Are there, or will there be, US negotiations with Iran?

Alastair Crooke, 26 March 2026

The short answer is ‘no’. Trump was confabulating when he said that he was already in negotiations with ‘important Iranians’.

There is a back history to the US’ ‘negotiations narrative’: In earlier rounds of ‘negotiations’ centred on the Ukraine conflict, Trump regularly would suggest that political negotiations with Russia were ongoing, when in practice, Witkoff and Kushner were simply engaging in a series of endless talks with the Europeans about establishing a ceasefire and the putative European-led ‘peacekeeping’ role that the Europeans were demanding. In fact, these ‘peace plans’ were never shared, or shown to Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

A prolonged ‘ceasefire’ then was seen by the White House as the bypass strategy to trying to resolve the entrenched security architecture issues between NATO and Russia’s sphere of security interests. Russia simply said ‘no’ to Trump’s attempt to ‘kick the security architecture can down the road’.

The same pattern of dissimulation was evident in the Gaza ceasefire talks: Ceasefires were proposed without specifying any details of what might follow in Phase Two of the ceasefire.

Last weekend, Witkoff and Kushner drew up their wish-list for yet another ceasefire — in Iran this time — with more ‘cans’ to be kicked along for later discussion. Same story. Same confabulation. A fifteen-point peace plan, drawn up by Witkoff and Kushner, was put to the client mediators — with its demands being hailed by Trump as “very good, and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of hostilities” — and with Iran “desperately wanting a deal”.

Iran, to Trump’s chagrin, said ‘no way’ to the proposal: Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesperson for the Iranian military, said, “Our first and last word has been the same from day one, and it will stay that way”.

Iran has no interest in a compromise at this point as it has not achieved its (audacious) strategic ambition to overturn the long-standing US-Israeli military and financial dominance of the Gulf region — and to remake it as a wide Iranian economic and military sphere of interest (‘hemisphere’, if you will).