Iran’s Comprehensive Peace Proposal to the United States
History occasionally presents moments when the truth about a conflict is stated plainly enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s February 7 address in Doha, Qatar (transcript here) should prove to be such a moment. His important and constructive remarks responded to the US call for comprehensive negotiations, and he laid out a sound proposal for peace across the Middle East.
Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for comprehensive negotiations: “If the Iranians want to meet, we’re ready.” He proposed for talks to include the nuclear issue, Iran’s military capabilities, and its support for proxy groups around the region. On its surface, this sounds like a serious and constructive proposal. The Middle East’s security crises are interconnected, and diplomacy that isolates nuclear issues from broader regional dynamics is unlikely to endure.
On February 7, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi’s responded to the United States’ proposal for a comprehensive peace. In his speech at the Al Jazeera Forum, the foreign minister addressed the root cause of regional instability – “Palestine… is the defining question of justice in West Asia and beyond” and he proposed a path forward.
The Foreign Minister’s statement is correct. The failure to resolve the issue of Palestinian statehood has indeed fueled every major regional conflict since 1948. The Arab-Israeli wars, the rise of anti-Israel militancy, the regional polarization, and the repeated cycles of violence, all derive from the failure to create a State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel. Gaza represents the most devastating chapter in this conflict, where Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine was followed by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and then by Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza.
In his speech, Araghchi condemned Israel’s expansionist project “pursued under the banner of security.” He warned of the annexation of the West Bank, which Israeli government officials, as National Security Minister Ben Gvir, continually call for, and for which the Knesset has already passed a motion.
Araghchi also highlighted another fundamental dimension of Israeli strategy which is the pursuit of permanent military supremacy across the region. He said that Israel’s expansionist project requires that “neighboring countries be weakened – militarily, technologically, economically, and socially so that the Israeli regime permanently enjoys the upper hand.” This is indeed the Clean Break doctrine of Prime Minister Netanyahu, dating back 30 years. It has been avidly supported by the US through 100 billion dollars in military assistance to Israel since 2000, diplomatic cover at the UN via repeated vetoes, and the consistent US rejection of accountability measures for Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law.
Israel’s impunity has destabilized the region, fueling arms races, proxy wars, and cycles of revenge. It has also corroded what remains of the international legal order. The abuse of international law by the US and Israel with much of Europe remaining silent, has gravely weakened the UN Charter, leaving the UN close to collapse.
In the concluding remarks of his speech, he offered the US a political solution and path forward. “The path to stability is clear: justice for Palestine, accountability for crimes, an end to occupation and apartheid, and a regional order built on sovereignty, equality, and cooperation. If the world wants peace, it must stop rewarding aggression. If the world wants stability, it must stop enabling expansionism.”
This is a valid and constructive response to Rubio’s call for comprehensive diplomacy.
This framework could address all the interlocking dimensions of the region’s conflict. The end of Israel’s expansion and occupation of Palestine, and Israel’s return to the borders of June 4, 1967, would bring an end to outside funding and arming of proxy groups in the region. The creation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel would enhance Israel’s security as well as that of its neighbors. A renewed nuclear agreement with Iran, strictly limiting Iran to peaceful nuclear activities and paired with the lifting of US and EU sanctions, would add a crucial pillar of regional stability. Iran already agreed to such a nuclear framework a decade ago, in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was adopted by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. It was the US during Trump’s first term, not Iran, that withdrew from the agreement.
A comprehensive peace reflects the foundation of modern collective security doctrine, including the United Nations Charter itself. Durable peace requires mutual recognition of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and equal security guarantees for all states.
Regional security is the shared responsibility of all states in the region, and each of them faces a historic obligation. This comprehensive peace proposal is not new, it has been advocated for decades by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57 Muslim‑majority countries) and the League of Arab States (22 Arab States). Ever since the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, all of these countries have endorsed, on a yearly basis, the framework of land-for-peace. All major Arab and Islamic states, allies of the US, have played a crucial role in facilitating the latest round of US-Iranian negotiations in Oman. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has clearly reminded the US that it will normalize relations with Israel only on the condition of the establishment of a Palestinian State.
The United States faces a moment of truth. Does it really want peace, or does it want to follow Israel’s extremism? For decades, the US has blindly followed Israeli misguided objectives. Domestic political pressures, powerful lobbying networks, strategic miscalculations, and perhaps a bit of blackmail lurking in the Epstein files (who knows?) have combined to subordinate American diplomacy to Israel’s regional ambitions.
The US subservience to Israel does not serve American interests. It has drawn the United States into repeated regional wars, undermined global trust in American foreign policy, and weakened the international legal order that Washington itself helped to construct after 1945.
A comprehensive peace offers the US a rare opportunity to correct course. By negotiating a comprehensive regional peace grounded in international law, the United States could reclaim genuine diplomacy and help to establish a stable regional security architecture that benefits all parties, including Israel and Palestine.
The Middle East stands at a crossroads between endless war and comprehensive peace. The framework for peace exists. It requires first and foremost Palestinian statehood, security guarantees for Israel and the rest of the region, a peaceful nuclear deal restoring the basic agreement adopted by the UN a decade ago, lifting of economic sanctions, the unbiased enforcement of international law, and a diplomatic architecture that replaces military force with security cooperation. The world should rally behind a comprehensive framework and take this historic opportunity to achieve regional peace.
Reprinted from Common Dreams.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). Other books include: Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017), and The Age of Sustainable Development, (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
Sybil Fares is a specialist and advisor in Middle East policy and sustainable development at SDSN.
