After each encouraging exchange, Iranians have watched key Trump negotiators issue bellicose statements to media in Washington, essentially reversing the positions they had taken in Oman.
Sultan Qaboos Street in Muscat, Oman, 2020. (Alexey Komarov /Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)
By Max Blumenthal
The Grayzone
With nuclear negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran’s reformist government at a standstill, I held two separate, lengthy background conversations in Tehran this past week with a pair of seasoned Iranian diplomats with detailed knowledge of the talks in Muscat, Oman.
Like most Iranians, the diplomats were eager for a durable deal that would provide sanctions relief. But they said their side could not seem to break through to a Trump team they described as dithering, divided, distracted by other conflicts and incapable of holding to a consistent position.
Worse, as the negotiations drag on, the Trump administration is defaulting toward the hardline Israeli position which rejects all uranium enrichment, even for civilian purposes, violating a right Tehran considers sacrosanct.
The Iranian diplomats have now begun to suspect the Trump administration held an ulterior motive for engaging in talks, and is exploiting the meetings in Oman as a instrument for generating instability to weaken Iran’s economy and foment social strife.
Their comments to me echoed a warning issued by the leader of Iran’s Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khamenei, as Tehran considered a request from President Donald Trump for nuclear talks last March. “Negotiating with this U.S. administration won’t result in the sanctions being removed,” Khamenei declared. “It will cause the knot of sanctions to become tighter and pressure to increase.”
Following two months of political confusion and a significant escalation of U.S. financial warfare, the Ayatollah’s words have proven prescient.
Iran’s reformist government now risks repeating the folly of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA, which failed to deliver meaningful sanctions relief in the brief period before Trump shredded the deal, and ultimately led to a regime of “maximum pressure” culminating with the U.S. assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani.
Ali Khamenei in January. (Khamenei.ir, Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)
Iran’s government entered the latest round of talks under heavy pressure, with Trump dispatching a B-2 bomber strike force to the Diego Garcia Airbase to enforce his demands. The negotiations also took place in the shadow of the post-Oct. 7 wars, in which Iran’s regional allies had suffered serious setbacks and with the last retaliation it vowed against Israel, True Promise III, still unfulfilled.
Iranian public opinion researcher Ebrahim Moehseni told me his polling at the time showed that a majority of Iranians from all social sectors supported the talks.
According to the two diplomats I spoke to in Tehran, Iran’s negotiating team arrived in Oman with a sense of pessimism, but quickly grew more positive as they realized the Americans were not introducing demands for Iran to sever relations with its allies in Lebanon and Yemen, scrap its long range ballistic missiles, or destroy its reactors in Natanz and Fordow.
But after each encouraging exchange, they watched key Trump negotiators issue bellicose statements to media immediately after returning to Washington, essentially reversing the positions they had taken in Muscat. The Iranians suspected Trump’s team, led by real estate lawyer Steve Witkoff, was kowtowing to Israeli assets like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and its top donor, Miriam Adelson.
During each round of talks, the Iranian team introduced concrete proposals to bridge disagreements and maintain momentum. But according to the diplomats I spoke to, they found themselves waiting for a week or more to receive a reply from the Americans. They described Witkoff as distracted by other diplomatic assignments and said he often put Iran on the back burner while he tended to Ukraine-Russia negotiations or the Gaza war.
The diplomats were especially concerned by the apparent power struggle between Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They suspected that Rubio was exploiting U.S. media appearances to project control over the negotiations, and worried that his apparent rivalry with Witkoff would prevent Trump’s team from reaching a consensus on the nuclear issue.
Witkoff on May 6 at the White House. (White House / Daniel Torok)
One Iranian diplomat referenced historian Robert Dallek’s book, The American Style of Foreign Policy, to elucidate his view that the Trump administration’s counter-productive approach reflected a deeper crisis in the U.S. establishment.
The 1983 book argued that domestic pressures and social shifts at home have placed U.S. foreign policy makers on a persistently irrational trajectory.
