If the US-Iran talks are evolving and changing according to the pace – and content – of Donald Trump’s posts, they could emerge as a separate case study of international negotiations.
This is because hostilities, talks and actions on the ground take place and combine with such speed that the state of affairs is constantly in flux. Thus, up until yesterday afternoon as this was being written, the situation was uncertain as to the progress of the negotiations. The ceasefire was nonetheless continuing.
In particular, the US president noted that if Iran “agrees to give what has been agreed, which may be a big deal,” Operation “Epic Rage” as well as the US naval blockade on Iran would end, leaving theSea of Hormuz open to all.
However, he warned that if there is no deal “the bombing will start and, unfortunately, it will be at a much higher level and intensity than before”. This contradicts his earlier post a few hours earlier (Tuesday night). In it, Trump claimed that great progress has been made towards a “full and final” agreement with Iran, announcing that, although the US naval blockade will remain in place, “Operation Freedom” – the passage of tankers through Hormuz escorted by the US Navy – that he had announced on Sunday is being halted.
Washington and Tehran, according to an exclusive report by Axios,were negotiating a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations. The agreement, based on the same line of intelligence, included Iran’s commitment to a moratorium on nuclear enrichment. On the other hand, the US would lift its sanctions against Tehran and release billions in frozen Iranian funds; as for the Strait of Hormuz, both sides would lift their restrictions.
That’s the direction Marco Rubio’s remarks Tuesday afternoon at the White House fall along those lines. “Operation Epic Rage is complete. We achieved its goal,” the US Secretary of State said, saying that the war actually ended sometime after the ceasefire went into effect on April 7. In addition, he referred to the attempt to reopen navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, describing the US operation as a “defensive and humanitarian operation” that will lead to direct exchanges of fire with the Iranians “only if US ships are fired upon.” A similar tone was adopted by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said the US “does not seek combat”, while he himself was celebrating US firepower a few weeks ago, calling for “maximum lethality” against Iran.
Interestingly, General Dan Kaine, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed that since the ceasefire Iran has attacked US forces more than ten times. However, he added, those were attacks that were “all below the threshold for reopening major combat operations at this point.” According to Kane, setting that threshold was a “political decision”, i.e. a decision made by Trump. After many questions about the bar of this particular limit, the US president’s response was sybaritic: “The Iranians know what to do and what not to do.”
Shift in strategy?
In any case, the war in Iran does not seem to be going well for Washington. Distinguished New York Times journalist-analyst David Sanger observed that the word war has been dropped or changed from US rhetoric and especially from Trump’s positions. “While it all sounds like politically convenient wordplay, any actual statement that the battle is over represents a fundamental shift in strategy, even for a war in which the White House seemed to be making its next move day by day,” he stressed.
The complexity of the situation and of US action is revealed by the fact that Israel, its closest partner – and essentially the country that convinced it of the importance of the war – did not know where the talks between Washington and Tehran were. Yesterday, Israel’s chief of staff of the armed forces, Eyal Zamir, stressed that his country is ready to launch a new attack on Iran “if necessary.”
