Summary
- A former US diplomat who negotiated hostage releases with Iran explains why current talks over the Strait of Hormuz are deadlocked.
- Iran is demanding $24 billion in frozen assets to reopen the vital shipping lane, treating it like a hostage negotiation.
- Washington faces three options: endure economic pressure, pay Tehran’s price or seek military control of the strait.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
Brett McGurk is a CNN global affairs analyst who served in senior national security positions under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
As President Donald Trump searches for a way to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Washington and Tehran appear to be engaged in a standard negotiation.
In reality, they may be participating in two entirely different ones.
Washington tends to view negotiations with Iran through the lens of power. Tehran views them through the lens of possession.
Washington aims to force Iran to succumb to demands through economic pressure and sanctions. Tehran aims to force the US to succumb after acquiring something valuable and refusing to give it back.
I learned that lesson firsthand.
Twice over the last decade, I was involved in protracted negotiations with Iran for the release of American hostages held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.
Hostage negotiations collapse power advantages. Iran understands this. It’s why Tehran, since the 1979 revolution, has repeatedly used hostages as bargaining chips with the US.
As a diplomat representing the most powerful country in the world, there was nothing in my hand to overcome the imbalance at the table. My counterparts possessed something we wanted (people), and they would hold onto it until we were prepared to pay a sufficient price.
Power mattered less than possession.
Short of a hostage rescue operation, there was nothing Washington could do outside of paying an agreed price.
Time favored the Iranians. They felt little urgency. Their strategy was to wait as hostages suffered and pressure mounted on Washington to secure their freedom.
In this way, Iran’s leverage increased over time — and they knew it.
In September 2023, the US struck a deal with Iran for the release of five Americans wrongfully held in Evin Prison. The talks had lasted months. The breakthrough came after the US agreed to free several Iranians held — after due process and convictions — in American prisons together with the transfer of $6 billion from South Korea to Qatar.
The $6 billion was held in restricted accounts available to Iran only for non-sanctioned humanitarian transactions. Iran insisted the funds move from Seoul to Doha, where they would be easier to access. As part of the deal, the US established oversight mechanisms through the Treasury Department to ensure no diversion and spending only on non-sanctioned goods.
As part of the team that coordinated this complex arrangement, I explained its merits at the time in an interview with Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian. Jason was another former hostage whom we managed to set free 10 years earlier after a year of protracted talks.
Three weeks later, on October 7, 2023, Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 251 hostages. Iran’s supreme leader publicly praised the attacks as they were unfolding. Washington responded by denying access to the Qatar funds once again, a status quo that remains to this day.
Today, Iran appears to be applying a similar logic on a much larger scale. Its hostage is no longer an American citizen. It is one of the world’s most important economic arteries.
The Strait of Hormuz handles roughly one-fifth of global petroleum trade. Iran is effectively controlling it through threats and use of force — missiles and drones — and establishment of what it says is a new Iranian-led authority to meter access in and out.
For Iran, this is possession. It now has something the US (and for that matter, the rest of the world) wants. And it will not give it up unless and until America pays an exorbitant price. In Tehran’s eyes, the strait has now become the most valuable hostage it has ever possessed.
All of this was brought home by CNN’s Fred Pleitgen’s extraordinary interview with Mohsen Rezaei, military adviser to Iran’s new supreme leader. The interview gave me chills because it brought flashbacks to sitting across from Iran’s security officials in a hostage negotiation.
Rezaei stated the strait remains shut unless and until Washington releases $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets. “You must release them,” he said. “If Trump takes the negotiation seriously … this $24 billion is a test of trust. It’s a test America must pass.”
His formula is simple: Give us the money or you don’t get what you want — and what we possess. The sum Rezaei is demanding includes the $6 billion at the center of the 2023 hostage deal. This is revealing. For Iran, the current talks appear to be another hostage negotiation — except this time, the hostage is the global economy, and the opening demand is four times larger.
The administration has attempted to reverse Iran’s leverage through economic pressure of its own. By stopping Iranian oil exports through a blockade of Iran’s ports, Trump has sought to create costs that outweigh whatever benefits Tehran believes it might derive from a prolonged standoff.
The strategy is logical. The economic impact inside Iran will compound over the following weeks and months. By most indicators, the country is on the verge of an economic collapse with hyper-inflation and loss of billions of dollars in revenues needed to pay government salaries.
But economic pain and the suffering of Iran’s people likely won’t move the new leaders in Tehran. Rezaei represents the hardcore of the Islamic Republic, and his worldview now appears to be ascendent in Tehran — together with Ahmad Vahidi, the new head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which purports to control access to the strait. These are the leaders now calling the shots (literally).
On Sunday, Iran launched its first missile attack targeting Israel since an early April ceasefire, marking a fresh escalation after weeks of negotiations.
Tehran believes that Trump cannot withstand the macroeconomic pressure imposed on the world longer than Iran can withstand pressure from the US blockade. Trump’s repeated predictions that a deal is near may only reinforce Iran’s belief that Trump needs an agreement far more urgently than Tehran does.
Militarily, the US might still seek to impose its control and secure the international route through the strait. This was tried in “Project Freedom,” which lasted only one day. It might be tried again — Trump has speculated about “Project Freedom Plus” — but Iran is threatening to fight back even if the US blockade simply remains in place.
As Rezaei stated on CNN: “If the naval blockade is not lifted, we will drag the war to the Indian Ocean, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.”
In other words, if you try to fight us, we’ll take more hostages. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait controls nearly 10% of all seaborne trade.
This is why the talks are stuck and there is no breakthrough in sight.
The question in Washington is when a deal might be concluded following exchanges of texts through mediators. The question in Tehran is simply whether Trump will pay the price they are demanding.
It’s the classic dynamic of a hostage negotiation.
For Washington, the three options remain what they’ve been for weeks:
Endure: Seek to outlast the macro pressure and rising gasoline prices as economic pain compounds inside Tehran to some distant and uncertain breaking point.
Concede: Pay the up-front cost with billions to Iran in exchange for a return to status quo before the war — a humiliating retreat for Trump given the stated objectives at the outset.
Fight: Seek to control the strait militarily and renew major operations inside Iran, with risk that Tehran then seeks to expand the war to other fronts.
For Tehran, the calculation is simpler: hold the asset and wait.
This is the dilemma of negotiating with a party that possesses what you want back.
Unless and until the leverage changes, Iran will not surrender it cheaply — and talks will remain as today: deadlocked.
