The collapse of the Islamabad negotiations between Iran and United States signified an unbridgeable rift, not only between the negotiating parties, but also between two worldviews on resolving conflicts. The last two rounds of negotiations in May and June 2025 and February 2026 had already demonstrated the Trump administration’s propensity to use stick, instead of pen; verbal abuse, instead of respect, and war, instead of diplomacy, a course of conduct that has been aptly called ‘the Trump Doctrine,” which itself manifests the continuation of many of the U.S. policies adopted by previous administrations around unilateralism. Although indirect negotiations and exchange of various ideas have continued between the two nations, it has not resulted in any breakthrough, and a fragile ceasefire has continued.
But the problem is deeper. The Obama administration did not try to bully Iran, and President Obama always referred to that nation as “the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Thus, Iran negotiated with his administration and signed the landmark nuclear agreement of 2015. It also negotiated with the Biden administration about the United States returning to the agreement, after the first Trump administrated had pulled the U.S. out of it. Had the war in Ukraine not started in February 2022, we would have most likely had a second nuclear agreement.
Thus, it is not the Iran that does not want to reach agreements with the U.S. Iran tried for decades to avoid war with the U.S. It could block the strait of Hormuz when in 2018 Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear agreement of 2015 and imposed maximum pressure on Iran. It could do the same after the U.S. assassinated Major General Ghasem Soleimani, Iran’s most important military strategist, or after U.S. and Israel attacked Iran last June. In each and every case, Iran demonstrated what is referred to as “strategic patience,” because it was not interested in a war with the U.S. and/or Israel.
What has prevented reaching an agreement is the hubris manifested by President Trump toward Iran and pressure by Benjamin Netanyahu. This will not work with Iran. Iran is neither Venezuela, nor Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya. It is a nation that prides itself on being a cradle of ancient civilization with several millennia of written history , and a land in which fierce nationalism has deep roots, even when a large segment of the population opposes its government, as we have witnessed over the past year.
One does not have to be pro-Islamic Republic to understand why the U.S.-Israel war of aggression has enraged even the most pro-U.S. segment of the population living in Iran. Iranians have been witnessing an unconstrained breach of international laws of war by the U. S. and Israel, from attacking civilian infrastructure, schools and universities, medical research institutions, and even a synagogue in Tehran, to assassination of political and military leaders, making statements tantamount to genocidal intention, and even trying to destroy Iran’s historical monuments, many of which are recognized by the United Nations’ UNESCO as the world’s cultural and historical heritage. Murdering 165 school children in Minab, in southern Iran, by U.S. missiles truly angered the Iranian nation.
Iranians have also seen Trump incessantly threatening to attack power grids and desalination plants, obliterating the Iranian civilization, and throwing an entire population to the stone ages. Trump relied on the Iranian monarchists to claim support for his bombing. However, Iranians inside Iran, among them the most ardent opponents of Tehran’s government, responded to his threats with unity and condemnation of his actions, forming human chains around power plants and other civilian infrastructure, and on roads and bridges to shield them.
To see another face of Trump’s hubris, consider his claims about the Strait of Hormuz. At its narrowest point, the Strait is only 21 miles (34 km) wide. The international conventions on the law of sea have recognized the first 12 nautical miles (roughly 22 km) of any water adjacent to a state as its territorial sea. Iran obtained sovereign rights on its territorial sea since the first convention was adopted by the United Nations in 1959. Oman, which is on the opposite side of the Strait, has claimed the same, which means the two territorial waters overlap, leaving no residual in between as international waters. All universally agreed international law standards provide that any otherwise implication on the passage of vessels through Iran’s territorial water, arising from the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, does not adversely affect Iran’s sovereign rights because Iran has not ratified the latter convention, although it has signed it.
Yet Trump’s gunboat diplomacy, under the guise of “peace through strength,” is trying to impose naval blockade on Iran in response to enforcement of its sovereign rights for wartime self-defense on its territorial waters.
The trump administration does the same when it misrepresents and conflagrates Iran’s right for peaceful use of nuclear technology, codified by Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and by Resolution 2231 of the UN Security Council in 2015, based on the worn-out notion of “no nuclear weapon” when there is no evidence that Iran has tried to make the weapon. Iranians see this an affront to their national sovereignty and self-determination.
If Iran were the only nation treated in this manner, one could perhaps argue that its regime deserves to be on the receiving end of such hubris. But the Trump administration has been treating Cuba and Venezuela the same way; dictated to Iraq who its Prime Minister should be, and has meddled in the elections of other countries, such as Germany and Hungary, while it greets Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, “leader” of Syria, with red carpet at the White House, the same man who up until early 2025 was still in the State Department’s list of most wanted terrorists, and whose group, Al-Nusra Front, committed an enormous number of war crimes during Syrian civil war.
Even when it negotiates with Iran, the Trump administration manifests its hubris. Aside from attacking Iran twice in the middle of negotiations, it effectively rescinded its acceptance of Iran’s 10-point proposal as a workable plan and, instead, sent a negotiation team to Islamabad with a 15-point plan that had been rejected by Iran. In his press conference immediately after the failed negotiations, Vice President J.D. Vance stated that Iran did not accept “the United States’ terms,” as if Iran is a client state, or a banana republic.
Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are also two principal members of the U.S. negotiations. They are, however, two real-estate moguls who know nothing about the complex issues surrounding Iran’s nuclear program and other contentious issues. They misunderstood Iran’s highly significant concessions made by Ali Larijani, the slain Secretary-General of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and misinterpreted statements made by Iran’s delegation right before the current war began. Many believe that that caused last year’s attacks on Iran.
Iran, on the other hand, brought technical, financial, nuclear, political, and military experts. To demonstrate that the nation supports agreement with the U.S., the delegation included members of Iran’s entire political spectrum, from the Speaker of the parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a conservative pragmatist, and Ali Bagheri Kani, the hardline former nuclear negotiator, to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a moderate, Abdolnaser Hemmati, the Reformist Governor of the Central Bank, and Mahmoud Nabavian, the ultra-right member of the parliament.
The saddest aspect of all of this is that, after suffering from decades-long economic sanctions, Iranian people now endure setbacks from the illegal war’s destruction of civil and industrial infrastructure. The dynamic civil society that was pursuing creation of more space for political and social rights before the war is now focused only on the defense of the nation. During the peaceful protests in December and early January, before they became violent, the government was highly attentive to the people’s legitimate grievances. The police protected the demonstrators against violence by right-wing vigilante groups. President Masoud Pezeshkian met with some of the protestors’ leaders. New financial aids to the poor strata of society were put in place. The political space for criticizing the State was more open, and even Islamic Republic Broadcasting, the national network of television stations and programming that has always been controlled by the hardliner, broadcast the protests live.
If negotiations eventually succeed and result in lasting peace and lifting of the economic sanctions, it will enhance Iranian people’s aspirations for a more representative political system and economic development, whose emergence will be beneficial to the entire Middle East.
Amirhassan Boozari has an SJD from UCLA School of Law, and an LLM from Case Western Reserve University. He taught as an adjunct professor at UCLA International Institute and UCLA School of Law. He has published one book on Iranian constitutionalism and currently serves as an expert in foreign law and as a consultant in international law.
Muhammad Sahimi, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and the NIOC Chair in Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California, has written extensively on Iran and the Middle east over the past three decades.
