This week Tehran denied any news of resuming talks with Washington about its nuclear programme. Talks had been interrupted by a 12-day war last month. Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that Iran and the US haven’t agreed on a time, date or place to resume the stalled negotiations.
Hopes had risen about the prospects of a new round of talks this week after American President Donald Trump claimed that one was scheduled. At a dinner in the White House, hosting visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters, “we have scheduled Iran talks. They want to talk... They want to work something out. They are very different now than they were two weeks ago.”
Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, who was present at the dinner, said the meeting “could take place in the next week or so”. That coincided with an article by Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi published in the Financial Times in which he said that Tehran remains interested in diplomacy, added however that “we have good reason to have doubts about further dialogue.”
Iran and the US held five rounds of indirect talks, brokered by the Sultanate of Oman, since April, but negotiations stopped when Israel started attacking Iran just before mid-June. Iran retaliated by targeting Israel with missiles and drones. Then the US launched an air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities and announced a ceasefire.
Just before the Israeli attacks, there was optimism about a deal that would prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons in return for alleviating sanctions imposed on it for decades. That would have limited Iranian uranium enrichment to the low level required for power plants fuel. The tone later changed, however, and Washington adopted a harder position calling for stopping all enrichment programmes which Tehran insists is its non-negotiable right.
From the very beginning, Israel has been lobbying the US not to negotiate and join it in destroying the Iranian nuclear programme altogether. It is not clear if the Israeli and American strikes completely ended the Iranian nuclear programme. That is why Netanyahu is trying to pressure Trump to authorise more strikes.
Hardliners in Iran were also opposed to resuming negotiations with the Americans. When Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told US journalist Tucker Carlson last week that Iran had no problem resuming talks so long as trust could be rebuilt between the two sides, critics attacked him. An editorial in the hard-line Kayhan newspaper said of Pezeshkian: “Have you forgotten that these same Americans, together with the Zionists, used the negotiations to buy time and prepare for the attack?” Another conservative daily, Javan, accused the president of being “a little too soft.”
Yet the official tone remained positive about resuming negotiations. On Saturday, the Iranian foreign minister told diplomatic corps in Tehran that his country “would accept a resumption of nuclear talks with the US if there were assurances of no more attacks against it”. That is a guarantee Israel would prefer Washington not to give to Tehran, as it might prevent Tel Aviv from striking Iran again.
Some analysts argue that Netanyahu wanted to divert Trump’s attention to other paths in the region that would weaken Iran further before sitting at the negotiating table. Netanyahu is asking for more strikes on the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. He is also working on speeding up an agreement with the new Syrian regime. Meanwhile, as Trump pushes for ending war on Gaza, Israel is re-igniting its war on Lebanon. As many in Israel and the West note, Netanyahu needs to keep Israel at war to stay safely in power till October next year, thus avoiding any sentences in the trials he is facing for corruption and other charges.
Whether Trump is willing to support Netanyahu in that personal endeavour is not clear. A veteran Western diplomat told Al-Ahram Weekly, “Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu is highly difficult to read.” The rhetoric about “re-shaping the Middle east” is a reminder of George W Bush’s defunct New World Order through “creative chaos” in the region.
Some analysts argue the time is not yet ripe to resume American-Iranian talks. Andrew Hammond of Oxford University feels that Tehran is not in a rush. “There’s less pressure on the Iranians. They survived a war, with Israel suffering daily and Trump having shown the limits of what he’ll do for the Israelis... Iran has also had time to weed out spies, meet with Axis allies in Baghdad, and get anti-air batteries from China,” he told the Weekly. He added that for Trump “the bottom line is he won’t fight beyond what can be framed as US interest to prevent Iran getting a nuclear weapon.”
Intentional leaks and rumours are keeping the situation tense. News reports about regional parties concerned about renewed Israeli attacks on Iran, along with resurfacing Iranian threats to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz are keeping everybody on their toes.
Yet, as the traditional wisdom goes: there is no endless war and military conflicts usually lead to negotiations towards a political settlement. So, even though the noise about resuming nuclear talks has now subsided, it is destined to start again at some stage in the future.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 17 July, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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