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Closing summary
New talks between Washington and Tehran are the “last chance” for Iran to forge a deal and avoid an escalation of US strikes on the country, Donald Trump said on Monday. It comes a day after the US president again said he had called off further “massive strikes” because Gulf allies had urged diplomacy. It’s all very consistent with Trump’s repeated pattern over the last five months as he struggles to find an off-ramp; he threatens devastating military action, only to pull back at the last minute and claim the two sides are on the brink of an agreement to end the war. As my colleague Patrick Wintour notes, this is thought to be the 12th time in the war that Trump has called off threatened strikes.
Indeed, Trump said he expected negotiations to begin in the next day or two to reopen the strait and create a pathway for Iran to address the US’s concerns about its nuclear programme. “The first phase is the opening of the straits. The second phase will be the denuclearization,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “And that will take a little while.” He also reiterated that he was running out of patience with Iran, saying “this the last chance for them to sign a good document.”
However, Tehran had on Monday denied that talks with the US were taking place. Esmaeil Baghaei, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, told reporters at a weekly press briefing on Monday that Iran is not currently holding any talks with the US – contradicting claims made by Trump on Sunday night that talks with Iran would happen the next day.
Baghaei said that there were no plans to receive a delegation or send an Iranian one, and that Iran’s current focus was on negotiations with Oman over the strait of Hormuz. “We are now going to reach an understanding on a route acceptable to both sides – neither the northern route nor the southern route – but one that respects the sovereign rights of both sides and safeguards our national interests and security,” he said in an interview with Iranian state television.
To that, the US president called the Iranian leadership “unbelievably duplicitous” in a post on social media. He wrote on Truth Social: “They ask for a meeting, some would say ‘beg’, talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about, and they’re only dealing with ‘Oman’.”Analysis: Trump meets his obstinate match in Iran’s hardball regime
Andrew Roth
The Donald Trump doctrine has always contained
a tenuous relationship with the truth. It was his mentor, the
infamous New York lawyer Roy Cohn, who taught the young real estate
mogul always to claim victory and never to admit defeat. Unfortunately for
Trump, in Iran the US president has found a counterpart just as
stubborn as himself.
As Trump claims new negotiations are to begin with Tehran
this week, Iran has
shown it can also reignite the conflict by lobbing ballistic missiles at US
bases in the region and maintaining a stranglehold on the strait of
Hormuz, effectively taking initiative in the stalled peace process. And time is
of the essence for Trump as the clock ticks toward a global energy crisis and a
painful midterm elections for him and his Republican party.
But as soon as his latest attempt to hammer out a peace
deal was announced, it
was denied by Iran and the US president was left fuming once again.
Trump has suggested dozens of times since the beginning
of the war that a deal with Iran is
imminent, and his latest claim that new negotiations could produce a peace deal
within days has shown the administration’s desperation to reopen the strait and
find a road map out of the crisis. After promising to hit Iran “very hard”,
Trump made a U-turn on Sunday and claimed that talks would continue and that
the “perimeters of a deal” for the opening of Hormuz and the “denuclearization
of Iran” had been agreed.
Unfortunately, the Iranians don’t agree. In a statement
on Monday, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson denied any peace
negotiations were taking place. “We are not currently negotiating with the
United States,” said Esmaeil Baqaei. “Our negotiations are
with Oman to secure passage through the strait of Hormuz.”
That may result in an agreement. But that will not result
in the return of the strait of Hormuz to its prewar status, Baqaei
added, in effect keeping the waterway a political football for the
foreseeable future. “We must ensure that the strait of Hormuz cannot be misused
by parties that have committed aggression against Iran,” said Baqaei.
Little has changed since the last round of negotiations.
Iran remains capable of closing the strait of Hormuz and stifling
shipping – including a fifth of global oil supply – through the crucial
waterway. The US remains capable of inflicting devastating strikes on
Iran – despite a shortage of key munitions that could be needed for a war
against key rivals like China – but has a lack of meaningful targets that could
force Iran to change its policy.
The Trump administration has been signalling a desire to
end the conflict since April and three ceasefires have come and collapsed since
then. With just over three months left until the US midterm elections, in which
the Republicans are expected to lose the House and possibly even the Senate, a
new Reuters/Ipsos poll last week showed that fewer than a third of
Americans support the war in Iran, and 69% believe that Trump has not “clearly
explained the goals of US military involvement in Iran”.
For Iran, the strategic unpredictability has become a new
weapon in a war that has counterintuitively strengthened its negotiating
position, giving the regime new tools in slowing global oil supply and in
attacking regional US allies in the Gulf.
Iran has concluded that its best strategy is to “maximise
the pain that they can impose on the United States and its partners in the
region”, said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and an
expert on Middle East security issues with a focus on Iran, during the
institute’s podcast last week. The view there was that Trump “is not really yet
ready for a deal with Iran, not a deal that would work for the Iranians
anyway”.
Iran is also facing a time crunch with a US blockade in
effect halting trade out of the country.
“They are now at a point where they don’t think just sitting back and having one round after another of diplomatic talks is the best way forward,” he added. “They’re trying to shake things up to try get Trump’s attention and see if they can get a different result./-
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