Talks, ceasefire in peril as Trump grapples with new sheriffs in town
Of all Donald Trump’s instincts, perhaps the sharpest is influence. He knows how to use the power he has been granted (whether it be America’s economic size or military might) to put pressure on friends and enemies.
Military action in Iran was about maximizing influence before a deal: essentially bombing them into submission and then negotiating with those who remained.
Trump considered the idea of regime change. He told the Iranian people that once the bombs stopped falling, Tehran would fall into their hands. However, this soon turned into a claim that the regime had already changed because strikes had killed many former leaders.
Trump has repeatedly said that the new people are much more moderate, more reasonable, “sharper” and “smarter.” They were the kind of people he could make deals with.
Now, amid a tense ceasefire agreement and confusion in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump is learning that things with Iran are not so simple.
In Islamabad, Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner are meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Araghchi and Ghalibaf are the regime’s “friendly faces”; Politicians whose English-language jokes against Trump on social media (mostly about rising oil prices) have attracted the attention of Trump’s foes in the United States and abroad. But there has always been a question mark about their real power and capacity to make deals at the table.
Vance said this was made clear in the Islamabad talks, where Iranian negotiators appeared to lack authority and had to go back to Tehran to get approval “either from the supreme leader or someone else.”
This “someone else” almost certainly includes leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the supreme leader’s militia.
On Sunday (US time) the Institute for the Study of War said Revolutionary Guard commander Maj. Gen. Ahmed Vahidi and his inner circle “likely exerted at least temporary control not only over Iran’s military response in this conflict, but also over its negotiating position and approach over the past 48 hours.”
It was the Revolutionary Guard Navy that opened fire on many commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend and declared that no ships would pass through. This reversed Araghchi’s statement on 17 April that the strait would be reopened for the duration of the ceasefire.
Vahidi is a hard-core Revolutionary Guard lifer who once led the special operations Quds Force and served as Iran’s defense minister. He had been wanted by Interpol since 2007 for his role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina, killing 85 people.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, the IRGC’s recent show of force was intended to be “an internal show of force designed to showcase the IRGC’s control within the regime, particularly its control over Iran’s negotiating policy.”
It seems that Trump, who just 48 hours ago heralded an almost finished deal with the Iranians, is now aware of the power struggle developing in Tehran. He told Fox News on Sunday (US time) that there was a war between “moderates” and “crazy people”.
“If they don’t sign this deal, the whole country is going to blow up,” Trump said. “We are preparing to deal them a harder blow than any country has ever dealt before.”
Three days before the end of the two-week ceasefire, the next round of talks is now in jeopardy, with Iranian state media reporting (as of Monday morning AEST) that Iran will not participate. Tasmin News Agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, said there would be no talks until the US lifts the blockade.
At the same time, Trump may have overplayed his hand and given up his own leverage in his haste to end his Iran “trip” and calm the markets. Iran’s claims that it would hand over its enriched uranium and never close the strait again likely caused hardliners in Tehran to push back.
Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said Araghchi’s statement about reopening the strait reflected an understanding in Tehran — “probably based on what they heard from Pakistan” — that the United States would respond by lifting its own naval blockade.
“But Trump kept the blockade in place and suggested in many tweets that Iran had surrendered on the nuclear issue,” Nasr said on channel X.
“This has only increased Iran’s suspicions about Trump and that Islamabad, like Geneva, is a diplomatic ploy before another military strike. The door to diplomacy is not closed, but it has become much more difficult. Whether intentional or not, Trump has undermined diplomacy and increased the likelihood of further war.”
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political correspondent in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
