With the cease-fire shattered and Iran and the United States battling for control of the Strait of Hormuz, prospects for a détente look dim.
But Tehran’s release of an Iranian American citizen this week, coupled with a hint from Iran’s chief negotiator, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, that his country could be open to talks, suggested that the door to diplomacy may still be ajar.
Talks have thus far failed to dent the decades of tensions between the United States and Iran. Four veteran Western diplomats who have collectively spent years negotiating either directly or indirectly with Tehran warned that de-escalation at this moment would be difficult to achieve. One advised against going back to the table any time soon. Here is their advice.
Agree on the goal
The Trump administration has cited several aims for the war: regime change in Tehran; ending the country’s nuclear program and curbing its military; and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where commercial ships could sail freely before the conflict began.
Catherine Ashton, a British politician and the top European Union diplomat from 2009 to 2014, said, “What is needed is clarity on the endgame both seek — what do the U.S. want as a final outcome they can live with, and what does Iran want?”
“For diplomacy to restart, they need to establish what they are trying to do and agree on a plan,” added Ms. Ashton, who took part in years of talks focused on preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb.
Federica Mogherini, who succeeded Ms. Ashton as the chief E.U. diplomat and helped clinch a nuclear deal with Tehran in 2015, said that expecting to agree on all of Mr. Trump’s demands at once was “clearly a non-starter.”
To restart negotiations, Ms. Mogherini said, U.S. officials must “be clear on their ultimate goal — possibly a realistic one.”
Lower the temperature
During a fraught round of negotiations in 2015, Ms. Mogherini recalled, there was a shouting match between Iranian and international officials.
Iranian diplomats typically stay calm under pressure, Ms. Mogherini said, but after a European country raised an unrelated issue at a make-or-break moment during those talks, the Iranian side lost its composure. Ms. Mogherini ordered an hourslong cooling-off break. When negotiations resumed, the focus was shifted squarely back on the nuclear issue, she said.
Ms. Mogherini suggested that the Trump administration should “take a more rational, consistent approach, less impulsive reactions and random contradictory public statements.”
Talks would benefit, she added, from including other interested countries or multilateral organizations. “You need more players around the table to dilute a little bit the confrontational attitude that both sides would have,” she noted.
Consider the timing
Some American conservatives believe it is better for the United States to wait before taking another stab at diplomacy.
Elliott Abrams, who worked on Middle East diplomacy under three Republican presidents, including Mr. Trump, said the only negotiation that the United States should currently consider is “a bare-bones Hormuz deal” to lift the American naval blockade if Iran agreed to allow free shipping through the waterway.
“We just tried negotiating, and the Iranians emerged from that feeling triumphant, and believing that they would now be able to take over the Strait of Hormuz and monetize it,” Mr. Abrams said. “So I don’t think a quick return to the negotiating table is helpful.”
That limited approach, playing more of a waiting game, echoed comments this week from Condoleezza Rice, who was President George W. Bush’s national security adviser and secretary of state. She told an audience in Colorado that her approach to the Iranians would be to “just let them sit there and stew in their lousy economy, where most of their A-level nuclear scientists have been killed, where I believe there are deep splits in the Iranian government.”
Set a realistic deadline
The cease-fire agreement that Iran and the United States agreed to last month set a 60-day deadline for brokering a final peace deal, including the thorny issues of limits on Iran’s nuclear program and control of the Strait of Hormuz. Nearly halfway through that timeline, the two sides appear farther apart than ever.
Ms. Ashton said deadlines were appropriate “if you include what you expect to cover in that time, and both sides agree.”
Robert Malley, who was on American negotiation teams under the Obama and Biden administrations, said that diplomatic talks with Tehran were usually drawn out because Iranian officials “sweat every detail, revisit tentative understandings, and verify far more than they trust.”
If new negotiations begin, he said, “there will likely be no grand bargain, only painstaking talks over every last clause and every last word.”
“The Trump administration prizes speed and simplicity,” Mr. Malley said. “By dint of its actions, it guaranteed that whatever it gets will, at best, be very slow and extremely tough.”
