Trump risks his image as a strong man

From the outset, these talks should have taken place in Istanbul, where the previous ones were held, but Iran demanded at the last minute that they be moved to Qatar or Oman, something the United States initially refused, but ultimately accepted.

The location of the summit, obviously, does not matter exactly. It is a question of marking territory, something that has not been liked at all by Donald Trump.

The White House was on the verge of bringing back its large delegation, but pressure from several countries involved in some way in the conflict—Egypt, Qatar, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey itself—made Trump finally decide, reluctantly, to return to the table.

The sending of a Shahed drone, which was immediately shot down, to the vicinity of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the large American aircraft carrier monitoring the situation a few hundred kilometers from Iranian territorial waters, did not help either.

It seems that the ayatollahs have given up and are playing cat and mouse with the United States, something that can only be explained by the signs of weakness that Trump himself has shown in the last month.

Unexplained change

And just three weeks ago, the question was not whether the United States was going to depose the ayatollah regime but when and how it was going to do it.

With ‘Operation Maduro’ just over and adrenaline through the roof, Trump threatened the Iranian regime repeatedly and even asked opponents to continue demonstrating in the streets because the United States would help them soon.

However, from one day to the next and without giving a credible explanation, Trump relaxed his tone, remained undaunted by the increase in repression, looked the other way while tens of thousands of Iranian civilians died and determined that, thanks to his mediation, “there would be no more executions.”

Of course, it was a lie: the leaders of the protests have been imprisoned and many of them hanged. It is not something that the regime in Tehran has even bothered to hide.

Threats that are not carried out are always signs of weakness. It seems clear that this is how they have understood it in Tehran. What is not fully understood is exactly what the White House intends.

Iran is in its worst moment since 1979: Hamas and Hezbollah are reduced to their minimum expression, as well as the Axis of Resistance in Syria or Iraq; civil society is divided in two and its nuclear program is supposedly destroyed since the June attacks by the United States and Israel.

The stick and the carrot

The latter, curiously, we know because Trump told us about it. Not only did he tell us, but he shouted it at us and insisted on discrediting anyone who said otherwise: the Iranian nuclear program had become completely useless. Spot.

So, why so much urgency in reaching an agreement now with the same people who have murdered their own citizens, who have been attacking everyone around them for five decades, and who equate the United States with Satan?

Trump was always very critical of the agreement he signed Barack Obama with the Iranian president Hasan Rushes in 2015. So critical that, as soon as he came to power two years later, he broke it and established a hard line with Iran that led to the assassination of General Qassem Soleimanicommander of the Quds Force, in 2020.

However, his obsession in this second term is also to reach an agreement, although, logically, under much more restrictive conditions with the Tehran regime.

In fact, they were in Doha when the United States decided to join Israel’s attacks and bombed the underground nuclear facilities in Fordow and Natanz, as well as the Isfahan Nuclear Research and Technology Center. One more example of the unpredictability of this administration, which now seems to once again trust in diplomacy to finish the work done militarily.

Witkoff-Kushner

The positions, yes, are very far apart. The United States wants a comprehensive agreement that guarantees peace in the Middle East.

In other words, he does not want to limit it only to the military use of Iranian nuclear technology, but he wants Tehran to reduce the number of ballistic missiles that bothered Israel so much during the various attacks in 2024 and 2025 and to commit to not attacking any American ally again, as it did with Saudi Arabia in 2019, using its famous drones.

Iran, on the other hand, wants to talk only about the nuclear program and wants to do so only with the United States and not with its allies in the region.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abás Araghchiis scheduled to meet with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkofffirst thing on Friday, a meeting to which it is expected that he will also attend Jared Kushnerson-in-law and mediator of the president already during his first term and considered a “hawk” on the Iranian issue.

Both were in Abu Dhabi this Thursday, where they met with a Russian delegation to extend the New START mutual nuclear surveillance treaty at least until the beginning of negotiations for a new agreement.

It is still surprising that Trump leaves all these types of key negotiations for the future of the country in the hands of two businessmen while his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio; his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegsethand his vice president, J.D. Vancethey stay in Washington.

The couple’s affinity with the Kremlin and its emissaries has been clear from the beginning; we will have to see how they handle the Iranians.

As Trump himself told Kushner: “The Iranians have never won a war… but they have never lost a negotiation either.” And in this, the entire region has a lot at stake.