It Is Donald Trump Who Really Needs Negotiations.

Tehran; April 2026: US President Donald Trump believes that the blockade which has been imposed on Iran is A GOOD THING. He’s going to keep it in place. He thinks it puts pressure on Iran economically. He also believes that it puts pressure on Iran’s customers for their energy products, the likes of India and also, particularly, China.

And he believes that US will squeeze Iran into getting back to the negotiating table and perhaps accepting some of the things that the US want to see in any peace deal. He also talked about how he was under no pressure for a deal. He said that the Vietnam War had taken many, many years. Korea had lasted more than four years. This was initially going to be a six-week war, as per claim of the US President. It’s stretched slightly beyond that, but Trump says he’s under no pressure to bring it to an end. He will do that when he believes that it’s the right thing to do.

President Trump has also talked about (criticised) former US President Barack Obama’s approach while negotiating a deal. He says it will be a better deal, but he says the most important thing out of all of this is to make sure that Iran just simply can’t get a nuclear weapon.

Zohreh Kharazmi, an associate professor at the University of Tehran, says Iran would prefer to avoid resuming hostilities, but believes that it holds the upper hand and is prepared to return to fighting if necessary. “Trump is always issuing warnings and bombastic ultimatums, but we should look at what is actually happening in practice. And Iran is insisting on this position, that under the shadow of threats, there will be no negotiations”, Kharazmi reiterated.

“Not the preference, but at the same time, as Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf mentioned, they have new cards to be revealed on the battleground. And Iran, on the battleground, had the upper hand”, she added when asked if Iran would prefer to avoid a resumption of fighting. “The Iranian understanding is that Trump is really in need of the negotiations”, she said.

In a development that has taken place a few while ago – Daniel Benaim, a former US deputy assistant secretary for Arabian Peninsula Affairs, reiterated about what Trump needs to achieve, diplomatically and militarily, to end the war on Iran. Benaim told reporters that the off-ramps for the war, or the moments when the US could have claimed outright victory, “were probably far earlier, and we didn’t take them. We’re now in a very complicated military engagement with Iran and a very complicated diplomatic engagement”.

Benaim said the US has fallen well short of every goal it set out to achieve when it launched the war on Iran. “We talked about restraining Iran’s nuclear programme in an authoritative way over a long period of time. Arguably, some of that could have been done without a war. We talked about addressing Iran’s missile stockpile so that it can’t threaten the region and the world. I think that has happened to some extent, although a lot of those missiles remain, and Iran has found a new way to threaten the region and the World by closing the Strait of Hormuz in a way that wasn’t even really palpably clear before this war”.

And on the question of toppling the Iranian government, while the US-Israeli strikes have killed key Iranian leaders, “it’s the same regime with different people”, including leaders who “are less amenable. So, on all of those goals, we’re pretty far behind where we started this war”, Benaim said.

From the moment this conflict began, President Trump has had shifted timelines about how long this conflict is going to last. Initially, he was saying it was a matter of days; then it became a matter of weeks, not more than three weeks; then five weeks. And then, of course, what we’ve had in recent days: that one word – “soon”.

“Soon” has been repeated many times by President Trump with reference to when this conflict is going to end, or when President Trump intends it to end. There are these shifting timelines, there is this lack of clarity as to exactly what the status of this conflict is. And given the fact that there are these shifting timelines, one raises the question whether there was any timeline at all from the beginning of this conflict; whether indeed the endgame had been thought through before the conflict began.

These are the questions that Americans public are asking. Why start a war when you do not know how it’s going to end, and you don’t have an off-ramp in order to end it? President Trump is now continuing to try to build an off-ramp, insisting that talks will take place, insisting that he knows that these negotiations will be successful. This, despite, once again, all evidence to the contrary.

Team Maverick.