The diplomat pointed to former Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a case study in Dallek’s thesis, recalling how Blinken routinely moved the goalposts on previous agreements with Iran in order to prevent negotiations from taking concrete form during the Biden years.
His implication, as I read it, was the preponderance of pressure from the Israel lobby and military industry had been too overwhelming to allow either the Biden or Trump administration to execute a lasting deal.
Both diplomats I spoke to brought up recent reports revealing that Witkoff had promised Hamas he would force Israel to lift the starvation siege on the Gaza Strip if they released the U.S.-Israeli captive Edan Alexander. They were dismayed that Witkoff had reneged on his promise and allowed Israel to slaughter hundreds of civilians in an apocalyptic frenzy throughout the week.
Trump’s bad-faith tactics with Hamas have cast a pall over the negotiations in Oman, fueling Iranian pessimism about a workable deal.
But perhaps no statement was more damaging to the prospect of a deal than Witkoff’s proclamation on ABC’s This Week: “We have one very, very clear red line, and that is enrichment. We cannot allow even 1% of an enrichment capability.”
The comments fit the pattern of Trump negotiators sabotaging progress in Oman by issuing onerous demands and threats immediately after returning to Washington. And few issues are more central to the Islamic Republic’s sense of independence than its civilian nuclear program.
Tour of Tehran’s Nuclear Reactor & ‘Battle of Wills’
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, left, with Iran’s defense minister, Brigadier Amir Hatami, undated. (Tasnim News Agency/ Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)
While in Tehran, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) invited a small group of journalists and academics to tour the city’s Nuclear Research Center, an active reactor originally constructed with U.S. assistance under the shah.
Once inside the vast facility (without our phones, as recording devices were strictly forbidden), we were treated to an exhibition touting the many lifesaving products of Iran’s nuclear program, from advancements in radiotherapy to the production of anti-cancer drugs to the sterilization of medical devices and protection of agriculture.
The visit was clearly designed to illustrate the importance of nuclear energy to Iran’s national development, and the absolute commitment of its leadership to continuing the project despite the continuous threat of assassination, sabotage and all-out war.
Following our tour, we met with Beyrouz Kamalvandi, a veteran Iranian diplomat now serving as spokesman for the AEOI. Like the other Iranian diplomats I spoke to, Kamalvandi volunteered his country’s desire to abide by all its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But he viewed Iran’s civilian nuclear program as the key to consolidating its technological edge, and an absolute right under international law.
“They want to do with us what they did with Gaza, where the entire society is besieged,” Kamalvandi proclaimed. “But we have a great civilization, and it’s only a matter of time before they realize we won’t submit. This is not just a battle over enrichment, it’s a battle of wills.”
At one point during the meeting, Kamalvandi pointed to a young man seated in the back row of the conference room, asked him to stand, and identified him as the son of the Iranian quantum field theorist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, who was assassinated by a Mossad asset in 2010.
Ten years later, Iran lost the godfather of its nuclear program, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, when the Mossad smuggled a machine gun drone into the country and stationed it along a road to attack Fakrizadeh’s convoy.
Kamalvandi, for his part, was injured and hospitalized in 2021 while inspecting a part of the Natanz reactor that had been damaged by an Israeli attack.
In the eyes of Iran’s leadership, Witkoff’s demand to end enrichment was not only a recipe for squandering decades of technological advancement, it was an insult to the top tier scientists cut down by Israeli assassins. If this is the new baseline for a deal, negotiations are an exercise in futility. And yet the show goes on.
Economic Sabotage in Guise of Negotiations
Trump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud at the royal palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025. (White House / Daniel Torok)
Since negotiations began, the value of the Iranian rial has fluctuated wildly against the dollar, improving in value after the first round of positive exchanges, then depreciating following each wave of bellicose threats from Trump and his team.
