Iran, US Head Toward War They Don’t WantFirst round of talks in Oman are over, with neither side willing to give ground.
The United States and Iran held the first round of talks in Oman today in a last-ditch effort to avoid a military confrontation that appears to be entirely unnecessary. Oman’s ministry of foreign affairs said the two sides met separately with Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi meeting separately with the Iranian delegation, led by his counterpart Abbas Araghchi, and the American delegation, represented by Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The talks today “focused on preparing the appropriate conditions for resuming diplomatic and technical negotiations,” the Omanis said in a tweet. I doubt the talks will amount to much. The gulf between what the Trump’s people want and what the Iranian regime is willing to do is probably just too wide. Americans want Iran to curtail its missile program, stop its backing for allied militias in the region, and halt its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Iranians have no reason to trust any deal Trump agrees to, given his administration’s past actions. Those have included Trump’s abrogating the 2015 nuclear deal, his assassination of Qassem Suleimani, and his greenlighting of Israel’s surprise attack on the country last June. Share The US has cornered itself into a situation where it’s under tremendous diplomatic and political pressure to do something about Iran. It had promised that if Iran crossed the red line of killing protesters in early January, that America would respond. Iran killed thousands of protesters. Trump didn’t respond. But it still may do so. The dilemma for the US is what kind of military action? Is the aim to destroy Iran’s nuclear program which it already severely damaged last summer? If the US can win a commitment from Iran that it won’t try to resuscitate the nuclear program and deploy international monitors, Trump could trumpet that as a W and walk away from the whole affair. But that won’t satisfy a key group of his supporters. The administration is being lobbied hard by Israel and pro-Israel operatives such as Sen. Lindsey Graham and talk show host Mark Levin. They’re on TV constantly demanding that Trump launch a regime change war in Iran, or at least severely degrade its defenses by targeting its missile and anti-craft infrastructure. The regime-change lobby, reinvigorated like never before, is explicitly saying that a nuclear deal would be a betrayal of Trump’s “promises” that would be even worse than the status quo On the other hand, there’s no quick and easy route to regime change in Iran. Even the type of fake regime change the US conducted in Venezuela by replacing President Nicolas Maduro with his even more hardline deputy is not feasible in Iran. Any attempt to degrade Iran’s missile arsenal could trigger a larger scale Iranian response. US officials in the State Department, Pentagon, and CIA are very skeptical of a regime-change war. They see no quick and easy formula for regime decapitation. Unlike the lead-up to the US bombing of the nuclear sites in June of last year, there will be no element of surprise in the next conflict. Iran has been gearing up for an imminent US strike for nearly a month and has been building up its missile and drone arsenal since the war with parts and machinery and technology from abroad, including China. Military planners are warning the White House that they would not be able to predict or maintain control over the escalation of any conflict. Upgrade to paid Trump is also under pressure from his regional partners, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other countries that have leverage over Trump because of big business deals (remember the Qatari plane he was gifted?). They don’t like Iran, and they would love to see a weakened, more moderate Iran, which many believe they already have. They don’t want a big disastrous war to generate more tension and more economic disruption, refugees, and extremism. Iran also in a very tight and vulnerable situation, though that doesn’t mean it will be more willing to negotiate more flexibly. It has been weakened by the 12-day war that erupted last summer. Its economy has been hollowed out by sanctions, its finances are a mess, and, despite vocal shows of support from the global south, it is more isolated than ever. Most importantly, the regime’s national legitimacy and its connection to the population have been badly damaged by the protests that erupted in late December and continued until January 8 and 9, when they were violently crushed. Perhaps 7,000 or more people were killed, according to a credible based human rights organization. Iran also finds itself exposed militarily. Its national security system appears to be heavily infiltrated, either by human intelligence or electronic intelligence. Israel and the US seem to know everything that it has been up to. The country suffers from a lack of quality leadership. Suffice it to say that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has seen better days. His leadership style is rather sclerotic—he doesn’t seem able to adapt to to come up with any creative ways and defending the country diplomatically or military. His words are always the same old, same old. In negotiations, it will seek to trade minor concessions on its nuclear program in exchange for either sanctions relief, or to just be left alone by the US while it rebuilds its military and economic capacity and attempts to repair relations with its own people. “Iran remains dangerous. It will not go quietly into the night. It will fight to the bitter end.” But Iran remains dangerous. It will not go quietly into the night. It will fight to the bitter end. This is a dogmatic ideological leadership that has long romanticized war and martyrdom. Regime elite literally have nowhere else to go and are ready to fight. As an example, Iran originally agreed to a meeting in Istanbul but demanded at the last-minute to change the venue to Oman’s capital, Muscat. Americans said no. Iranians responded, ok, fine, then the meeting was off. Americans buckled. All-out war between the US and Iran could be catastrophic. The US could hit any of Iran’s military sites from the skies, but wind up killing barracks full of young cherubic-faced draftees, alienating the Iranian people and welding them to the regime. Killing Khamenei would galvanize the 15% to 20% of the population that supports the regime, probably a favor to certain Revolutionary Guard elite who view him as an impediment to its ambitions. With its arsenal of medium-range missiles, Iran could target US military sites in the Middle East as well as infrastructure, oil, and energy sites in the Arabian Peninsula. It could attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz, sending up oil prices. Israel will definitely be on the target list, because of the perception that. Turks, Egyptians, and Qataris have reportedly floated a proposal whereby Iran would suspend enrichment of uranium for three years (until Trump is out of office) and then resume but only at 1.5% purity, far below the 90% required for a bomb, as well as commit to no first strike with its missiles, in exchange for sanctions relief. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran refused to suspend enrichment during the talks without being anything in return. Israel is also a player. It sees the pliable, pro-Israel Trump as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for it to expand its powers and diminish its enemies. It likely sees that it only has about a year before resurgent Democrats take control of Congress and attempt to destroy Trump and his presidency. It has pulled out all stops in pushing for regime change. On the other hand, Turkey, the Gulf states, and other regional powers like Egypt do not want the US and Iran to engage in a war that could rattle the region and reduce its business prospects. “The biggest loser in the talks so far appears to be the Iranian people.” As for other world powers, the crisis has shown the limits of their diplomatic and global power. While China and Russia have condemned the US and sided with Iran, they have taken no action to either defuse the conflict or support their Middle East partner. Europe, which played a key role in the original deal limited Iran’s nuclear program, is also sitting this one out, having apparently greenlit anything the US wants to do regarding Iran in exchange for keeping the spigot of weapons and cash open for the Ukraine war. The biggest loser in the talks so far appears to be the Iranian people. Lost in the talk of security guarantees and missile ranges are the protesters who were killed in the recent uprising, and whose deaths prompted the confrontation between Iran and the US in the first place. It would not be too cynical to think that the US doesn’t really care about the Iranian people. It is just using the moment of the regime’s weakness to extract the concessions for its own and Israel’s security that it has long sought. Leave a comment © 2026 Borzou Daragahi |