THE Donald Trumpstill touring in the Middle East, continues to say how “very happy” it would be if he could make an agreement with Iran. In the meantime, Iran needs such an agreement to avoid bombardment from Israel and economic strangulation from the repetition of the United Nations. If reports from Tehran are right, these pressures may have motivated the Iranian leaders to come up with an unconventional idea worth listening to: they want to work with their enemies -and not against them -to build Iran’s nuclear program.

The idea deals with a kind of consortium between Iran, S. Arabia and Emirates, as well as private investors, including US companies. At first glance, the idea seems weird. How could the deadly enemies work around the material that brought them to the brink of war? At a second glance, however, the absolute boldness of the idea may be exactly what these negotiations need to peel off.

In a way, Iran’s proposal reminds me of European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1951 from six founding nations and led by France and Germany, who had fought three harsh wars. To avoid a fourth war, French politicians such as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman proposed the common custody of the raw materials of the war – then, coal and steel. And German leaders like Konrad Adenauer, willing to reconcile with their neighbors, agreed. Against all probabilities, this ECX will later evolve into what the European Union is today.

What was then carbon and steel is today the uranium and plutonium. These elements are much more dangerous than carbon and steel. And no one suggests that the Middle East could ever become a new EU. In the 1950s the Germans, the French and other Europeans really wanted peace. As Karim Sadjadpour warns at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Iranian Theocrats may believe that the survival of their regime depends on facing the US and their allies as enemies.

And yet there is an elegance in the idea. First, this arrangement would last indefinitely. On the contrary, the common integrated action plan, signed a decade ago by Iran and six other parties, including the US, would have gradually abolished restrictions in Iran by 2030.

The Iranians have long insisted on their right to the peaceful uranium enrichment, an activity that is explicitly allowed by both the International Treaty of Nuclear Weapons and by the Jcpoa. As part of the consortium, they would continue to do so.

The Saudi They also want to get into the nuclear energy market and will need celestial. They could begin to enrich on their own, but this would also allow them to build their own nuclear weapons if they ever felt that they were threatened by Iran or anyone else, which in turn would allow the spread of nuclear weapons worldwide.

And Trump? He wants to prove that he is a “peacemaker” and of course he is a perfect negotiator. The permanence of the new deal would allow him to claim that he negotiated something better than the JCPOA he canceled in his first term. And with US companies in the consortium, it could show all the money they will raise soon.

It is easy, of course, to see the prospects of such a consortium as unlikely. But this was also said for Europe in 1951. Trump must remain ready to use violence if needed. But first he should study all alternatives.