With US-Iran talks in Pakistan in doubt after Iran's foreign minister left Islamabad and President Trump canceled the planned trip by US negotiators, veteran journalist Eli Lake says Washington should use its leverage not only on the nuclear file, but to help the people of Iran.
As debate over a ceasefire and renewed talks with the United States intensifies, the absence of a clear supreme arbiter in Tehran appears to be giving Iran’s hardliners more room to shape the narrative and to hinder any eventual agreement.
Mounting opposition to negotiations with Washington in Tehran is casting doubt over whether Iran will proceed with a new round of talks with the United States in Islamabad as the ceasefire deadline approaches.
Tehran’s commentariat is warning that the most troubling outcome of the current negotiations with Washington may be neither war nor peace, but a prolonged “no deal–no war” limbo.
Apparent divisions over negotiations with the United States may have strengthened the most confrontational elements within Iran’s political landscape and facilitated the rise of new hardline actors.
Iran said on Monday it had not yet decided whether to join a second round of talks with the United States, even as Pakistan prepared to host a US delegation, with Tehran accusing Washington of violating the ceasefire and showing no real seriousness about diplomacy.
Despite deep political turmoil, economic distress, militant violence, and a fraying security landscape at home, Pakistan has unexpectedly emerged as the publicly acknowledged central mediator between Washington and Tehran.
One hundred days after one of the deadliest crackdowns in modern history, Iran remains suspended between grief and uncertainty, with a fractured public mood as some see justice in recent blows to the regime, while others feel left behind with it still in place.
As a fragile ceasefire holds between the United States and Iran, former CIA analyst and former National Security Council director Ken Pollack is warning that the greatest risk may be a war that ends with the Islamic Republic still intact.
As US and Iranian envoys prepare to meet in Pakistan this weekend, the truce between the two sides appears less a step toward peace than a fragile intermission in a war whose central disputes remain unresolved.
As US and Iranian envoys prepare to meet in Pakistan to explore a path out of the war, China is watching from further east—an influential but cautious actor that helped move diplomacy forward but is unlikely to become the guarantor Tehran would like.
Iran has released French nationals Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris after more than three and a half years in detention, closing one chapter of a case Paris has long held up as emblematic of what it calls Iran’s practice of detaining foreign nationals on politicized grounds.
The details are still incomplete, but the positions Tehran and Washington have publicly tied to the ceasefire suggest not a shared settlement so much as a temporary halt layered over unresolved hostilities.
Iran and the United States have received a proposal to end hostilities that could take effect on Monday and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to Reuters citing a source familiar with the plan.
The United States and Iran are discussing the terms of a potential 45-day ceasefire that could open the door to a permanent end to the war, Axios reported Sunday, citing four US, Israeli and regional sources familiar with the talks.
Iran and the United States may prefer an end to the war, but the gap between the minimum terms each side could accept is so wide that a deal remains unlikely for now.
Iran said on Monday its ambassador to Lebanon would remain in Beirut despite a Lebanese order to leave, turning a diplomatic reprimand into a broader test of how far the Lebanese state can push back when its decisions collide with the interests of Tehran and Hezbollah.
President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States is engaged in serious negotiations with officials in Tehran, but vowed to keep striking Iran for the time being.
Iran has received a US 15-point proposal via Pakistan aimed at opening a path toward a ceasefire, a senior Iranian source told Reuters on Wednesday, though the venue for any talks was still under discussion and Tehran publicly denied that negotiations with Washington had begun.
Sweden has stopped issuing and renewing short-term visas for some Iranian embassy staff in Stockholm following the execution of a dual national, in a move its foreign minister said was “just the beginning” of further action.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf may soon be called a pragmatist. That would be a mistake.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Tehran had offered Washington a “very significant prize” related to oil and gas, expressing optimism that a deal to end the conflict could be possible.