Donald Trump went to war intending to break Iran’s power. But $50 billion later, a deeply battered Islamic Republic is still standing, and with talks set to commence in Islamabad, the tables have turned. Although Trump had hoped to determine Iran’s future, Tehran may now determine his. Iran holds veto power over Trump’s legacy—and the political future of his vice president, J. D. Vance, who will lead the negotiations.
The significance of this war will be judged over decades, not weeks. But for now, the Islamic Republic is feeling triumphant. Three months ago, the global news story was about Tehran massacring its own people; today it is about Tehran successfully resisting America and Israel. Even if before the war, the United States and Israel sought to change Iran’s regime, what is being demanded now is not total surrender, but cooperation.
Iran discovered that its leverage is economic, rather than nuclear, extortion. Few countries feel directly threatened by an Iranian bomb, but most people around the world have felt the consequences of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which flows nearly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and a fifth of its natural gas. Before the war, more than 100 vessels transited the strait daily; on April 8, just four ships passed through it. Desperation was the mother of Iran’s strategy.
The cease-fire is tenuous. But if Vance and the Iranian speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, meet as intended, the talks will mark the most senior in-person engagement between the United States and Iran since the 1979 revolution—Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke briefly by phone in 2013 but never met. Trump once described Qalibaf as one of Iran’s “more moderate” leaders, a man with whom Washington might do business. Qalibaf’s triumphalist posts on X suggest otherwise—a man entirely of the revolutionary system, whose public demands make it appear as if he is representing the superpower. Vance, meanwhile, arrives in Islamabad with the optimism of a newcomer to Middle East diplomacy. He has likened Iran’s enrichment of uranium to his wife having the right to skydive, noting that he does not want Usha to jump out of an airplane.
Both Trump and Tehran, for different reasons, have looked to Vance to end the war. White House reporters who speak with Trump regularly believe that he’s already moved on from the Iran war—recognizing that it’s a political loser—and doesn’t intend to return. When toppling the Iranian regime appeared within reach to him, Trump wanted the credit; now, sensing the war’s unpopularity, he is content to let Vance own the outcome. If a deal “doesn’t happen, I’m blaming J. D. Vance,” Trump recently joked. “If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.” Trump’s predicament has been transferred to Vance: A bad deal damages him, no deal damages him, and a good deal is the only outcome that helps him, but Iran has no intention of offering one.
Iran’s leaders have their own reasons to prefer Vance. They view him as the anti-war voice in MAGA—less sympathetic to Israel than Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, or Jared Kushner, his son-in-law—and highly motivated to resolve the conflict quickly, given his presidential ambitions. And if he reaches the highest office in the White House, he will be bound by whatever he signs in Islamabad.
Yet there is no overlap between what Trump is demanding and what Iran is offering. On every significant issue, the two sides are not negotiating over terms—they are negotiating over incompatible realities. Trump demands zero nuclear enrichment; Iran calls it a sovereign right. Trump demands that Iran abandon its proxies; Iran calls them “the heroic Islamic Resistance.” Trump demands that Iran suspend its use of ballistic missiles; Iran doesn’t mention them, because they are nonnegotiable. Trump offers sanctions relief as a reward; Iran demands their full removal as a baseline. Trump offers nothing on reparations; Iran demands payment for the war.
The Obama administration took nearly two years to negotiate a deal limited solely to Iran’s nuclear program. The Trump administration has two weeks to resolve the Strait of Hormuz, as well as Tehran’s nuclear, missile, and regional ambitions simultaneously. The best achievable outcome in Islamabad is not resolution but reversion—a cold conflict to replace a hot one.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has been brazenly candid about its objectives. In an official statement, it described the Islamabad talks as a ratification of a victory rather than a negotiation: “Within a maximum of 15 days, the details of Iran’s victory on the battlefield will also be cemented in political negotiations.” The cease-fire, it added, “does not mean the end of the war.” Vance is not flying to Islamabad to make a deal. He is flying there to hear Iran’s terms.
During Jimmy Carter’s tenure, Iran’s nascent revolutionary government held Americans hostage for 444 days, releasing them one minute into Ronald Reagan’s presidency. During Trump’s, Tehran is holding the global economy hostage. The mechanism has changed—from the embassy in Tehran to the Strait of Hormuz—but the strategy is identical: to imperil the American administration politically rather than defeat it militarily.
Trump and Vance now risk the same criticism that Republicans have leveled at Democrats for decades: Being overeager for a deal, the negotiators walk into the bazaar having already announced that they must have the rug.
The war significantly diminished Iran’s capabilities but hardened its intentions. Although Iranians have been mythologized as expert negotiators, driving a tough bargain is easy when you do not care about the consequences that your obstinacy inflicts on your own people. For two decades, Tehran’s ideology, and its insistence on uranium enrichment, has delivered neither nuclear energy nor a deterrent—and has cost Iran an estimated $1 trillion in sanctions, lost oil revenue, and now a devastating war. Uranium enrichment has impoverished national enrichment. Yet it is Trump’s presidency and Vance’s future that now depend on Iranian goodwill.
