WH says more Iran talks could be held in Pakistan
“The sense I’m getting is that the administration thinks they are close,” Eurasia Group’s Gregory Brew. “We feel good about the prospects of a deal,” White House’s Karoline Leavitt.
The White House said today that more U.S./Iran talks could be held in Pakistan, amid signs the parties could be working on a framework deal.
Vice President JD Vance, who led the U.S. delegation to high level talks with Iran in Islamabad over the weekend, said Trump wants to make a “grand bargain” with Iran, rather than a narrower deal focused on the nuclear issue and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
The President “doesn’t want to make like a small deal,” Vance said at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia Tuesday night. “He wants to make the grand bargain. …He really wants a deal where Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, Iran is not state sponsoring terrorism, but also the people of Iran can thrive and prosper… and join the world economy. And that’s the trade that he’s offering.”
But veterans of diplomatic negotiations with Iran say reaching such a comprehensive deal—let alone with a country against which the United States has gone to war twice in the past year and with which it has not had diplomatic relations for almost five decades--would take considerable time, patience, and attention to detail that the Trump administration has not shown much inclination for. It would also require Trump to give Iran expansive economic and other concessions that will be politically controversial and opposed by Israel.
They believe that more likely than reaching a “big for big” deal with Iran, the Trump administration and Iran could agree to an extension of the current ceasefire and work to reach smaller understandings in order to “lengthen the runway” for the negotiations for a prospective longer term deal.
“In order for these talks to succeed, the Iranians will have to adjust their expectations,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has led Track II dialogues including former American and Iranian officials for several years.
“I think by now they understand that if an agreement is reached with the Trump administration, it will likely be a two-page framework that includes some first order action items and a set of principles, with key details to be worked out later,” she said.
Diplomats foresee ceasefire extension to lengthen runway for negotiations
“There’s just this culture clash, where I think Trump’s idea of negotiation is, we hit you with a two-by-four, and then while you’re… seeing cartoon stars over your head, we sign some piece of paper and then we’re done,” Daniel Benaim, a former top State Department Middle East official, said on a Middle East Institute panel today.
“This is going to be long and painful and complex,” he said. “So it’s going to take all the work of the mediators to create the kind of long runway of mutually acceptable…circumstances that will allow these people to actually talk and to find a way to agree to something that isn’t war.”
“We’ve done this in the past when we couldn’t get the big deals,” he said. “You look to achieve a series of smaller and more finite understandings. This kind of crowded negotiating table is ripe for that kind of thing.”
“It looks like there’s a possibility of an agreement on the nuclear issue, but it’s going to take time, and….serious, sustained negotiations for both sides,” Alan Eyre, former State Department diplomat and Persian language spokesman, told the MEI panel.
“I think Iran is ready for that,” Eyre said. “But frankly, I don’t know to what extent this U.S. administration is willing or capable to roll up its collective sleeves and engage in serious, detailed negotiations to thrash out not just the general principles, but also the details.”
“So start on that process,” he said. “But in the meanwhile, extend the [ceasefire] deadline and just get the Strait fully reopen again.”
White House says more talks could be held in Islamabad
While the United States and Iran had not yet formally agreed to extend the two week ceasefire, “we remain very much engaged in these negotiations,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told journalists at the press briefing today.
“These conversations are productive and ongoing,” Leavitt said. “We feel good about the prospects of a deal.”
She said another US-Iran meeting if it takes place would likely again be held in Islamabad. And she said the administration believes that Pakistan should be the coordinating US-Iran mediator at this time.
“While there have been many countries around the world who want to offer their help, the President feels it’s important to continue to streamline this communication through the Pakistanis, and so that’s what continues to take place,” Leavitt said
Key Pakistani officials continued intensive consultations with Iran, the Trump administration, the Gulf and other nations. Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Gen. Asim Munir arrived in Tehran today for meetings with Iranian officials. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif arrived in Saudi Arabia today and is scheduled to travel to Qatar and Turkey through April 18.
Pakistani Army chief Munir “has good relations with both the IRGC and Trump, which places him in a unique position,” DiMaggio noted.
Does Trump want a deal?
Some long-time observers of US/Iran diplomacy think that with the ceasefire, Trump may have found enough of an exit ramp from the war to be able to walk away without a deal.
“Trump achieved his main objective. He found an exit out of the war,” Trita Parsi, an Iran expert and vice president at the Quincy Institute, said. “He can leave the table without a deal.”
“The Iranians will have more gains forfeited if there is no deal,” he said.
Gregory Brew, an Iran and energy expert at the Eurasia Group, says he hears the Trump administration feels it is closing in on a deal.
“The sense I’m getting is that the administration thinks they are close,” Brew told me Tuesday. “I don’t know about the Iranians, but my gut is they want to wrap this up. That might be enough to get them to agree to something.”
“I think the blockade gives them [the US administration] a bit of cover, it makes it look like they are getting the Iranians to give in,” Brew said. “But from what I’ve heard, they’re ready to give Iran a lot, in exchange for peace, an enrichment freeze, handing over [its highly enriched uranium], and easing up on the Strait.”
“The Iranians are being cautious about the blockade,” he said. “I don’t think they think it’ll last. I’m not sure it will either.”
Shifting goal posts
In the end, Trump himself may not yet know what he wants to do.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that during the talks in Islamabad last weekend, the parties were closing in a Memorandum of Understanding, when the U.S. shifted the goal posts.
“When just inches away from ‘Islamabad MOU,’ we encountered maximalism, shifting goal posts, and blockade,” he wrote on Twitter.
As Trump frequently says, we’ll see what happens.
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"In the end, Trump himself may not yet know what he wants to do." And that problem is only going to get worse.
Just feels odd that a nuclear armed, China - engaged, somewhat unstable internally with tons of debt (and Taliban promoter) Pakistan emerges as broker of a just peace.