Iona Cleave
New York: At least 39 times, Donald Trump has declared that a deal between the US and Iran is close, imminent or nearly complete.
On Thursday (US time), he stated that a “great settlement” had been agreed. The scepticism was immediate. By Friday morning, both sides were publishing contradicting accounts of what had been decided, unravelling the hope that the end of the war was near.
The world has grown accustomed to the wildly oscillating cycle: will they or won’t they make a deal?
The US president often makes public threats of a return to all-out war, only to later pull back dramatically. Then come grand statements, hailing major diplomatic progress and claiming the conflict is nearing its end. The markets rally, oil prices fall, political pressure on the White House eases – and yet no resolution comes.
The Iran war has been narrated through the eyes of the US president. The view from Tehran has almost always been different.
“High-stakes diplomacy is traditionally about ambiguity, table-setting, but here it is all being conducted out in the public: Trump threatens a return to war and then shifts to diplomatic engagement,” said Jonathan Guyer, program director at the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group. Bluff or no bluff, he said: “It lacks a clear strategy.”
Whether this is another fanciful claim or the real deal, “We don’t know. It is a total ‘he said, she said’ situation,” he said.
But Trump’s insertion into the discussion, independent of negotiations taking place elsewhere, “raises the stakes for diplomatic success and increases the potential for the talks to catastrophically backfire”.
More importantly, Guyer said, his constant yo-yoing “creates a lack of trust in US diplomatic postures”.
On Friday, Trump furiously denied that Washington had agreed to major concessions to Tehran after Iranian state media published a draft 14-point deal.
“The terms that Iran leaked out to the Fake News have NOTHING to do with the terms that were agreed to, in writing,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform as unease grew in Washington.
The leaked draft includes demands that the US and its allies spend at least $US300 billion ($426 billion) on reconstructing Iran, American forces withdraw from around Iran, and $US24 billion in frozen Iranian assets be released.
Those terms offer Iran much of what it has demanded since the start of the war and no meaningful concessions from Iran that would align with core US demands, beyond the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to allow the global economy to breathe again.
Trump wrote that the leaked draft “bears no relation to the truth”. Instead, the White House claims that Iran agreed to just five points, including destroying its nuclear material, dismantling its nuclear program and no longer funding terrorist proxies.
A US official said the deal was “performance-based”, meaning that none of the sanctions would be lifted or frozen assets returned.
There still appears to be a wide disconnect between both sides, raising concerns that Trump’s “grand settlement” is far from being signed.
“Iran and the US have two very different approaches to, and conceptions of, negotiations,” said Mehran Kamrava, a professor who specialises in Middle Eastern politics and Iran studies at Georgetown University in Qatar.
“Iran approaches it as long, drawn-out theories of discussions, whereas the Trump administration views it as quick and decisive, something the president can use to declare a swift victory. The Trump administration is playing poker, whereas Iran plays chess,” he said.
Experts have long argued that Trump’s strategy of brinkmanship and coercive diplomacy will not yield results with the Islamic Republic. Its rulers feel emboldened after surviving attacks by two of the world’s most powerful militaries and have made clear that they are negotiating from a position of strength.
“Both sides, by virtue of their rhetoric, need to declare victory. The negotiations have been so torturous because coming up with a win-win scenario is extremely difficult, if not impossible,” Kamrava said.
Not all the signals are negative.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s top diplomat, said on Friday that a memorandum of understanding between the countries “has never been closer”.
It was an unusually positive statement from a senior official. Both US and Iranian sources have suggested a broad framework has been accepted, though the terms are not yet known.
“We have been here before,” Kamrava said. “Our traditional assumptions about internal relations and mechanics of negotiations are obsolete when it comes to Donald Trump.
“As a result, any declaration of imminent American attack on Iran or imminent end to the hostilities through negotiations needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Unless a deal is finalised, there is no deal.”
