United States President Donald Trump is insistent that “productive” negotiations have taken place with Iran to end the war he launched with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu almost a month ago. The major problem with that narrative is that Iran’s top officials have repeatedly denied it.
Amid the fog of war and the propaganda being pushed by all sides, it is hard to know who to believe. But an analysis of what each side has to gain from any negotiations – and a potential end to the conflict – could bring more clarity.
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Trump’s comments that there were “major points of agreement” after “very good” talks with an unnamed “top” Iranian figure came as stock markets opened in the US for the start of the trading week. The five-day deadline he gave for a positive response from Iran also happens to coincide with the end of the trading week.
Many have cynically noted that timing, especially as it comes after a two-week period in which oil prices have fluctuated in line with events in the Middle East, leading to a high of about $120 a barrel last week.
Trump’s talk of negotiations may also give time for more US troops to arrive in the Middle East, if Washington decides to conduct some form of ground invasion of Iranian territory.
Among those questioning Trump’s motives was the man believed by some to be the senior Iranian official Trump was referencing: the Iranian parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
“No negotiations have been held with the US, and fakenews is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped,” Ghalibaf wrote on social media.
The impact on stock markets and oil prices is not just relevant to the US and Trump, but also to Iran. However, for Tehran, the benefit comes in the damage the war is doing to the US and global economies.
The Iranian state wants the US to feel economic pain from the war, as a means of deterrence for any future Israeli or US attack on Iran.
Therefore, as much as it is in the US interest to play up talk of negotiations in order to calm the markets, it is also in Iran’s interest to downplay any talk to do the exact opposite, and not give the Trump administration any breathing space.
US benefits?
Consequently, both sides have their own narratives on negotiations, and public comments will do little to inform us as to whether those negotiations are really taking place, or in what form they may be.
That instead leads us into what each side has to gain from negotiations, and an actual end to the war at the current stage.
Trump appears to have underestimated the consequences of the conflict that he launched with Netanyahu on February 28, and the ability of the Iranian state to withstand the attacks against it without collapsing.
“They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East … Nobody expected that,” he said last week, adding that even “the greatest experts” didn’t believe that.
Leaving aside that experts – including US intelligence officials – had repeatedly made those warnings, reality has now made Trump aware of the consequences he had previously ignored.
While some allies and supporters may continue to push him to plough on with the conflict, Trump has previously shown himself amenable to cutting deals to extricate himself from difficult situations, and it is not far-fetched to see the benefits of doing so in this instance.
The US president has already ordered his government to issue temporary sanctions waivers on some Iranian oil, in an effort to calm oil prices. This is the first time Iran has lifted sanctions on any Iranian oil since 2019, and it will not be lost on Iran that the waivers have come as a result of their policy to expand the conflict to the wider Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas transits.
The war was already unpopular in the US – and now even more so, as consumers see the impact on petrol prices and potentially other areas of the economy, all in the run-up to congressional elections later this year, in which Trump’s Republicans are likely to do poorly.
Trump, therefore, has the options of extending this war – and suffering the economic and political cost, or ending it – and facing the criticism that he was unable to finish what he termed as a “short-term excursion”.
The Iranian perspective
But whatever Trump wants to do, the decision is not totally in his hands. Iran, attacked for the second time in less than a year, now appears to have less of an incentive to end the war without the establishment of an effective deterrent to another in the future.
Gone are the days of the telegraphed attacks on US assets and the slow climb up the escalation ladder. From the outset of the current war, it was clear that Iran had changed its tactics and was not as interested in restraint.
It is now arguably in the Iranian state’s benefit to drag out the conflict and inflict more suffering on the region, if it wants to ensure its survival.
There may also be a belief that interceptor stocks in Israel are running low, allowing Iran to strike targets more effectively. The thinking – particularly among the hardliners who now appear to be in the ascendancy in Iran – will be that now is not the time to stop, and allow those interceptor stocks to replenish.
And yet, Iran is suffering. More than 1,500 people have been killed across the country, according to the government. Infrastructure has been heavily damaged, and the power grid could be next. Relations with Gulf neighbours have nosedived, and, after repeated Iranian attacks, are unlikely to return to their previous levels after the conflict.
More moderate voices in Iran will look at that and think that things could easily get worse. They can argue that some form of deterrence has been achieved, and that the time is now ripe to talk. And if they can get some concessions – such as a promise of no future attacks, or greater authority in the Strait of Hormuz – they may decide that the time is right to make a deal.