I personally witnessed Iran’s financial chaos each time I attempted to exchange dollars for rials, as business owners consulted their phones for the new rate, which seemed to shift from day to day depending on the U.S. president’s rhetoric. A friend joked that I would have paid a substantially lower rate to book a hotel room for my family if negotiations were not currently taking place.
Trump’s statements about the negotiations have also roiled oil markets. On May 16, when Trump claimed he was “getting close to maybe a deal” with Iran, the price of oil dropped by 3.4 percent.
Then came Witkoff’s call to cease enrichment, and on May 20, U.S. intelligence leaked a warning that Israel was planning to attack Iran’s oil facilities, causing a sudden surge in oil prices.
The American president’s ability to manipulate financial markets both inside and outside Iran with his bluster has contributed to a sense that entering the negotiations have weakened Iran’s political position. Meanwhile, Trump’s crude insults to Iran’s sense of national honor and sovereignty have disrupted whatever goodwill existed when talks began.
The president’s announcement on May 7 that he was considering changing the name of the Persian Gulf to “the Arabian Gulf” fueled outrage across Iran — uniting everyone from pro-government principlists, to reformists, to pro-regime change monarchists in opposition to the insult to their national pride. Tehran responded with a billboard campaign condemning the change and a lawsuit against Google for abiding by the name change on its Maps applications.
Trump’s speech in Riyadh deepened the enmity, as he attempted to pit the Iranian public against its leadership, praising his unelected, monarchic hosts for supposedly having “turned dry deserts into fertile farmland,” while accusing Iran’s leaders of “turn[ing] green farmland into dry deserts, as their corrupt water mafia…causes droughts and empty riverbeds. They get rich, but they don’t let the people have any of it.”
Two days after Trump’s address in Riyadh, dust storms from the growing deserts of Saudi Arabia gusted into Iran, clouding the skies over Tehran and keeping many residents indoors. The irony did not escape those who heard Trump’s praise for the House of Saud’s supposed green miracle. Meanwhile, there is a growing sense that war clouds are gathering as well.
One well-connected Iranian academic in Tehran told me he expected his country to be on the receiving end of Israeli sabotage and confrontation throughout the summer. Both diplomats I spoke to insisted that in such a scenario, True Promise III was an option on the table.
The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
This article is from The Grayzone
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Nah, nah, even more than sabotage, Trump talk offers are more likely to be energy price strategems given that most developed economies are willy-nilly headed towards bankruptcies and/or protractedly mired in the Gaza and Ukraine imbroglios !
“Iran’s reformist government now risks repeating the folly of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, or JCPOA, which failed to deliver meaningful sanctions relief in the brief period before Trump shredded the deal, and ultimately led to a regime of “maximum pressure” culminating with the U.S. assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani.”
What this otherwise interesting report does not mention is what was (in 2015) and is now the alternative for Iran? If people have forgotten, in 2013-15, the sainted Obama regime, knowing full well that reports of weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program were nonsense as they were being told so by our own intel agencies, nevertheless maneuvered the UNSC into authorizing severe sanctions on Iran that were destroying its economy. The faulty agreement that was eventually achieved, while not really effective in removing US sanctions, nevertheless gave the country room to live and move for a few years (actually until now).
As for now, the worst thing is not lack of agreement and therefore perhaps an attack on nuclear facilities. You can’t bomb know-how, which Iran already has. The worst thing would be the snap-back sanctions that are on tap for later this year which would devastate Iran’s economy even more that the current US sanctions. I’m afraid the author is being influenced by the hardline division in Iran who are profiting from their nation’s isolation and wish for no change … kind of like the Israel/Military alliance here at home.
“Both diplomats I spoke to brought up recent reports revealing that Witkoff had promised Hamas he would force Israel to lift the starvation siege on the Gaza Strip if they released the U.S.-Israeli captive Edan Alexander. They were dismayed that Witkoff had reneged on his promise and allowed Israel to slaughter hundreds of civilians in an apocalyptic frenzy throughout the week.”
