The renewed Iranian-American nuclear negotiations, nominally revived in the quiet corridors of Muscat in Oman, are unfolding not as diplomacy in the classical sense but as a strategic theatre staged under the roar of approaching artillery.
At the centre of this choreography stands Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, flying urgently to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington on Wednesday not to rescue the talks, but to suffocate them with demands designed to make agreement politically impossible and war structurally plausible.
This is not conjecture; it is design. Every Israeli demand from zero uranium enrichment on Iranian soil, to curtailing Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, to severing Tehran’s regional alliances does not constitute a negotiating position so much as a deliberate elevation of conditions to a level that guarantees early derailment.
Netanyahu’s urgency reflects a specific Israeli anxiety: that the Muscat channel may remain what Iran insists it must be – narrowly defined negotiations confined to the nuclear issue and sanctions relief.
But such an outcome, however modest, would deprive Israel of one of its most valuable strategic assets: the permanent Iranian “threat”. Israel does not fundamentally fear Iran’s current military capabilities; it fears an Iran normalised, negotiated with, and gradually reintegrated, because this outcome constitutes an existential danger to Israel’s regional strategy.
The Muscat talks, which are indirect but not insignificant, have produced precisely what Israel fears most: continuity. Language from both Tehran and Washington, while cautious, has acknowledged a “positive atmosphere.”
Trump has described the talks as “very good”, announcing that a second round will take place in the coming days. And Netanyahu’s accelerated visit to Washington is intended to curb any progress before it crystallises into a deal that Israel cannot derail.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth has reported that the White House decided to hold the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu behind closed doors, deviating from the usual media coverage that has accompanied their encounters.
The decision, according to the paper, was aimed at avoiding the public exposure of disagreements between the two leaders over a potential agreement with Iran. Israeli officials cited in the report say Netanyahu is deeply concerned about mounting pressure from Arab and regional powers, particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar, as well as the active intervention of US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to prevent a military confrontation with Iran.
These dynamics, from Netanyahu’s perspective, risk pushing Trump towards what he considers to be a fragile and incomplete agreement limited to the nuclear issue.
Ahead of Netanyahu’s arrival, US Vice President J D Vance emphasised that Trump alone would determine Washington’s red lines in the negotiations. On the Iranian side, senior officials intensified diplomatic outreach. Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, travelled to Muscat on Tuesday for talks with Omani leaders in preparation for the second round of negotiations.
Netanyahu’s task in Washington is threefold: first, to harden the American negotiating position by expanding the agenda beyond the nuclear issue, thereby overwhelming the talks with irreconcilable demands; second, to convert diplomacy into a coercive countdown, coupling negotiations with sanctions escalation, as already demonstrated by the Trump administration’s executive order imposing secondary tariffs on countries trading with Iran; and third, and most consequentially, to reframe war on Iran not as a failure of diplomacy but as a strategic upgrade for the United States.
This final objective is crucial. Netanyahu’s argument to Washington is not primarily about the Iranian danger; it is about American power. The pitch is simple and ruthless: rather than managing a sprawling coalition of Middle Eastern partners whose interests align with Washington unevenly, the United States should consolidate its regional order around a single, hyper-militarised, ideologically aligned partner – Israel.
Israel requires a deep and permanent state of emergency to justify territorial expansion, internal militarisation, and regional dominance. For Washington, or at least powerful factions within it, a war that promises simplification is tempting: one enemy, one ally, one axis of control.
In this vision, war on Iran is not a catastrophe but a recalibration. It eliminates a rival pole, intimidates the region into dependence, and cements an American-Israeli security condominium as the final arbiter of Middle Eastern politics.
The centrepiece of this strategy is the insistence on zero uranium enrichment on Iranian soil. Israel treats this demand as non-negotiable because more than any other condition it guarantees the failure of the talks. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory, explicitly recognises the right of member states to peaceful nuclear technology, including enrichment under safeguards. To demand zero enrichment is therefore to demand Iran’s exit from the basic grammar of sovereign equality.
