'The regime doesn't want any deal the West can live with'

Keeping talks with US sputtering along, Iran may be looking for time, not a deal

As negotiations persist despite missed meetings and parleys derided as pointless, some see IRGC effort to rebuild militarily while delaying dealing with intractable nuclear issue

The latest stutter steps to plague US-Iran talks — marked by cancellations and missed meetings in Pakistan — have sharpened a central question hanging over the high-stakes negotiation: Is this a temporary breakdown, or evidence that the two sides are not negotiating at the same table at all?

Plans for the sides to gather in Islamabad over the weekend fell apart on Saturday, with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi leaving Pakistan and US President Donald Trump telling his negotiators to turn back at the last second and describing the trip and the talks as a waste of time. This came after Tehran earlier rejected attending a planned second round of direct talks.

“They can call us anytime they want, but you’re not going to be making any more 18-hour flights to sit around talking about nothing,” Trump said he told special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Both sides have continued to exchange proposals indirectly, but the episode underscored a widening gap — not just over substance, but over how negotiations themselves should unfold.

For some analysts, that gap reflects the messy reality of high-stakes diplomacy. For others, it signals something more fundamental: a process designed to buy time rather than reach a deal.

Sanam Vakil, director of the Chatham House think tank’s Middle East and North Africa Program, cautioned against reading too much into the failed meeting itself.

“All negotiations are very difficult,” she said, emphasizing that while direct talks may be paused, indirect exchanges are still ongoing.

From that perspective, the missed connection does not necessarily indicate a setback or impending collapse, but rather a familiar phase in negotiations in which both sides test their leverage and set conditions.

While the delays and false starts may be part of tactical maneuvering on the part of Tehran, it may also be a symptom of a lack of clarity within Iran’s leadership itself regarding what its negotiating position is.

Beni Sabti, a senior Iran researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, argued that Tehran may no longer have a coherent negotiating framework following the death of supreme leader Ali Khamenei in a February 28 US-Israeli strike.

During the late ayatollah’s reign, Sabti said, “he was guiding them on what to give up and what not to give up.”

Now, “it seems that they actually don’t know what to talk about. They jump from one issue to another,” he said.

Vakil similarly pointed to the erosion of previously rigid boundaries.

“They don’t have the same sort of restraints that they did before,” she said, noting that Ali Khamenei had enforced clear red lines, including opposition to direct talks. That taboo was broken when senior US and Iranian officials met in Islamabad this month for the highest-level talks between Washington and Tehran in half a century.

Reports have circulated that Ali Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been incapacitated by injuries from the same round of strikes that killed his father, elevating Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals in shaping wartime and diplomatic decisions instead of the country’s traditional clerical leadership and contributing to internal friction and confusion.

Still, Sabti argued that despite any discombobulation regarding specific tactics or positions, Iran’s leadership remains aligned on broader goals, including confronting the West — even if it is divided on how to do so.

Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, explained that Ali Khamenei borrowed heavily from his predecessor Ruhollah Khomeini in his openness to trading concessions for diplomatic gains.

Khomeini famously referred to the 1988 agreement ending the Iran-Iraq war, which he okayed, as “more deadly than drinking from a poisoned chalice.”

But the IRGC, known for its hardline opposition to the West, might not be as willing to make compromises.

“I don’t know if the head of the IRGC could do that here,” Makovsky said. “It’s going to be harder for them to drink a poison chalice and work out an arrangement with the United States.”

Delaying talks, dodging nuclear issue

For Iran, smarting after a six-week US-Israeli bombing campaign that degraded its military capabilities and facing the threat of renewed attack, there is a benefit to using the talks to buy time regardless of whether gaps between the sides seem ultimately unresolvable.

“They want to earn some time,” said Sabti, describing the current situation as a “tactical pause” on the Iranian side.

He argued that Tehran is using diplomacy to rebuild degraded capabilities, including its ballistic missile program and regional proxy network.

Looming over the talks is whether the sides can reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, an issue that appears to be intractable at present. Iran insists that it be allowed to continue enriching uranium and wants a pact similar to the one signed by former US president Barack Obama in 2015, which Trump ripped up a few years later.

Trump demands that Iran give up all enrichment and seems keen to avoid anything resembling the 2015 deal.

Though Iran, whose leaders are sworn to destroy Israel, denies seeking nuclear arms, it has enriched uranium to levels with no peaceful application and obstructed international oversight of nuclear facilities.

“I don’t see how to reconcile the two sides,” Makovsky added. “I don’t see how the Iranians are ever going to give up their nukes… It’s just not in their DNA.”

Makovsky noted that Trump appeared similarly unwilling to budge on the nuclear issue.

“For a guy with an erratic personality, he’s been very steadfast in focusing on the nukes,” he said.

Sabti suggested that the regime “doesn’t want any kind of agreement… that the West can live with.”

Yet Iran has also indicated that it would like to reach an agreement in other areas, particularly the US-imposed blockade deployed in response to the IRGC’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Nowhere is the US-Iranian friction clearer than in the maritime trade issue, where both sides continue to exert pressure.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that a reported recent offer from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz under strict conditions is not acceptable to the United States or other countries.

During the ongoing ceasefire, Iran has restricted shipping, allowing passage only under its strict conditions, while the United States has imposed a blockade on Iranian ports. The result, Vakil said, is a high-stakes standoff.

“They’re both holding a gun to each other’s heads,” she said. “The question is, who’s going to bring their gun down?”

Vakil argued that economic pressure wrought by the moves — particularly rising oil prices and global market disruption — may ultimately weigh more heavily on Washington than Tehran.

“The Islamic Republic doesn’t make decisions based on inflation or GDP per capita,” she said, suggesting the US could feel pressure to blink first.

At the same time, Iran’s suggestion that talks start with Hormuz before moving to the nuclear issue could signal that Tehran doesn’t want its foot-dragging to stall the resumption of maritime trade.

According to reports, Iran has proposed sequencing negotiations to address the Strait of Hormuz and other issues while saving the nuclear issue for last, a strategy that could see it avoid war and resume economic trade without giving up its primary piece of leverage.

Nonetheless, Makovsky claimed Trump was unlikely to lift the blockade without concessions on the nuclear front.

Vakil said Iran’s approach of delaying nuclear talks could also be a way of simply getting the negotiations moving, though she warned that leaving the problem unaddressed is “dangerous.”

“I don’t think the nuclear issue is on the back burner,” she said. “Perhaps this is a sequenced process… that can build momentum to a nuclear deal.”

Limbo land

For now, the talks appear suspended in an uneasy middle ground — neither advancing nor fully collapsing.

Vakil described the moment as finely balanced, saying, “I think we’re at a 50/50 point” between a diplomatic breakthrough and renewed fighting.

Others are far more skeptical about the chances of diplomacy succeeding.

“We are not near a diplomatic solution, and it also seems that we are not ready to renew the war,” Sabti said, describing a state of limbo.

Makovsky, who predicted that “a renewed round of fighting is inevitable,” noted that the hope for regime change in Iran should weigh on US deliberations.

Any deal Trump makes is liable to bolster the regime in some way rather than buttress opposition forces who could renew protests and bring it down.

“You don’t want to make a deal that demoralizes them,” Makovsky said. “You want to encourage them to rise up and bring down the regime with [American] protection.”