Trump’s Iran deal slowed by couriers in complex peace process
The latest example occurred on Thursday, when Trump claimed a deal was close, telling reporters it could be signed as early as this weekend. Iran rejected Trump’s claims, with the semi-official Fars news agency reporting that regime leaders had not approved any text with the US.
While Trump’s tendency to exaggerate, threaten, and provoke helps explain the confusion about the state of negotiations, there’s another reason why a deal has been so difficult to reach: the cumbersome way the U.S. and Iran are actually conducting negotiations.
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U.S. officials, analysts and people familiar with the matter say the talks are a cumbersome process that takes days of passing messages back and forth rather than actual talks. The people asked not to be identified discussing the format of the interviews, which are not under scrutiny.
American negotiators’ overtures follow a circuitous diplomatic route that often involves human couriers on the Iranian side to conceal the location of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who was injured early in the U.S. and Israeli campaign. His location is being kept top secret, with Iranian authorities fearing he is a potential assassination target.
ASLO READ | Iran says no final decision has been made on a deal Trump had hoped could be signed soon. WhatsApp messages sometimes take up to 48 hours to be delivered, according to a diplomat who declined to give his name to speak publicly, complicating matters by sporadic wartime connectivity in Iran. The talks also depend on Pakistani officials conveying U.S. proposals and responses through phone calls and in-person visits to Tehran before couriers are dispatched, the sources said.
A senior administration official described the Iranian system as frustratingly slow and incomprehensible. Even if the United States gave Iran everything it wanted, five days would be needed to sign the deal, the official said, declining to give names to speak freely.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly complained about the slow process, telling lawmakers last week it could take “five or six days” to hear back.
“What we’re working on in many cases is delays in responding to people, and that’s why you’re seeing reports that there could be a deal in the next few days,” Rubio said.
For now, the two sides appear to be negotiating a halt to the war while leaving tougher issues for later. That raises the question of whether the rivals will eventually return to the kind of face-to-face talks that would be necessary for a larger deal.
“Can you actually conduct successful negotiations through intermediaries or cell phones? No,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime State Department adviser on Middle East negotiations. “Every issue they address — sanctions, frozen assets, nuclear enrichment of Iran — each of these issues involves a universe of detail that will take weeks, if not months, to negotiate.”
The Trump administration and Iran declined to detail what the talks looked like. But statements from people familiar with the matter make clear that these are a far cry from the face-to-face talks Trump administration officials had with Iran early in his administration.
And it bears no resemblance to the months-long efforts that led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action under President Barack Obama. During that effort, U.S. and Iranian officials booked themselves into the Palais Coburg, a luxury hotel in Vienna, for about three weeks to iron out the final details.
Sources said White House special envoy Steve Witkoff maintained direct messaging contact with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a channel the US uses more frequently. However, Witkoff has not traveled to the Middle East since the last US-Iran talks in Islamabad.
The fact that the cumbersome nature of the talks may have been intentional works against Trump. Other people familiar with the negotiations said Iran wanted to avoid creating a digital trail that could reveal Khamenei’s whereabouts and lead to his assassination.
Khamenei’s predecessor and father, Ali Khamenei, was killed at the beginning of the war, and Iran remains distrustful after the United States bombed the country after two separate negotiations. Israel has targeted negotiators in the past, including an attack on Tehran-backed Hamas officials in Qatar’s capital Doha, which resulted in the deaths of five people.
Many stakeholders need to be taken into account in the discussions. In a social media post on Thursday calling for an attack on Iran, Trump tipped his hat to at least 10, mentioning “Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and others.”
Fars placed the blame for any failure squarely on Trump, saying U.S. negotiators were trying to add new provisions after Iran accepted its earlier draft.
The talks have also frustrated U.S. allies, prompting the United Arab Emirates to hold face-to-face talks with Iran this week, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. According to reports in Iranian media, Qatar sent a separate delegation to Tehran this week to advance stalled US-Iran talks.
Diplomats and Gulf officials have also suggested that Tehran is deliberately stalling to keep pressure on the White House.
“This seems to serve Iran’s interest and make us even more uneasy,” said Dennis Ross, a former top U.S. negotiator in Middle East peace processes. “They’re playing on our nervousness, and whenever President Trump says we’re close, they think it’s best to play against the clock. They’re waiting for the pressure to work on him.”
