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Susan Rice: How Did We Get 10 Minutes From War With Iran?

President Trump’s process of ordering and then canceling military strikes was a mess. But he now has an opening to restart talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

Protesters outside the White House on Thursday.Credit...Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Ms. Rice, a contributing opinion writer, was the national security adviser from 2013 to 2017.

If President Trump is to be believed, the United States just came within 10 minutes of launching war against Iran. Make no mistake, these would not have been pinprick strikes that Iran simply swallowed. They would have marked the beginning of a costly war that put tens of thousands of American service members in the Gulf, our regional partners and Israel directly at risk, while shocking the global economy by choking off shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Never mind. Mr. Trump claims to have thought better of it. At the last minute, he decided that killing an estimated 150 Iranians was a disproportionate response to the downing of an unmanned American drone, which just might have strayed briefly into Iranian airspace. Let’s stipulate that this 11th-hour decision was correct and far better than the alternative.

But the risk of war remains real.

How on earth did we find ourselves 10 minutes from an idiotic war without the president having weighed the consequences? As a former national security adviser who has participated in many decisions about whether and when to use force, I am more certain than ever that our national security decision-making process is dangerously dysfunctional.

If President Trump is being truthful, he did not delve sufficiently into the risks and consequences of the military action before ordering military strikes. The question of potential civilian casualties is hardly trivial and should have been fully factored into his original decision. Did the national security adviser, John Bolton, who has advocated striking Iran for over a decade, fail to provide a balanced presentation of the arguments on both sides?

There is, however, a potential silver lining, if Mr. Trump truly doesn’t want war with Iran and aims to take control of his national security policy.

Since, for whatever reason, Mr. Trump chose not to strike Iran, he could parlay that relative restraint into a diplomatic opening. The Iranians now claim they refrained from downing a manned aircraft with 35 United States service members aboard and hit the drone instead. Both sides have contributed to this crisis, but now say they chose to step back from escalation. True or not, this presents an opportunity to defuse the situation.

To test the prospect for de-escalation, President Trump would need to act with uncharacteristic clarity and resolve.

First, he needs to sideline his out-of-control national security adviser plus his hawkish sidekick, the secretary of state.

Second, the president needs to narrow and clarify his redlines for military action against Iran. He should make plain that three things would force consideration of a United States military response — attacks on American personnel, Iran rushing to acquire the fissile material for a bomb and any direct Iranian attack on Israel. Mr. Trump should also reassure Congress that he will not start an unnecessary war of choice against Iran that would flout his own redlines and require wildly contorting a 2002 authorization to use force against Al Qaeda.

Third, Mr. Trump needs quickly to communicate directly his redlines to Iran and propose a path to avert war. To do so, he should enlist a retired nonpartisan career ambassador who knows Iran well — someone of the caliber of Bill Burns, a former deputy secretary of state, who has negotiated with Iran, or Thomas Pickering, a six-time ambassador and former under secretary of state. If Mr. Trump can’t stomach someone outside his team, he can send his reputedly rational deputy secretary of state, John Sullivan, to New York to meet with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht Ravanchi, who studied in the United States, helped negotiate the nuclear deal and is a reliable conduit to Tehran.

Fourth, Mr. Trump needs to lay out a series of reciprocal steps whereby both sides give a little, so familiarity and confidence can be built for more significant discussions. For instance, Mr. Trump might offer to allow Iran again to export its low-enriched uranium in exchange for Iran shelving its threat to exceed the stockpile limits imposed by the nuclear deal. (Iran says it uses or sells the uranium to fuel power plants, but Mr. Trump blocked its export last month.)

Next, he could trade a pause in the buildup of additional United States forces in the Gulf for a firm Iranian commitment not to target international shipping or foreign aircraft. Let’s test if Iran will adhere to that pledge, for an initial ninety days, while we hold in reserve the option of deploying reinforcements.

Fifth, President Trump should offer a time-limited “suspension” of the United States withdrawal from the nuclear deal and allow temporary (perhaps partial) relief from the newly reimposed sanctions, if Iran immediately releases American persons it has imprisoned and agrees to direct talks with the United States and the other partners to the nuclear deal on extending and strengthening the agreement. If the talks yield progress, we could expand sanctions relief.

Eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat must be any president’s priority. The Trump administration’s demand that Iran simultaneously halt all its nefarious activities failed utterly, as it sacrificed the nuclear deal and obtained nothing else. Should a renewed nuclear dialogue bear fruit, on a separate track the administration could aim to negotiate restraints on other aspects of Iran’s malign behavior.

Such incremental reciprocal steps may well not work. Iran may refuse to talk. Mr. Trump may lack the guts to use real diplomacy or ease any pressure. Mr. Bolton and Mr. Pompeo, Saudi Arabia or Israel may provoke a confrontation that draws us in. But here is what’s clear: without such an effort, we seem to be on an inexorable path to costly, deadly conflict with Iran.

President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and impose crippling sanctions, when Iran was in full compliance, was foolish and, predictably, has backfired. But we are where we are. Finding a way to leverage his massive mistakes while demonstrating the will and capacity to climb down is our least bad option.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser from 2013 to 2017 and a former United States ambassador to the United Nations, is a contributing opinion writer. @AmbassadorRice

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