Witkoff isn’t making any decisions, he’s a PR figurehead to provide some cover for who’s really running the show: Jewish supremacists in Washington. These same hegemonic psychopaths are set on sabotaging any nuclear power talks with Tehran in order to lay the propaganda framework for a Trump regime attack on Iran.
Is war between US/Israel and Iran inevitable? Are the talks a means to that end? General Wesley Clark famously talked about the list of countries the US intended to invade and they have all but fulfilled that agenda with the outstanding country being that of Iran. What are the real stakes? In ten years China will be big enough militarily to challenge the USA. Russia and Iran are already allied with China. Making things worse for the USA/NATO. So take out Iran replace the anti western regime with a pro western regime before China and Russia are ready to do something about it. What is the prize? A Middle East which is compliant to Western and Israeli dictates. The ability to switch off Chinese oil imports. Control of European Asian trade. The stakes could hardly be higher or more pressing. The US must attack Iran according to the real politic strategy governing the USA. The international media is largely controlled by the West they can argue that Iran refused reasonable American proposals. It will be accepted by the citizens of the West. The only question is can Iran resist?
The elephant in the room that I’m rather annoyed to see so few people even in the independent media space talk about is the fact that Russia is already preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with their recent military pact. There’s nothing left for America to do except repeal its murderous sanctions, they’ve been completely scooped on the diplomatic front. Any pretensions about further American “deals” to stop Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons are nothing but subterfuge from the beginning.
US and UK = two birds of the same nefarious feathers.
Hmm, I would think that by this point in time – believing in anything short of a written promise, hand signed by the one who actually has the power to keep it, is pretty foolish indeed … especially from the US. Wouldn’t you think folks would have realized that out by now …
@SH:
don’t you think that, by this point in time,
even a written promise made and hand-signed
by the heinous hypocrites currently in power
would NOT be worth the paper it would have
been written and hand-signed on?
The US government has adopted the Jewish Kol Nidre.
Great piece from Mr. Blumenthal.
Instead of playing 5d chess like his followers say, the orange emperor flip flops, lies, makes sht up, contradicts himself every 5 minutes, yet we are to believe he is of sound mind? Like Genocide Joe, DT shows signs of cognitive decline, as well as egomania, malignant narcissism…delusions (In addition to being a great stereotype of the Ugly American: fat, ignorant, loud-mouthed, obnoxious, mendacious, and an all-around asshole)
The DT can’t even remember his own BS!
And to think that even many well informed, highly intelligent people were desperate enough to WANT to believe that the Orange Idiot is a man of “peace”. A sucker born every minute to fall for the lies of a serial conman. Folk done forgot about Yemen, Syria, Palestine, siege warfare against Venezuela, Cuba…and escalating trade wars and military confrontation with China. WTF? Now Iran.
This goes to show that politics is largely based on emotion, not reason. Wishful thinking and baseless hope don’t get us anywhere.
The DT2 regime is playing with fire, it’s like giving an insane Chimpanzee the Nuclear Football. Hyperbole? I would think so, but not sure anymore. (Not to insult our primate cousins)
So refreshing to get the truth from Max and all of you. I’m inspired by your understanding of the entire web of stupidity, greed, ignorance, and sociopathy that we are stuck with. Thanks for your take on it. Chile is a model for what they have in mind.
Thank you for a fascinating report. I understand the prestige and importance governments give to their nuclear power projects, but am puzzled as to exactly how the Iranian nuclear program contributes to “protection of agriculture.”
Surely the MAGA slogan itself is derived from a reading of Mein Kampf
Jews were conveniently scapegoated by Hitler during the Nazi era in Germany to serve his purposes; with the strategic intent of making Germany great again (MAGGA), after its humbling defeat in WW I, and the enforced stipulations of the Versailles Treaty imposed on it by the (all lies) victors.
Today the supremacist radical nationalist dictators name is Trump, who is whimsically scapegoating whichever group of people he feels suits his – nefarious hegemonic purposes at any given moment, for reigniting the living nightmare he is arbitrarily attempting to reimpose on the populations of the world he continues to con.