Iran A Bogus or Genuine Rebellion?
Angry demonstrations against Iran’s clerical government engulfed the capital, Tehran, and other cities in December and early January. Although the turmoil has receded since then, it appears that more than 6,800 people have perished in the violence as of February 3, 2026. The protests have been the largest in years, and the demonstrators appear to be more diverse than in earlier anti-regime episodes. Such differences have sparked speculation in the United States and other Western countries that the mullahs may finally be losing their grip on power.
Optimists are celebrating that an especially repressive, misogynistic, reactionary government could be headed for the ash heap of history where it belongs. What is taking place, according to that view, is a genuine, popular revolution by the Iranian people. President Donald Trump has even mused about resuming the bombing of targets in Iran as a way of encouraging the protesters and showing that they have Washington’s support. He apparently contemplated such strikes as a way to “reignite” the protests that had faded during the previous 2 weeks. Washington took its first new military action on February 3, shooting down an Iranian drone over the Persian Gulf (or as anti-Tehran hawks in the West are fond of calling that body of water: the Arabian Sea.)
Skeptics regarding the disorders in Iran, however, contend that the demonstrations do not reflect the will of most Iranians. Instead, such critics assert, the disorders are the product of a carefully orchestrated and heavily funded covert operation that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s Mossad are using to undermine Iran’s government and install a puppet replacement. It is an argument that, given Iran’s history since the early 1950s, cannot be summarily dismissed. After all, the CIA and Britain’s MI6 orchestrated the coup that ousted Iran’s secular democratic government in 1953 and restored the Shah to power as an unrestricted domestic tyrant eager to do the West’s bidding on both economic and security issues.
At this point, we cannot be certain if the demonstrations constitute the first stage of a popular rebellion on the part of an aggrieved population finally pushed beyond endurance or is the latest cynical power play by the United States and its favorite ally.
It should not come as a surprise if a mounting percentage of Iranians have had their fill of the mullahs and religious tyranny. The 1979 Islamic Revolution long ago lost most of whatever exciting, dynamic appeal it might once have had following its overthrow of the Shah. Decades of economic mismanagement, combined with repressive measures, both large and petty, have taken an extensive toll. Instead of being seen as the youthful vanguard of a revolution, Iran’s current rulers have the pervasive image of being cranky, brutally intolerant elders who are economic incompetents to boot. Thus, the societal ingredients are certainly in place for a violent upheaval to dislodge such a regime.
However, it also would be naïve to assume that the United States and its allies (especially Israel) would not resort to even the dirtiest tactics to overthrow the clerical regime. There is no evidence that today’s CIA is any more ethical than the 1950s version. Moreover, Washington has engaged in numerous other regime-change wars over the decades against both authoritarian and democratic governments. Indeed, the Trump administration just recently captured and removed from office Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro. Mossad has long regarded ousting the Iranian mullahs as a high priority.
On January 15, Trump openly threatened to intervene militarily if Iranian security personnel continued to crack down on demonstrators. The prospect of an immediate crisis did recede shortly thereafter when the Tehran regime apparently promised not to launch new attacks on crowds or to execute demonstrators. Obviously, though, the situation remains extremely tense and delicate.
A U.S.-led assault not only would constitute unlawful interference in Iran’s internal affairs; it also could well backfire in terms of the overall impact. Since the 1953 coup, Iranians across the ideological spectrum have been hypersensitive to any hint of U.S. meddling. Even staunch opponents of the clerical regime have been wary of Washington’s intentions. U.S. professions of support during previous uprisings have been given a cool, if not frigid, reception by most Iranians. The Trump administration’s extensive assistance to Israel for Tel Aviv’s air strikes against Iranian air defenses in late 2025, and Washington’s own subsequent B-2 bomber strikes on Tehran’s nuclear installations have not likely enhanced trust about U.S. motives even among the regime’s arch-adversaries.
Circumstances also have not boosted the credibility of the political forces that Washington now appears to be backing. An especially visible spokesperson for anti-regime factions has been Reza Pahlavi—the son of the late Shah. It would be difficult to identify a more hated figure for millions of ordinary Iranians than the leader of the Pahlavi family. One possible exception might be the MEK (Mojahedin-e-Khalq) domestic insurgent group that the U.S. government formerly listed as a terrorist organization. Despite that well-deserved reputation, some of the most prominent American and West European hawks have long embraced the MEK and touted it as a movement devoted to liberating Iran and establishing a democratic government. U.S. and other Western activists who are inclined to embrace the current anti-regime demonstrations need to be cautious. The prominence of both Pahlavi and the MEK are not encouraging developments.
Most cautious realists who backed Donald Trump’s presidential bid did not expect him to be the willing instrument of new regime-change wars for the United States. Trump already has disappointed many of those supporters with his antics in Venezuela. If he now entangles the United States in an even more dangerous, open-ended regime-change crusade in Iran, he will forfeit the allegiance of any American who wants a sensible, achievable U.S. foreign policy. His record will then replicate the follies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.
We can all hope that the current turmoil in Iran is the initial stages of a genuine, indigenous, democratic revolution. No one who values freedom—and especially the dignity and rights of women—should shed any tears if the mullahs lose power. But it is far too soon to determine what the demonstrations actually signify. Washington’s long record of meddling and duplicity regarding Iran makes that task even more difficult. In any case, Iran’s political future should be for Iranians to determine. U.S. leaders need to step to the sidelines.
