The likelihood of the United States and Iran coming to an agreement to settle the war took another hit over the weekend with President Donald Trump ordering his top diplomats to skip the planned meeting with their Iranian counterparts.
Trump announced on Saturday that special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, would not travel to Islamabad, Pakistan, for a planned meeting with Iranian officials. Earlier, the White House announced that Vice President JD Vance, who had led the American delegation for the first meeting, would not attend.
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The president met with his national security team on Monday to discuss Iran’s recent proposal to separate the issues they are negotiating over, effectively calling for multiple agreements over time, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing.
“The proposal was being discussed,” Leavitt said, adding that, “I wouldn’t say they are considering it, I would just say there was a discussion this morning that I don’t want to get ahead of.”
The reported deal would call for both the U.S. and Iran to end their dueling blockades of the Strait of Hormuz while setting aside the subjects of Iran’s nuclear program, support for proxies, and the retrieval of their highly enriched uranium.
Tuesday will mark three weeks since Trump announced a ceasefire agreement, which was only initially supposed to last two weeks and was contingent on Iran reopening the vital strait. The president extended the ceasefire even though Iran has not made good on the initial requirement of allowing the transit of vessels transporting oil and gas through the waterways off their coasts.
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The Iranians have threatened to attack ships that transit the strait and did so three times last week, forcing these companies to decide whether using the waterways is worth the risk. The threat has caused global ramifications for the economy. Since the ceasefire commenced, the U.S. began its own blockade in the same area, targeting only vessels going to or coming from Iranian ports.
Andrew Tabler, a former State Department and National Security Council Middle East official, told the Washington Examiner, “We’re in a game of diplomatic chicken right now.”
Tabler, who now works at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: “Many times there are interim agreements or partial agreements that lead to fuller agreements. In the near term, most of the urgency concerns energy, both from the Iranian side to get their energy to market, and from the US side to get Gulf energy from the Arab Gulf countries to market.
“So there could be a deal, a more narrow deal on that, but given that each side sees its leverage in the strait, I think that’s unlikely to happen easily.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday said of the U.S.’s diplomatic prowess that “an entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership.”
“The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result,” Merz said.
While U.S. airstrikes in Iran and Iranian drone and missile attacks in Gulf States have stopped, the new combat arena is the strait, and both sides believe they have the advantage. U.S. forces, for its part, have deterred more than 30 vessels from breaking its blockade, urging them to return to where they came. In a handful of instances, U.S. troops have boarded and/or seized the vessel.
Mona Yacoubian, the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner: “I think we’re in a moment of limbo.”
She said: “There’s no movement as of now on talks, the Strait of Hormuz remains, for all intents and purposes, blockaded both by the U.S. and Iran, and yet there’s also no major kind of hostilities, no air strikes on Iran and no Iranian drone or ballistic missile strikes on targets around the strait or in surrounding Gulf countries.”
Trump acknowledged last week that it’s not entirely clear who the ultimate decision maker is in Tehran, which makes any deal harder to finalize.
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There are indications that even though the senior ranks of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were badly degraded during the war, they have taken more control of the government’s decision-making power, which could also make a deal more complicated.
“I actually have a hard time seeing any circumstances under which they fully and completely relinquish control over the strait,” Yacoubian said. “I also think Iran is also looking to sort of establish itself in the emerging order in the Middle East, and its ability to exert control over the Strait is part of the way through its asymmetric means that it is projecting power and influence in the region.”
More hard-line figures within the Guard, including the new commander, Major General Ahmad Vahidi, are presumably much less likely to agree to the administration’s stances on how to limit their military power.