Say one thing though, the man is artful in his dodging of a highly gullible – historically indoctrinated, propagandized, U.S. public.
That the transition of South Africa from an institutionalized system of a white racist Apartheid government occurred, without the usual daily predictions, by the ‘whites’ of a race war ever having come to fruition; should the vast majority ‘non-white’ indigenous populations ever truly even have actually got it into their heads to overthrow the abhorrent regime, a race war would surely have ensued.
It NEVER happened! The major portion of a miniscule minority (13%) ‘white’ population, which had thrived in their Ivory Towers of privilege, prior to the dismantlement of the Apartheid state, in the first truly multiracial democratic general election of 1994, fled the country in droves in fear of their self-created ‘boogeyman’ prophesies, that had, over too many years of being blithely and blindly shepherded and had had die-cast into their minds, by the zealous white racist nationalist leaders who had formally instituted the Apartheid system in 1948; which in reality dated back well beyond 1948 to 1913 when the passage of the Natives Land Act occurred, which “restricted land ownership and occupation by black South Africans, and was a key step towards apartheid.
This Act limited the areas where black South Africans could purchase or lease land, and it mandated that they reside in designated reserves”. (AI Overview confirmation of historical facts)
Would someone please inform Trump that this is the real “land occupation, without compensation” situation that is the actual concern here; just as it is in Palestine today. But the man knows this! A con-artists specialty is in knowing that he is deceiving.
The real truth of international justice simply doesn’t comport with his interpretation and implementation of Neocon “Wolfowitz’s Doctrine” of the early 1990’s.
The term is often associated with the draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) authored by Paul Wolfowitz, outlining the United States’ post-Cold War hegemonic foreign policy objectives.
The Wolfowitz Doctrine is a term often associated with the draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) authored by Paul Wolfowitz, which outlines the United States’ post-Cold War foreign policy objectives.
It asserts America’s status as the world’s sole superpower and prioritizes preventing the rise of any new rival that could challenge American dominance. This means the US would maintain military – “full-spectrum (economic, industrial, political, technological, any means necessary) dominance” – by way of proxies, whenever the necessity of “plausible denial” of the truth is required; as well as being willing to freely use these forces unilaterally.
A “petulant child” refers to a child who displays bad temper, sulks, and is easily annoyed or upset, often in a childish way when they don’t get their way. Essentially, they behave in an unreasonable and angry manner, especially when they can’t have what they want.
Donald Trump, the president of the country, is a “Petulant Adult”.
He “is someone who exhibits unreasonably irritable, sulky, or childish behavior. (He) may become angry or annoyed easily, especially when (he doesn’t get his way), and this anger is often expressed in a rude or disrespectful manner. This behavior can be seen as immature and can be disruptive in personal and professional relationships”.
We have just witnessed these behaviors with our own eyes, in his latest interrogation and attempted humiliation of a ‘lesser’; on this occasion, President Cyril Ramaphosa, not forgetting his successful castigation and humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy just the other day.
A petulant child does not have the full-fledged intellectual capacity of mind to destroy, with much conscious intent, whereas a vengeful petulant adult, with his finger on the nuclear button of Armageddon – has enough unmitigated power to annihilate the global populace, and is of greatest danger to us all, in the here and now.
An egomaniacal narcissist is someone who exhibits extreme self-centeredness, boasting, and has a grandiose sense of self-importance, often bordering on or meeting the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. They are characterized by an excessive need for admiration, a lack of empathy, and a belief that they are special and entitled to favorable treatment.
Oh Pete, will he ever learn, in time???
Notes:
Pertinent formal definitions are made with AI Overview confirmations.
See: Claims of white genocide ‘not real’, South African court rules
25 February 2025
Khanyisile Ngcobo
BBC News, Johannesburg
hxxps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyj1198wy3o