The Regional War Continues: Talks That Mask an Escalating Quagmire

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Tahir Mahmoud

Dhu al-Qa'dah 03, 1446 2025-05-01

News & Analysis

by Tahir Mahmoud (News & Analysis, Crescent International Vol. 55, No. 3, Dhu al-Qa'dah, 1446)

The ongoing negotiations between Islamic Iran and the Trump regime must be understood within the broader context of the ongoing regional war.

Analyzing these talks in isolation from the post Al-Aqsa Flood regional realities risks yielding a partial and distorted understanding of the process.

At this stage, the negotiation process itself is the most critical factor, as the outcome remains uncertain.

Washington is fully aware that Islamic Iran has not yet made a political decision to pursue nuclear weapons, just as Islamic Iran recognizes that the nuclear issue is merely a pretext for western regimes to maintain political and economic pressure.

The “nuclear agreement” never meant cessation of American hostilities.

After Iran and western regimes signed the JCPOA, following Iran's ballistic missile tests in October and November 2015, the Obama regime imposed sanctions on 11 entities and individuals involved in Iran's ballistic missile program.

With the above context in mind, this analysis will focus on the underlying dynamics and strategic considerations shaping the negotiation process.

Iran understands that Donald Trump is driven by urgency—primarily because, for him, securing a “deal” is tied to personal ego and political optics. Tehran also recognizes that the Trump administration lacks the diplomatic expertise and long-term vision required to craft a comprehensive, state-to-state treaty.

For Iran, the restoration of the JCPOA is no longer a definitive objective. If it is revived, so be it; if not, Tehran no longer views it as essential.

At this stage, the negotiation process itself holds greater strategic value for Iran than the agreement's outcome.

Meanwhile, Israel—Tehran’s primary regional adversary—is entangled in a deepening regional quagmire. From Israel’s perspective, the only viable exit from this impasse appears to lie in a joint military assault on Iran, likely in coordination with the US.

From Iran’s perspective, the ongoing negotiations are serving to drain apartheid Israel and entangle it in a vicious cycle that is steadily reducing its standing to that of a pariah state on multiple levels. Unlike in previous regional crises—where Israel remained relatively insulated from direct consequences and could cunningly exacerbate tensions from a position of safety—the current crisis has penetrated Israel itself, affecting it across military, political, economic, and social dimensions.

The Israeli–U.S.-led genocide in Gaza has created regional political circumstances from which neither Israel nor the United States will ever fully recover.

Israel cannot suddenly reverse the deeply entrenched hostility of over 100 million people in its immediate vicinity, nor can it alter the fundamental reality that its survival depends on sustained, massive material and political support from Western regimes.

Although Israel and the U.S. currently enjoy more favorable tactical military and security conditions due to their superior material capabilities, these advantages are temporary and superficial within the broader context of the ongoing regional war.

Meanwhile, the negotiation process serves a strategic purpose for the Axis of Resistance.

It provides Islamic Iran, Iraq, and Hizbullah with the opportunity to reorganize and reconfigure their military infrastructure, operational strategies, and regional coordination without a higher-intensity conflict—at least for the time being.

Given the circumstances at the time of this writing, this aspect most likely plays the most important role in Iran’s calculations.

Of course, the above approach from Iran’s perspective will have to expire at some point. Probably sooner than later. Especially considering that the only certainty about the Trump regime is its uncertainty.

The process of negotiations also allows Iran’s “biggest ally” Donald Trump to continue antagonizing the global majority and isolating the US politically.

Being incompetent and an ignoramus to boot, a prolonged political process will provide the Trump regime with opportunities to continue making blunders.

Overall, the negotiation process represents a win-win scenario for Tehran.

If the JCPOA is restored, it will provide Iran with some economic relief—though to a far more limited extent than many assume.

If the negotiations collapse, however, it will expose Trump’s strategy as a bluff and make a regional war virtually inevitable. Such a conflict would inflict damage on both Iran and the United States, but it would likely be catastrophic for Israel, potentially reducing it to a failed entity.

This brings us to a crucial question: what does the United States aim to achieve through the ongoing negotiation process?

Given that Donald Trump's rise to power in Washington marked a shift from a systemic regime to a personality-driven regime, any attempt to answer this question must begin by focusing on Trump himself.

His personal ambitions, impulses, and worldview have come to define the direction and tone of US foreign policy, often overriding strategic considerations or institutional norms.

Trump is driven by ego and obsessed with securing a legacy. He doesn’t particularly care whether that legacy comes from striking a deal with Iran or from breaking a long-standing regional security taboo by initiating a war against it. In both scenarios, Trump believes he “wins.” However, the risks associated with war are significantly higher.

While it would be relatively easy for Trump to sell a revised nuclear agreement—JCPOA 2.0—to his uninformed support base as a diplomatic triumph, it would be far more difficult to spin a costly military conflict as a success. Body bags returning from West Asia and a surge in global oil prices would be hard to frame as victories, even for his most loyal followers.

This leads us to a rather unconventional but compelling conclusion: Israel is likely to do everything in its power to sabotage the ongoing negotiations. Why? Because a political settlement, even if a limited one, between Iran and the US would leave Israel trapped in a protracted and unwinnable conflict—resembling the quagmire the US faced in Afghanistan and Israel’s own entanglement in Lebanon during the 1990s.

Such an outcome, combined with Israel’s growing status as a global political pariah, the emergence of a capable and determined adversary like Yemen, Iran’s entrenched political and military influence in Iraq and Lebanon, and the ongoing collapse of the Syrian state, would produce a strategic configuration that threatens Israel with a permanent state of hostility on multiple fronts.

Given that Western regimes are currently under immense military pressure in Ukraine, facing economic pushback from China, and grappling with internal divisions exacerbated by Trump, there is very little they can do to rein in Israel.

Considering Israel’s entrenched influence within the western political elite, it is unrealistic to expect that, at their weakest point, these regimes will suddenly begin prioritizing their own national interests over zionist ones. They failed to do so even at the height of their strength—there is even less reason to believe they will manage it now.

Although this may spell further trouble for West Asia in the short term, it appears that the region’s indigenous socio-political forces have come to a critical realization: sometimes, progress requires enduring and overcoming significant obstacles.