In Tehran, Iranians are anxiously wondering whether, once their economy is exhausted and they can no longer defend themselves, the Israelis and the United States will bomb them. Under these circumstances, should they or should they not negotiate with the enigmatic President Donald Trump?
On March 2, 2025, Iran’s Majlis (Parliament) voted no confidence in Economy and Finance Minister Abdolnaser Hemmati over his handling of the Western economic blockade and the resulting economic crisis. On the same day, his friend Mohammad Javad Zarif, former negotiator of the Joint Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (JCPOA) and current Vice President, resigned.
President Donald Trump revealed on March 7 that he had sent a letter to Iran. The international press had reported that it had been delivered the same day by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. However, Nournews revealed that Russia had refused to act as intermediary. According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei, it was ultimately delivered on March 12 by Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the President of the United Arab Emirates.
In any case, without waiting to hear about it, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of the Revolution, declared: “What interest do we have in negotiating when we know that he will not respect his commitments? We sat at the same table and negotiated for several years, and once the agreement was completed, finalized and signed, he overturned the table and tore up the agreement.”
The liabilities of the JCPoA agreement
Indeed, in 2013, Iran negotiated a comprehensive agreement with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, the 5+1, in Geneva. They resulted in a temporary halt to Iran’s nuclear program and a partial lifting of unilateral Western coercive measures and Security Council economic sanctions. The 5+1 negotiations then broke off, while direct discussions between Iran and the United States continued behind the scenes. They finally resumed in 2015 in Lausanne. The public agreement was signed in Vienna, in much the same terms as the draft that had been drawn up two years earlier. It is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA).
The United States finally recognized the Islamic Republic’s right to develop its civilian nuclear program. In exchange, Iran agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to verify that it was not concurrently developing a military program. To this end, it agreed to possess no more than 5,060 centrifuges, not enrich uranium above 3.67%, and limit its plutonium production.
France and the United Kingdom declared themselves satisfied, while the French negotiator, Sayan Laurent Fabius, acknowledged that, as the talks progressed, he had informed the Israeli Prime Minister, his friend Benjamin Netanyahu, without the knowledge of other diplomats.
Russia and China concluded from these discussions, confirmed by their own observations on the ground, that Iran had closed its military nuclear programme in 1988, in accordance with a fatwa from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and had never resumed it [ 1 ] .
On April 30, 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu released 100,000 documents stolen by the Mossad from archives in Tehran relating to the AMAD project. He explained that, by resorting to the Muslim principle of taqiya, Iran had lied. Tehran had developed a military nuclear program from 1989 to 2003 under the direction of physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
A week later, on May 8, 2018, President Donald Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the agreement signed by the Obama administration in Vienna. The persisting unilateral coercive Western measures are being maintained and strengthened.
“Since then, Iran has lost $100 billion a year,” according to former President Hassan Rouhani. By this measure, the US withdrawal would have caused $650 billion in losses over the past six and a half years.
Subsequently, nuclear experts who studied the Iranian documents provided by Israel would all assure that it was not Iran that lied, but Israel. The only part of the AMAD project that could be linked to the manufacture of an atomic bomb is a shock wave generator that is used in the manufacture of a detonator for this type of bomb [ 2 ] .
Iran, in turn, withdrew from the JCPoA and the secret agreements signed with the United States. Its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% increased to 182 kg in the last quarter of 2024.
In 2020, Israel assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Tehran.
Towards new negotiations
Asked by the Iranian press about possible contacts via Oman, Abbas Araghchi said: “Yes, this is not a strange method, and it has happened many times throughout history. Therefore, indirect negotiation is feasible… What is important is that the will to negotiate and reach a fair and just agreement arises under conditions of equality between states. The form of the negotiation is irrelevant.”
On March 12, the same day President Trump delivered his letter, France, Greece, Panama, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States convened a closed-door meeting of the Security Council to examine Iran’s continued failure to comply with the IAEA’s requests for information.
