Donald Trump can’t decide whether to negotiate with the Iranians or to “go in and annihilate them”. But Tehran has its own conditions for going back into talks.
Trump’s big decision
At the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, Donald Trump will meet leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman to talk about the next phase of the war against Iran. But he has also left open the possibility of meeting Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian, who will be in New York for the UN general assembly this week.
The Trump administration, which denied visas to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his officials to come to New York for the general assembly, has allowed a small Iranian delegation to attend.
Last week, Trump said he was approaching a critical juncture in the war. “I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not? It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me,” he told Axios.
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Qatar has been shuttling between American and Iranian negotiators for the past two weeks, sharing proposals to resume the negotiations that broke down in July. Tehran on Sunday set out seven conditions for resuming talks, warning that if Washington did not accept them, Iran was prepared for a decisive war.
The conditions include: a permanent end to all hostilities against Iran and its allies; lifting the naval blockade of Iran; unfreezing financial assets; withdrawal of all US combat forces deployed in the Gulf; compensation for war damage; restoration of Iran’s foreign and trade relations; and a jointly established mechanism to regulate shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran is demanding that the US demonstrates its good faith by implementing the Memorandum of Understanding the two sides agreed in Islamabad in June. But the negotiations collapsed because of conflicting interpretations of what the agreement said about Iran’s role in regulating shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran and Oman are close to agreement on an arrangement for managing shipping through the strait but it will require the endorsement of other Gulf states to be viable.
In the meantime, Washington is tightening the economic vice on Tehran, with treasury secretary Scott Bessent announcing this week that all Iranian airlines will be shut down from Wednesday.
Washington’s Gulf allies want to avoid an escalation of hostilities with Iran, and Saudi Arabia is hoping that Tehran will put pressure on the Houthi rebels to halt their offensive in Yemen if tensions ease. The Houthis have made dramatic advances this month to capture positions near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a major choke point along the Red Sea.
Trump has rejected at least two appeals from Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin-Salman to join in the assault on the Houthis, and the New York Times reported that the president abruptly called off an attack on Sunday as bombs were being loaded on to US aircraft.
Although the Houthis have attacked Saudi ships in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, they have left other vessels largely undisturbed, and shipping through the strait is close to normal levels.
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