Donald Trump did not fuel anti-war sentiments among the American public, but he did channel them in a manner that few other Republican politicians had done before him. Over time, Trump’s embrace of these sentiments has made the notion that American troops should come home from the Middle East and that the United States should not get embroiled in any more wars there a core pillar of his “America First” foreign policy platform. If he wins the election in November, his approach to Iran may determine whether he will fulfill those promises to the American people or whether America will get even more embroiled in endless war in the Middle East.

Trump withdrew from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal in May 2018 and replaced it with “maximum pressure” sanctions, ostensibly to force Iran to agree to a “better” deal. Despite Trump’s bombastic rhetoric and military threats against Tehran, his goal appears genuinely to have been to secure a new deal with Iran. On the campaign trail, he had repeatedly bashed Obama’s deal as the worst deal ever, not because it wouldn’t achieve its nuclear objectives, but because it only opened the Iranian market to European and Chinese companies, while keeping American companies out. “They bought 118 Airbus planes, not Boeing planes. They’re spending all of their money in Europe,” he argued in 2016. “It’s so unfair and it’s so incompetent.”

Trump wanted a deal that would allow him to build Trump Towers in Tehran, whereas Obama’s deal continued to keep business with Iran off limits to American companies.

But having surrounded himself with Iran hawks and neoconservatives like Mike Pompeo, Rudy Giuliani, and John Bolton, he was given disingenuously bad advice: They deceived Trump that escalating sanctions would bring Iran to its knees and enable Trump to secure a better deal while they knew all along that the strategy was designed to bring the U.S. into war with Iran. 

For instance, Pompeo’s twelve demands for the U.S. to return to the nuclear deal were designed to be rejected by Tehran. These included non-starters such as Iran completely giving up uranium enrichment, giving IAEA unqualified access to all sites throughout the entire country, as well as ending support for Iran’s long-time ally, Hezbollah. In short, Pompeo demanded that Iran fully capitulate, knowing very well that such demands would escalate tensions and bring the U.S. and Iran closer to war.

After Iran shot down an American drone that had penetrated its airspace, Bolton and Pompeo pushed for strikes on Iranian soil. Trump eventually agreed, but then had a change of heart last minute since the plan would cause disproportionate damage. “I thought about it for a second and I said, you know what, they shot down an unmanned drone, plane, whatever you want to call it, and here we are sitting with 150 dead people… And I didn’t like it. I didn’t think—I didn’t think it was proportionate,” he later told reporters. The Washington Post reported that Bolton was “devastated” that Trump had changed his mind. 

(The drone had entered Iranian airspace because, weeks earlier, Bolton had changed the rules of engagement and authorized American surveillance drones to infringe on Iranian territory, perhaps with the calculation that these provocations could spark a war.) 

Tehran misread Trump, concluding that his aggressive rhetoric and his deference to Pompeo and Bolton’s strategy, as well as his proximity to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, suggested that his objective was regime change or even war. On several occasions, Trump sought to talk directly to the Iranians but was rebuffed.

During the United Nations General Assembly sessions in 2017 and 2018, Trump sought French president Emanuel Macron’s help to secure a meeting with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Later, he conveyed an invitation to Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, through Senator Rand Paul. During a G7 meeting in France, Trump asked the French to set up a meeting with Zarif, who was visiting France at the time. But Iran never agreed.

Iranian officials told me later that rejecting talks with Trump was a mistake. Though they had reasons to be skeptical and wary, the refusal to talk only prompted Trump to double down on Pompeo and Bolton’s pressure strategy.

The lesson learned was reflected by Massoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s new president, during his election campaign. He insisted that Iran needed to renew diplomacy with the U.S., including with Trump, to resolve its economic problems. 

If he wins in November, Trump may have an opportunity to finally get his calls returned by Tehran. Beyond a nuclear deal, Trump’s diplomacy can arguably advance an even more important U.S. strategic interest: Reduced U.S.-Iran tensions can not only bring attacks on U.S. troops and bases to an end, they will also help pave the way for an American exit from Iraq and Syria, while also helping to reduce the U.S.’s broader military presence in the Middle East.

An understanding with Iran is not a prerequisite for leaving Iraq and Syria—Trump should bring the troops home regardless—but reduced tensions with Tehran make an American withdrawal easier and less risky.

But Trump’s path to the negotiating table will still be tricky. A return to the bombast of his first term—at least without the necessary backchanneling to Tehran that clarifies Trump’s intent and establishes some guardrails for the two sides’ rhetoric —will close the opening that Pezeshkian’s election has brought. The politics of Tehran simply won’t enable Pezeshkian to attempt diplomacy under those circumstances.

How Trump plays his hand with Iran at the outset of his potential second term can determine whether he’ll be the dealmaker that brings U.S. troops home from the Middle East or not.

This of course presumes that a broader war will not have broken out in the Middle East before January of next year. Netanyahu’s assassination of Hamas’ political chief Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran on the day of Pezeshkian’s inauguration was at least partially designed to close the window for U.S.-Iran diplomacy and, according to the former deputy chief of the Israeli National Security Council, to spark a larger war in the region that would pull in the U.S. on Israel’s side. 

By that, Netanyahu would trap Trump (or Kamala Harris) in yet another Middle East war even before his inauguration day. Netanyahu’s shrewd maneuvering and complete disregard for U.S. interests is a reminder that no other U.S. partner is more likely to drag America back into war in the Middle East than Israel. 

If Trump once again surrounds himself with neocons, then dealing with Netanyahu’s attempts to undermine his plans to withdraw from the Middle East may prove trickier than dealing with Pezeshkian’s Iran.