Rep. Bill Foster, an Illinois Democrat and the only Ph.D. physicist in Congress, says a nuclear deal is still possible under President Donald Trump — one where Washington and Tehran could both save face.

Trump would just need to find a way to turn back the clock.

The U.S. and Iran are at a standstill on the question of whether Iran can keep enriching uranium — part of a broader stalemate in peace talks. Iranian officials insist enrichment for civilian use is their sovereign right, while the Trump administration is pushing to dismantle the program entirely.

But Foster says the key is to get back to where negotiations were in early June 2025, before Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer. At the time, the Trump administration and Iran were working toward a framework that would have allowed limited, low-level enrichment under international oversight. The idea was to shift the activity to a regional consortium and a tightly controlled facility, potentially on an Iranian island in the Persian Gulf.

That location would give Iran symbolic sovereignty while leaving the program transparent and vulnerable to Israel and Iran’s other neighbors, Foster said. Trump could sell it as tougher and even more enforceable than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated under President Barack Obama, he added.

“Their whole nuclear pipeline enterprise would have to be on one of these islands,” Foster said. “And it’d be totally open to the proper inspection, but because of that location, anyone can destroy it. If they start saying we’re kicking the inspectors out, instantly, to any of the Gulf states, or Israel, it would be, by design, defenseless.”

Foster said the hardest part would be getting Iran to agree to anytime, anywhere inspections — something it has repeatedly resisted, viewing it as an imposition on its sovereignty and a potential cover for spying. Tehran has suspended such inspections before.

Foster spent decades studying subatomic particles at the Energy Department’s Fermilab. He joined Congress in 2013 and has carved out a role translating the technical details of nuclear weapons into policy terms.

Despite Trump’s repeated claims that U.S. strikes obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, Foster is skeptical. Iran has produced hundreds of kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, which is not considered weapons-grade, but it’s close enough that it could be used to quickly build a crude nuclear device.

“They would not need a giant factory,” Foster said, adding that Tehran could already have accomplished this within weeks of last summer’s strikes in small, hard-to-find sites.

Sending U.S. troops to seize Iran’s nuclear material by force, as Trump has floated, is so risky it was rejected during the Obama years.

“No, it was ugly 15 years ago,” Foster said. “Members of Congress asked, ‘What exactly does that military option look like, and why don’t we just do it now?’ [The answer] was a lot of the stuff is underground, and the Iranians had lots of time to prepare, so if you send some assault team down underground with unknown numbers of booby traps and poison gas and everything you can imagine, it’s not going to be fun.”

He said any lasting agreement would have to rely on intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has more international credibility than U.S. inspectors alone.

“Most of the world would trust the IAEA more than they would trust American inspectors, because Trump has a huge incentive to declare victory,” he said.

To make the deal really stick, Congress must insist on treaty-level approval, he said. That’s a higher bar than the 2015 nuclear agreement, which was never ratified by the Senate and which Trump later abandoned.

Foster said a deal built around strong caps on enrichment, a centralized and heavily monitored facility, and snap inspections could likely win enough bipartisan support to clear the Senate filibuster.

“Trump can tear up agreements. He cannot tear up treaties,” Foster said. “When the Senate ratifies a treaty, it’s the law of the land.”

But he is skeptical that Trump is on track. Technical experts and nuclear nonproliferation teams from America’s weapons laboratories played a central role in crafting the 2015 deal, and Foster said he has yet to see that level of expertise being brought into talks.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, were due to lead the latest round of negotiations in Islamabad before Trump canceled their planned trip, blaming infighting among Iranian leaders.

“I am shocked that they don’t have a much stronger team,” Foster said. “This was asked by Republicans in our classified briefings, and basically the answer was, ‘We’ve learned a lot. We know all we need to know.’”

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly dismissed the criticism.

“Special Envoy Witkoff and Jared Kushner have done more for global stability in the past year, including negotiating a historic peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, than this Democrat Congressman has done in his entire career,” she said in an email. “The president’s national security team continues to negotiate in close coordination with experts from the National Security Council and State Department, and they will only accept a deal that puts America First.”