The two sides may have largely stopped shooting at each other, but listen to Washington and Tehran’s version of events and it’s clear they remain poles apart.
On Monday, US President Donald Trump said Washington had halted strikes on Iran at the regime’s own request.
“They asked us very nicely, ‘Please stop, let’s meet’,” Trump said.
But Tehran sees it differently and appears prepared to dig in for the long haul to secure its demands.
The same day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei appeared to contradict Trump. “We have no negotiations with the United States at present.”
Earlier, Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said “there was no begging from the Iranian delegation to continue the negotiations.”
During the lull, Iran has engaged in talks – not with the US, but with Oman, about the Strait of Hormuz. On Tuesday, Baghaei made Iran’s position even more definitive, saying talks with Oman are “constructive” but “unrelated” to the US.
If Oman gets a breakthrough over the waterway, whereby Iran concedes its demands to retain full control and charge a toll to ships, then Trump could count the lull as a win. But that doesn’t seem to be happening just yet.
Baghaei says the current talks are “for Iran and Oman, as two coastal states, to establish mechanisms to ensure safe shipping in the Strait of Hormuz while respecting the sovereign rights and sovereignty of both coastal states and observing Iran’s security and national interests.”
The kicker is in the last line. In diplomatic terms, “observing security and national interests” can have an ambiguous meaning, giving both parties – and end users like the US – space to interpret broadly enough to mean no tolls.
However, ambiguity is already an issue. The agreement reached between Iran and the US last month was riddled with it, designed to bring the two into further talks.
At the moment there is no evidence Iran’s interpretation of any proposal by Oman will be any more favorable to the US than the June agreement, further entrenching the impression Iran can keep this going longer than Trump has political capital, or patience.
