Before heading for Pakistan to lead the US delegation in the historic talks to end the US-Israeli war with Iran last weekend, US Vice-President J D Vance described his Iranian counterparts as being “better negotiators than fighters”.
Vance, who was echoing US President Donald Trump after he was designated to head the American team in the talks, was clearly signalling a tough road to negotiating with the Iranians while belittling their military achievements in the war.
It is a well-known opening salvo in any peace-talk strategy to tell your enemy ahead of the negotiations that he should not expect to be rewarded at the bargaining table for his losses on the battlefield.
It is even more so with Trump’s deal-making style and coercive negotiation and “hard-bargaining approach,” which focuses on “leveraging power, unpredictability, and ego-driven, win-loss framing.”
Vance’s counterpart, Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, an ex- Revolutionary Guard general who was trained in a “strategic patience” doctrine to unsettle counterparts, dismissed Vance’s claim by saying Washington was trying “to achieve through talks what it could not win on the battlefield.”
Both Iran and the United States have claimed victory in the conflict, and they both accepted a fortnight’s pause, brokered by Pakistan, as they emerged to the harsh reality that their six-week war had become deadlocked and had convulsed countries across the region and beyond.
Only one day before accepting Pakistan’s proposal, Trump stepped up the pressure on Iran to accept his terms for a deal to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz by issuing threats to obliterate Iranian civilisation.
The shocking threats drew international condemnation, including from the UN and the Vatican, and these, as well as concerns over potential war crimes, forced him to declare a ceasefire. The war’s economic fallout, which has driven up inflation and the prices of fuel, was also a major factor in his decision.
For Iran, which suffered a great deal of destruction and casualties in the 40-day war, the Pakistani proposal was a relief, though it repeatedly said that it would not agree to a temporary ceasefire and insisted that it wanted a permanent end to the US and Israeli war against it.
The de-escalation meant that Iran and the United States needed to find an exit ramp from the conflict, with both sides realising that the really hard part lay ahead, with the prospect of a permanent peace remaining a “maybe, maybe not,” situation.
The negotiations finally began on Saturday in Islamabad during the fragile ceasefire struck by Pakistan’s mediation. Surprisingly, the two teams met face-to-face, marking a significant moment for two nations that in the past have typically held high-level talks through intermediaries.
But after 21 hours of marathon talks, the negotiators walked away from the negotiating table after they failed to reach an agreement to end the war and raising speculation about when the conflict would end.
The talks had very difficult issues to resolve and not much time to do it. They were a very challenging assignment for both teams and one with a limited upside and plenty to lose if they failed.
Ahead of the talks, Tehran and Washington leaked their preconditions for an end to the war to the media, a well-known technique in any negotiation, where the idea is to set high goals that can then be bargained down if necessary but will likely lead to a better deal.
Iran’s demands reportedly included a guarantee of non-aggression, continuing control of the Strait of Hormuz, the acceptance of its right to enrich uranium, and the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions.
Iran also wanted the termination of the UN Security Council sanctions and of the restrictions put in place by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in addition to the payment of war reparations and the withdrawal of US combat forces from the region.
It also insisted on a ceasefire on all fronts, including with Hizbullah in Lebanon.
Iran’s demands, however, were a long way from Trump’s, who had already declared a “total and complete victory”. His leaked 15-point plan to end the war demanded the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme and constraints on its ballistic missiles.
The plan also addressed maritime routes, primarily the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway in and out of the Arab Gulf whose closure had cut the global supply of oil and gas and sent their prices soaring.
Having made their initial offers in the talks public, the two sides worked to establish the objectives to be presented at the negotiating table, hoping that their strategy would be effective enough to win.
Regardless of the anchoring techniques, which in Trump’s case seemed to be pure rhetoric, both sides appeared to be eager to find an off-ramp from the conflict as they grappled with the stalemate in the war and its rising cost.
Behind the scenes, Trump, who had trumpeted his chest-beating rhetoric and declared victory in the war, was reportedly pushing for an exit, contradicting what he had earlier said about the war.
The London-based Financial Times newspaper revealed that Trump was privately begging for a ceasefire, apparently to alleviate the economic strain caused by Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and to address growing unease among his support base, which has been critical of the war.
