Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, published an assessment on May 22 arguing that a U.S.-Iran deal is closer than either government’s public posture suggests, and that the diplomacy underway differs fundamentally from the 2015 JCPOA.
Parsi considers China’s role the most striking feature. Beijing has kept its fingerprints off the negotiations—and therefore off any future failure—while functioning as what Parsi calls “the silent, indispensable diplomatic power in the region.” He notes that while Pakistan’s Chief of Defense Forces and Army Chief Asim Munir is traveling to Tehran, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is departing for Beijing.
Regional involvement is “astounding,” Parsi writes—Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Oman are all actively facilitating, with Qatar’s shuttle especially active. Any deal would carry regional buy-in far beyond the JCPOA, with Israel and the UAE as conspicuous holdouts. Europe’s absence, meanwhile, “is noticeable but not felt, as its irrelevance is becoming normalized.”
