It has been exactly five years since former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and more than two years since current U.S. President Joe Biden launched his drive to restore it. But despite high hopes, Biden has been unable to resurrect the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the JCPOA. In part, this is the administration’s failure; in early negotiations, Biden was hesitant to push Congress to back a controversial foreign policy initiative when he needed its support for his domestic agenda. The failure is also a consequence of Iranian obstinacy. As talks dragged on, Tehran threw up roadblocks and made multiple demands—including a guarantee that the next U.S. administration will not again withdraw from the deal—that Washington simply could not meet. As a result, there has been virtually no progress in negotiations since September 2022. The two sides are far from an agreement.

Yet Tehran’s nuclear program is now more advanced than it has ever been. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has enriched uranium to 84 percent—just one percentage point short of weapons-grade purity—and has amassed enough enriched fissile material for several bombs. According to Pentagon officials, the country could produce an operational nuclear weapon within a few months. As a result, thanks to Trump’s strategic blunder, Iran is a de facto nuclear state: one screwdriver and one political decision away from weaponizing its nuclear capabilities.

Even if the negotiations resume, it is unlikely that the JCPOA can be saved. Iran’s program is too advanced to be contained by that deal, and the political climate in the West is not conducive to meaningful negotiations. The widespread, antigovernment social protests in Iran and Tehran’s brutal response have killed any appetite in Washington and European capitals for lifting sanctions on Iran—a necessary part of a deal. Iran’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been similarly repugnant to Western public opinion. And even if Washington were willing to hold its nose and lift many sanctions to restore the JCPOA, it is not clear that Iran’s hard-line leaders are actually interested in finalizing a deal with an administration that could be out of office in less than two years.

As part of the ongoing requiem over the JCPOA’s all-but-certain demise, policymakers are trying to craft a Plan B. But their prescriptions are generally the same policies—sanctions and international isolation, covert action, military exercises, and military threats—that have utterly failed to curb Iran’s nuclear advances for the past two decades. The White House seems interested in a kind of “less for less” deal, in which the United States preserves most of its sanctions but offers partial relief in exchange for Tehran freezing the most troublesome aspects of its nuclear program, such as high-level enrichment. Yet for now, Tehran has made clear it is uninterested in this kind of arrangement.

If the United States and Europe do not want Iran to become a nuclear-weapons state, and if they do not want to attack Iran and hazard war to set back the program, they need a new diplomatic approach. Thankfully, recent events in the Middle East have created an opening for one. A U.S.-Iranian deal may not be feasible, but as Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf forge better ties with Tehran, what was once impossible—a regional agreement that simultaneously tackles Iran’s meddling in the Arabian Peninsula and its nuclear program—is now entirely conceivable. Unlike the JCPOA, this kind of deal would generate buy-in from countries near Iran, making it far more sustainable. It would give Iran more meaningful and lasting economic relief. It could permanently, not temporarily, contain Iran’s nuclear program, and it might reduce Tehran’s support for troublesome militias in the region. In doing so, such a deal could bring more stability to a part of the world that sorely needs it.