I left Iran many years before the 1979 revolution and have spent nearly half a century building my professional life in the United States. Over those decades, I have maintained professional and academic connections throughout the Gulf region while observing relations between Washington and Tehran deteriorate from tension to hostility and often to crisis. Whatever one’s views of either government, few observers can deny that the last 47 years have produced a recurring cycle of sanctions, confrontation, mistrust, and missed opportunities.

For that reason, the recently proposed memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran deserves serious consideration. Whatever one’s political views, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance deserve credit for advancing a proposition that many previous administrations were unwilling even to test: that engagement may achieve what decades of pressure could not.