Iran was no less eager for a truce, hoping that this would make the Islamic regime look positively charismatic while the ceasefire would bring some relief to Iranians severely affected by the 42-day war.
With the negotiations finally under way, the two sides were expected to use leverage, bargaining, power, diplomacy, and all the deal-making they could to tackle their acrimonious dispute and to try to achieve their objectives.
Yet, after three sessions of negotiation that lasted for 21 hours, the negotiators failed to pull back their respective countries and the Middle East from the brink of a probably even more devastating war.
The failure of the peace talks has again underscored the red lines that both sides have set during the conflict, shaping their attitudes in the inconclusive ceasefire negotiations.
Declaring that the peace talks had failed before leaving Islamabad, Vance said the Iranian delegation had not accepted the American terms for ending the war after a marathon negotiating session.
Ghalibaf, on the other hand, said the talks had come to an end without reaching an accord due to a lack of trust.
“My colleagues in the Iranian delegation put forward 168 constructive, forward-looking proposals, yet the opposing side ultimately failed in this round of talks to gain the delegation’s confidence,” he stated in an X post upon returning from Pakistan.
For a few hours the abrupt end of the talks left the world guessing about whether Trump would leave open the possibility for a final settlement of the conflict or would seek to maximise his leverage over Iran.
In his first comment on the failure of the talks, Trump accused Iran of being “unwilling to abandon its nuclear ambitions” and of having “knowingly failed to make good on its promise to open the Strait of Hormuz”.
To no one’s surprise, Trump renewed his threats and vowed to take further military action in the absence of a deal, claiming that he “could take out Iran in one day” and listing its desalination and power plants and bridges among potential targets.
Trump said the US Navy in the Middle East would immediately start blockading the Strait of Hormuz and would also stop every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran.
In a lengthy Truth Social post, he said the US was going to start destroying the mines the Iranians had laid in the strait and warned “any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!”
Whether there will now be further negotiations or Trump as some reports suggested Thursday or he will choose to finish the disastrous job remains to be seen. The ceasefire is slated to end on 25 April, and the remaining period will be a test of nerves.
The breakdown of the negotiations has underscored what amounts to a fiasco in Trump’s Middle East diplomacy. His negotiation team even failed to understand the name of their chief counterpart, Ghalibaf, which means “carpet weaver”, a job that means patience and memory in Persian culture.
Apart from the battle for the narrative over the negotiations’ breakdown and the two parties’ goals and bilateral issues, Trump has failed to understand that the Iranians are good negotiators, as Vance correctly, though surprisingly, described them.
Right from the beginning, Iran insisted that the talks should include the withdrawal of US combat forces from the region and a ceasefire on all fronts, including in Lebanon, as stated in its list of demands.
The demand reflects Iran’s thinking about what is termed the “unity of arenas”, or its regional Shia allies, and it was accepted by Trump in his announcement of the ceasefire, which stated that the demand was a “workable basis on which to negotiate”.
The talks in Islamabad faltered largely because Trump and his unseasoned delegation failed to understand the geopolitical inter- connections between these “arenas”, not only in Lebanon but also in Iraq and Yemen, although crushing Iran’s proxies was always on their agenda.
Yet, the Trump administration did not only refuse to discuss Lebanon in the negotiation room, but it also gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light to destroy the country and occupy large chunks of its territory in order to force its government to make peace with Israel.
One other key issue that was not on the negotiation table, but was in the ceasefire proclamation, was “PEACE in the Middle East”, which for the wider region means security and stability and not submission to Israel.
For all these reasons, a broader bargain to narrow the gaps on regional disputes is needed to end the conflicts that have resulted in the Israeli war of genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran, shaking the entire Middle East.
While the negotiations remain stalled waiting for the two sides to make concessions or come together on an understanding, key regional flashpoints and disputes exposed by the war should be put on the agenda.
If the ceasefire is to become something more durable and a US-Iranian détente achieved, the talks will have to address the core regional issues that triggered the war rather than merely postpone them.
These issues, in particular Israel’s expansionism and the region’s rising sectarianism, are the by-product of US-Israeli designs to reshape the Middle East, which after the war ends could become another geopolitical blunder.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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