Iran Refuses to Send Delegation to Negotiations in Islamabad as Cease-Fire Is Due to Expire

The trouble here is that Trump wants a deal. Iran does not. They want to keep their nuclear program and missiles and remain in power. Trump wants them to want a deal, but they do not.

So he keeps threatening them in apocalyptic terms to make them want to want a deal.

But they don't. And I don't think they believe he would or even could "end their civilization."

Trump doesn't want this war to drag on but that's exactly what Iran wants. They figure that if they can drag this out, public opinion in the US will compel Trump to just walk away from the war without actually forcing them to come to terms or to abandon power.

And they're probably right, unfortunately.

Last-minute ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran looked uncertain Tuesday as a two-week truce was set to expire and both countries warned that, without a deal, they were prepared to resume fighting.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance, expected to lead U.S. negotiators if talks continue in Pakistan, remained in Washington on Tuesday, a White House official said. And Pakistan, which has been urging both sides to return to Islamabad, said it was still awaiting confirmation on whether Iran would participate.

Earlier in the day, two regional officials said Washington and Tehran had signaled they would hold a second round of talks, with Vance leading the U.S. team and Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf as its top negotiator. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

But Pakistan's information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said later Tuesday on X that Iran had not formally confirmed its participation. The ceasefire was set to expire Wednesday.

AP correspondent Charles de Ledesma reports on further confusion regarding this week's projected Iran-US ceasefire talks.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Iran's state TV there has been "no final decision" on whether to attend because of "unacceptable actions" by the U.S., apparently referencing its recent blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

Vance had policy meetings scheduled at the White House on Wednesday morning, said a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The vice president's office and the White House did not immediately respond to messages asking whether Vance still intends to travel to Pakistan.

Trump says he doesn't favor extending ceasefire

Both sides remain dug in rhetorically. U.S. President Donald Trump has warned that "lots of bombs" will "start going off" if there's no agreement before the ceasefire deadline, and Iran's chief negotiator said that Tehran has "new cards on the battlefield" that haven't yet been revealed.

The ceasefire, which began April 8, could be extended if talks resume, though Trump said in an interview Tuesday with CNBC: "Well, I don't want to do that."

"We don't have that much time," Trump said, adding that Iran "had a choice" and "they have to negotiate."

Tousi has a more optimistic take on this than I do, stating that this is just a "desperate" tactic by Iran to show that they're the ones in charge. But... if one person wants to negotiate and you refuse, you are in charge, at least on the question of whether negotiations will happen.

He also says Iran is in "chaos" because no one knows who's actually in charge there. But that also means that the deal that Trump so desperately wants -- and I think he has telegraphed his desire for a deal much harder than he should have -- will still not happen.

I don't think this bothers Tousi much because he wants regime change, and Iran is making it clear that nothing but regime change will result in a deal.

But Trump just doesn't have the Bush-like indifference to public opinion and sheer bullheadedness about continuing an unpopular war. Iran believes that if they just refuse to concede, Trump will eventually be forced, by public pressure, to just declare a (false) victory and go home. Just making more and more extravagant threats isn't changing Iran's posture.

I don't know where this goes from here. I think Trump can afford to just wait Iran out with a long and crippling blockade, but I don't know that Trump feels like he has enough public support for several months of low-intensity warfare.

I've feared from the start that there is just no way to truly win a war without some ground component -- you have to literally blow their heads off and hang them from street-lamps -- and without an armed civilian overthrow, I'm thinking this war ends in a stalemate. Lots of damage inflicted on the mullocracy -- but the mullahs left in place to rebuild.

Do you have a more optimistic take than I do?

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:16 PM

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