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Two days after threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants, Donald Trump on Monday declared the US had “very good and productive” talks with Tehran, with “major points of agreement” between the foes.
Iran’s response was to swiftly deny any talks had taken place. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, one of Iran’s top wartime leaders, said: “Fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”
The terse reaction — even to the idea of indirect negotiations — underscores the formidable obstacles standing in the way of a deal to end the war that the US president claims is within reach.
Trump, if he is serious about a deal, may have opened a small window for diplomacy. But Tehran is deeply distrustful of a president who has twice launched attacks against Iran while negotiations were supposed to be ongoing and has insisted on the regime’s total surrender.
What could Iran agree to?
Iranian officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, have said Tehran would need “guarantees” that it would not be attacked in the future if it agrees to any sort of deal to end the war.
The regime is fighting what it believes to be an existential battle that began not in this conflict but when Israel first launched a 12-day war against the Islamic republic last June.
Since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started the latest war on February 28, Iran’s strategy has been to try to raise the costs of the conflict to deter them from striking again.
It has triggered global economic tumult by closing the Strait of Hormuz and attacking oil and gas facilities across the Gulf.
Iranian insiders and experts have warned the regime could continue fighting if it does not get the guarantees it seeks even if Trump says he is ending the war.
It has been pounded night and day as the US and Israel have launched thousands of strikes on the republic. But it has continued to launch missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf states.
How easy is it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz?
Iran has for years threatened to shut down the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passes. And now they have done so, Iranian officials have indicated, it will no longer be business as usual.
Tehran’s ability to slow the flow of traffic to a near halt through attacks and threats has been its main point of leverage over Trump and the global economy, pushing energy prices to multiyear highs.
Ship owners and masters are no longer willing to risk using the strait. At least one tanker has reportedly paid $2mn for safe passage through the waterway. An Iranian MP said that would be the new normal, suggesting Iran would extract a toll from vessels.
That would infuriate the US’s Gulf allies, whose energy and petrochemicals exports have been severely stymied by Iran’s actions and would be loath to have the threat hanging over them in the future.
What happens to Iran’s nuclear programme?
Trump has repeatedly insisted one of the reasons he went to war was to prevent Iran ever obtaining a nuclear weapon, despite claiming the US “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear programme when it briefly joined Israel’s 12-day war to bomb the republic’s main uranium enrichment facilities in June.
On Monday, he said the US would want to seize the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium. Iran has more than 9,000kg of enriched uranium but the key western concern is 440kg that is enriched close to weapons-grade levels. Iranian officials say it is beneath the rubble of its bombed plants.
People briefed on the last round of talks between the US and Iran said Tehran had agreed to “zero stockpiling” and to dilute its highly enriched uranium. But US officials disputed that there was significant progress at the talks, which ended when Trump authorised the military offensive.
Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University, said Iran could agree to give up its highly enriched uranium if it retains a degree of control over the strait.
He said Tehran believes its ability to close the strait would “be a deterrence against another war” and “could provide revenue through tolls from ships passing through”. “This is being discussed in Tehran,” he said.
What happens to Iran’s missile and drone programme?
In his speech announcing the launch of the war, Trump said the US was “going to destroy” Iran’s missiles and “raze their missile industry to the ground”.
Nine days ago, he said “100 per cent of Iran’s military capability” had been destroyed. But the Islamic republic continued to fire daily salvos at Israel and Gulf states.
Iran has previously insisted that its missile and drone arsenals — critical to its ability to fight an asymmetric war — were red lines and not up for negotiation.
But the US’s Gulf allies, which have borne the brunt of Iran’s attacks, will be desperate for the threat posed by the missiles and drones to be addressed.
Would Iran demand sanctions relief?
Pezeshkian this month said Iran’s conditions for ending the war included compensation for the destruction caused by the bombardment, as well as recognition of the republic’s “right” to enrich uranium and international guarantees to prevent similar attacks in the future.
While Pezeshkian did not explicitly raise sanctions relief, it was always a key demand during previous rounds of talks with the US over Iran’s nuclear programme, and critical to reviving its beleaguered economy.
Iran will be in an even more disastrous state after the war, and the republic will need funding to rebuild infrastructure and its military.
Trump has never publicly entertained the idea of offering sanctions relief to a regime he has described as the “world’s number one state sponsor of terror”.
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