The following day, March 13, Mohammad Hassan-Nejad Pirkouhi, director general for International Peace and Security at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, summoned the ambassadors of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. He criticized them for an “irresponsible and provocative” convening of the Security Council by abusing UN mechanisms. He emphasized that while Iran is no longer complying with its commitment not to enrich uranium above 3.67%, it is still abiding by its JCPOA commitments to IAEA inspectors and fulfilling its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
The United Kingdom has indicated that it is prepared to reinstate UN sanctions by October 18 if Iran does not curb its uranium enrichment. These sanctions have, in fact, been suspended, not repealed.
Simultaneously, the United States took unilateral coercive measures against Mohsen Paknejad, Iran’s oil minister.
On March 14, Russian Sergei Ryabkov and Iranian Kazem Gharibabadi were received by their Chinese counterpart, Ma Zhaoxu, in Beijing. The latter stressed that “the parties concerned should commit to addressing the root causes of the current situation and abandoning sanctions, pressure, or threats of force.” At a press conference, Kazem Gharibabadi stated that “all negotiations and discussions will be focused exclusively on the nuclear issue and the lifting of sanctions.” The former JCPoA negotiator, for his part, told the BBC that “the negotiations should not include Iran’s missile program or its regional influence. Adding these topics would complicate the process and make it unmanageable.” Finally, Sergei Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister, told the press that adding additional conditions to the negotiations would doom them to failure. Finally, Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stressed that “in the current situation, we believe that all parties must maintain calm and restraint in order to avoid the escalation of the Iranian nuclear situation or moving towards confrontation and conflict.”
Meanwhile, G7 foreign ministers, meeting in La Malbaie, Canada, discussed arbitrary detentions in Iran and assassination attempts by Iranian intelligence abroad.
On March 15, former President Hassan Rouhani emphasized that the leader, Ali Khamenei, “does not have absolute opposition to negotiations.” He continued: “Didn’t we negotiate with the United States on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the nuclear deal? Even back then, when I was secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the leader himself wrote that negotiations must adhere to certain principles.”
However, on the same day, the Pentagon bombed Ansar Allah (called “Houthis” by Atlanticist propaganda) in Yemen, killing nine civilians. On his TruthSocial network, President Donald Trump posted this message: “To Iran: Support for Houthi terrorists must end IMMEDIATELY. Do NOT threaten the American people, their President, who has been given one of the most important presidential terms in history, or the world’s shipping lanes. If you do it, WITH the Houthis, America will hold you fully responsible and we will not be nice. ” [ 3 ]
The stakes of the new negotiations
If new contacts take place (and it is likely that they have already begun), the pacification of US-Iranian relations would once again shake up the broader Middle East.
Currently, Iran has lost in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. Tehran maintains its military influence only in Yemen. Economically, the country, subject to unilateral Western coercive measures, is on the brink of famine, like Iraq before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein (2002) and Syria before the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad (2024). It would no longer withstand a ground invasion.
Since nature abhors a vacuum, Israel and Turkey are attempting to divide up the region’s ruins. The internal pacification of the Kurdish question in Turkey delegitimizes the position of Kurdish mercenaries from the pseudo-state formed in Syria (Rojava) and makes them available for a possible ground invasion of Iran on behalf of Israel.
Behind the scenes, the man behind Benjamin Netanyahu, Elliott Abrams [ 4 ] , is doing everything he can to turn President Donald Trump against Tehran [ 5 ] .
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[ 1 ] “ Who is afraid of Iranian civil nuclear power? ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , June 30, 2010.
[ 2 ] ” Shock Wave Generator for Iran’sNuclear Weapons Program:More than a Feasibility Study “, David Albright and Olli Heinonen, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) , May 7, 2019. (PDF – 4.3 MB).
[ 3 ] “ Donald J. Trump ,” Truth Social , March 15, 2025.
[ 4 ] “ The Straussian coup in Israel ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , March 7, 2023.
[ 5 ] “ Deals of the Century: Solving the Middle East ”, The Vanderberg Coalition , January 2025. (PDF – 12.2 MB)
