It has been mentioned that belief is like glass: Once it’s shattered, nothing will ever be the similar. In the case of the enduring hostility between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States over the previous 47 years, even this metaphor could also be an understatement.
The tone of the relationship is indicative of this truth.
In 2020, Iran’s supreme chief denounced President Donald Trump as a “clown” who solely pretends to assist the Iranian folks whereas finally plunging a “poisonous dagger” into their backs.
And in a U.S. model of this hostility, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Feb. 23, 2026, about the president’s strategy to Iran: “I don’t want to use the word ‘frustrated,’ because he understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he’s curious as to why they haven’t … I don’t want to use the word ‘capitulated,’ but why they haven’t capitulated.”
The war that began on Feb. 28, 2026, hews to a well-known however harmful sample. Deep, historic mistrust, incompatible strategic pursuits, home political constraints on either side, miscommunication and misperception, zero-sum considering and repeated diplomatic overreach regularly pushed the relationship between Iran and the U.S. towards open battle.
Rhetoric, not actuality
When Tehran refused to yield to Trump’s calls for, he described Iranian leaders in blunt terms: “They’re sick people. They’re mentally ill. Sick people. They are angry. They are crazy. They are sick.”
For a deeper understanding of Iran, policymakers in Washington might have regarded to the insights of John W. Limbert, a distinguished diplomat with 4 a long time of expertise in Iranian affairs and a hostage throughout the Iran hostage disaster.
In 2008, as half of a U.S. Institute of Peace examine of Iranian negotiating fashion, Limbert outlined 15 ideas for Americans searching for profitable negotiations with Iranian counterparts. Among his most necessary observations was that every aspect tends to assume the worst about the different, viewing its adversary as “infinitely devious, hostile, and duplicitous.”
Little proof means that such hard-earned knowledge has knowledgeable current rhetoric.
Instead, American leaders’ and media’s discussions of Iran over the previous few a long time have usually relied on a well-known narrative: the portrayal of Middle Eastern leaders as irrational or “lunatic” figures − first, revolutionary chief Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Saddam Hussein, adopted by (*47*), Bashar Assad, and now Ali Khamenei.
This narrative conveniently overlooks inconvenient info.
Getting to breakdown
It was Trump who withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran throughout his first time period. It was additionally the United States that in renewed negotiations in 2025 and 2026 selected to bomb Iranian targets twice whereas talks have been nonetheless underway.
Nor have been the negotiations ever strictly bilateral. There was all the time an unoccupied chair at the desk metaphorically reserved for a ghost participant: Israel. In my view, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu skillfully used political leverage and diplomatic stress to shape the process publicly and privately.
When it got here to Iran, Trump usually violated a fundamental precept of diplomacy: asking Iran to concede with out any reciprocity. Meanwhile, Netanyahu would repeatedly transfer the purpose posts − asserting that Iran was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, insisting it had no right to enrich uranium on its own soil, demanding the dismantling of its nuclear infrastructure, calling for the elimination of its ballistic missile functionality, and finally advocating regime change.
The extent to which Israeli stress formed successive American insurance policies is a query historians and investigative journalists will proceed to debate.
AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File
Yet duty for the breakdown can’t be positioned on Washington and Jerusalem alone. Iranian leaders contributed considerably to making the battle with the United States so intractable.
A corrupt, repressive and economically struggling regime relied closely on performative anti-American politics for home legitimacy. Tehran matched American and Israeli rigidity with intransigence and strategic overreach of its personal.
Limiting inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, failing to provide credible answers about previous nuclear actions, constructing secret facilities and trying to negotiate from a place of weak spot finally proved disastrous when coping with an impatient and impulsive American president.
The unknown unknowns
What comes subsequent?
If regime change doesn’t happen in Tehran, the two sides will nearly actually discover themselves negotiating once more as soon as the fog of war dissipates.
The hostility between them won’t disappear, and diplomatic niceties could turn into rarer. Yet diplomacy hardly ever requires belief; it requires pursuits.
I imagine that future talks are due to this fact probably to be transactional fairly than transformational. Technical and authorized parameters will nonetheless want to be negotiated. Hawks and doves will proceed to compete for affect in each capitals.
And the oldest rule of bargaining will stay unchanged: When you lack leverage, purchase it – then negotiate.