on the U.S. and Gulf nations, said Singh, to “force a diplomatic outcome.” But it could also prompt the U.S. to get more directly involved in the war.

“Iran still has difficult and dangerous moves that it can make ahead of it, and it’s trying to avoid taking those positions for the time being,” said Vakil.

For now, Trump is trying to leverage the Israeli strikes, convinced that the Iranians are weakened and willing to agree to concessions, especially on stopping uranium enrichment.

But experts who have followed Iran for decades say it is unlikely Tehran will give up any ability to enrich uranium, despite their weakened state.

“They know Trump is keen to strike a deal,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. “But they’re unlikely to bend over backwards to accommodate him lest it confirms that they’re desperate.”

“For the Iranians, the only thing that is more dangerous from their perspective than suffering from Israel’s bombing is surrendering to America’s terms.”

Write to Sudarsan Raghavan at sudarsan.raghavan@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com