Will the feud on tariffs between President Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, a.k.a. a “moron,” and Elon Musk, the car “assembler,” be replicated as America launches diplomatic talks with the Islamic Republic of Iran? Internal disagreements between Iran hawks and MAGA appeasers appear to be as intense on how to block the mullahs’ bomb as they are on trade barriers. The president says Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon.” 

A “team of rivals” helped President Lincoln steer the country through the Civil War. Mr. Trump could have a hard time repeating that strategy, though, if he follows aides who might succumb to Persian siren songs. Talks at Oman are set to begin Saturday, and President Pezeshkian of Iran is already appealing to what he believes to be the American president’s soft spot. “American investors: Come and invest,” he quotes Supreme Leader Khamenei as saying.

It would be folly to respond to that invitation. As a State Department travel advisory warns, “do not travel to Iran due to the risk of terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, arbitrary arrest of U.S. citizens, and wrongful detention.” Today the State Department is announcing new sanctions on “entities managing and overseeing Iran’s nuclear program,” and says it is doing so in support of Mr. Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign.”

The mullahs are under rising American economic pressure; Israel significantly set back the “ring of fire” that the Islamic Republic built around the Jewish state for decades at great expense; Iran is now exposed after Israel decimated its air defenses; two aircraft carriers are in the Gulf and B-2 stealth bombers await orders. No wonder the ayatollah has reversed his opposition to negotiations with the man who ordered the strike on Qassem Soleimani. 

Tehran’s best hope from the Oman talks is an easing of sanctions in exchange for hollow promises. To maintain its current status as a threshold nuclear power it would agree to more intensive inspection. Last month Mr. Trump’s top negotiator, Steven Witkoff, seemed ready to sign on to such a deal. The goal, he told podcaster Tucker Carlson, is to “create a verification program so that nobody worries about weaponization” of Iran’s program.

Such a deal would leave to Mr. Khamenei the decision of when to break through to a bomb. We prefer Prime Minister Netanyahu’s formula of the “Libyan model” — Muammar Qadaffi’s 2003 decision to fully dismantle his nuclear program under outside supervision. A “deal that doesn’t lead to dismantlement would not be worth the paper it’s written on,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Behnam Ban Taleblu, tells our Benny Avni. 

The Tucker Carlson wing appears to dread an Israeli or American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities more than it fears an Iranian bomb. Vice President Vance seems to prefer a bad deal to no deal. On the other hand, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, says Iran must dismantle its entire nuclear infrastructure. “Give it up, or there will be consequences,” he told CBS. Officials in Tehran are saying they would oppose dismantling their program. 

For now, the mullahs resist even admitting that the negotiations would be “direct” — well worn tactic of Tehran. America will not allow “indirect talks that last for years, and the Iranians just string us along,” the Department of State’s deputy Mideast envoy, Morgan Ortagus, told Al Arabiya Tuesday. Eager to prove chops, Mr. Trump has reportedly given diplomacy a two-month window. A long time for a batch of B-2s and a pair of carriers to stand by.