More importantly, it is to demand something Iran cannot concede without regime-level self-delegitimisation. After decades of sanctions and immense economic sacrifice to develop a domestic nuclear programme, halting enrichment on Iranian soil is viewed across Iran’s political spectrum as a red line and political suicide.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf have all reiterated in recent days that enrichment is “non-negotiable” and a “right to life for future generations”.
Israel knows this. So does Washington. The unavoidable conclusion is that the demand is aimed not at compliance but at the collapse of the negotiations and, ultimately, of restraint. The same logic applies to Israel’s additional conditions. Ending Iranian support for its regional allies in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq, and limiting Iran’s missile range to 300 km would strip Tehran of credible deterrence, lowering the costs of military action against it.
Israel is not proposing an agreement. It is proposing a regional hierarchy.
From Tehran’s vantage point, uranium enrichment, missile forces, and regional alliances are not tools of expansion but insurance policies and lessons etched into institutional memory by the wreckage of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, where states that surrendered deterrence were invaded, dismantled, or abandoned. From Washington’s and Israel’s perspective, those same assets are threat multipliers that allow a conventionally weaker Iran to punch above its weight, eroding American primacy and Israeli freedom of action.
“Any Iranian leadership that agreed to dismantle enrichment, missiles, and regional networks would be signing its domestic and geopolitical death warrant, surrendering autonomy without enforceable guarantees to an adversary whose commitments have repeatedly collapsed under electoral cycles and alliance pressures,” an Iranian reformist politician close to Pezeshkian told Al-Ahram Weekly.
“What the United States is truly demanding is Iran’s acceptance of a subordinate security role within a US-managed regional order. This is what normalisation means in practice: autonomy exchanged for conditional tolerance,” he argued.
Accordingly, Iran is on high alert and anticipates military confrontation more readily than the success of negotiations with Washington.
The dilemma is that Iran’s deterrence posture cuts both ways. Missiles, proxies, and nuclear latency do provide protection: they impose costs on attackers, push conflict away from Iranian borders, and complicate escalation planning. Yet they also trap Iran in a permanent state of siege, legitimising sanctions and freezing the country into a militarised identity with limited economic upside.
Tehran’s real vulnerability, therefore, is not only military action, but strangulation: sanctions, isolation, and managed stagnation. This is why Iran negotiates while preparing for war, without perceiving any contradiction in the practice. Araghchi’s formulation is precise: Iran does not seek war but is prepared for it if it is imposed. Iran’s parliament echoes the same doctrine, describing diplomacy and defence as “two sides of the same coin.”
Washington’s behaviour only deepens Iranian distrust. The imposition of new tariffs and sanctions immediately after Muscat sends a blunt message: diplomacy will proceed under economic siege. The United States pursued a similar dual-track approach with the former Soviet Union. The unsentimental truth is that Washington is not seeking peace so much as Iranian demotion.
This strategy of talking with one hand while strangling with the other narrows Iran’s options. When sanctions become permanent tools rather than bargaining instruments, incentives to compromise evaporate, empowering hardliners who argue that American commitments are structurally unreliable.
In recent days, Iranian conservatives have signalled they will hold Pezeshkian and the country’s reformist factions directly accountable should the negotiations collapse in an indication that the country may be entering a new and perilous phase of domestic political polarisation.
What disappears in this process is the possibility of a limited, technical, face-saving agreement of the kind diplomacy is actually designed to produce. An arrangement that caps enrichment levels, restores inspections, lifts the sanctions in phases, and reduces miscalculations would not reshape the region, but it would stabilise it.
Ultimately, this is why such a deal is unacceptable to Israel. Stability weakens the logic of hegemony. It allows regional actors to diversify alliances and imagine futures not organised around permanent threat.
Netanyahu’s Washington visit is not simply about centrifuges or missiles. It is about foreclosing that imagination. The irony is not that agreement is difficult; it is that difficulty has been weaponised. And in that weaponisation, the region is being marched deliberately towards a conflict its architects will call unavoidable. But its victims will know better.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 12 February, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: