The U.S. and Iran were close to a deal in Islamabad when the Americans shifted the goalposts and walked away, said Iran’s foreign minister.
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Iranian Foreign Minister Abas Araghchi. (Hamed Malekpour/Tasnim News Agency/Wikimedia Commons)
Iran’s foreign minister said Sunday that the Trump administration’s representatives derailed marathon talks in Pakistan’s capital with maximalist demands, just as the two sides were “inches away” from a preliminary agreement to end the six-week conflict.
“In intensive talks at the highest level in 47 years, Iran engaged with U.S. in good faith to end war,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media.
“But when just inches away from ‘Islamabad [Memorandum of Understanding],’ we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade. Zero lessons earned. Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity,” he wrote.
The failed weekend talks marked the second time since February that U.S. negotiators have been accused of sabotaging formal negotiations despite participants believing a deal was within reach.
Oman’s foreign minister, who mediated previous talks, said hours before the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran on Feb. 28 that “we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal.”
The Trump administration’s negotiating team, which consisted principally of Vice President J.D. Vance and special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, reportedly set down numerous “red lines” during the Islamabad talks this past weekend, including demanding that Iran end all uranium enrichment — which Iran has a right to conduct under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — and dismantle its major nuclear energy facilities.
“We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms,” Vance told reporters on Sunday. “I think that we were quite flexible.”
President Donald Trump claimed on social media that “the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not.”
Good faith does not work with these western mass murdering “elites”.
They have been proving to fool everyone often enough, didn’t they?!
What this article shows is a pattern that many people have been noticing for a while. Each time the talks get close to a real agreement, the U.S. team brings in new demands, shifts the terms, or raises the pressure. The mediators and negotiators describe the same thing: progress is made, trust begins to form, and then the process is suddenly pushed off track.
This isn’t what genuine diplomacy looks like. When one side keeps adding conditions that go beyond international agreements, or threatens military action while claiming to be flexible, it becomes hard to believe that peace is the real goal. The article makes it clear that Iran and the mediators felt they were “inches away” from a deal—twice—and both times the talks were derailed in the same way.
People in the region, and even some U.S. analysts quoted in the article, are saying that this approach feels more like control than negotiation. It keeps the conflict going, increases mistrust, and puts civilians at greater risk. Meanwhile, opportunities to reduce tension and move toward stability are lost.
The point here isn’t to take sides, but to name the pattern. When a powerful country uses pressure, last?minute demands, and threats instead of steady, honest dialogue, the result is predictable: more chaos, more fear, and fewer paths to peace.
What’s needed now is a different kind of leadership—one that listens, respects international law, and works with the region instead of trying to dominate it. The article shows that progress was possible. It was the approach, not the situation, that blocked it.
Yes, we need, in general, better humans at many levels of politics, economics and society broadly. But, here’s the rub: the human animal is not inherently a moral, rational creature, rather is adaptive to the surrounding conditions. In the present social/political world of material-power competition, adaptations of corruption and criminality come easily. Adaptations of social responsibility and self-regulation, in this environment, require studied effort to form.
You’re right absolutely. The thing is everytime they go through negotiations Iranian exposes it’s new leadership and where about so next things is bombing and assassinations. The US goal is essentially to change the Iranian government no matter what, and pauses are to get more amo and loaded for the next time. Obviously Trump is controlled fully by Natanyahi and he’s already said that he’s not done with Iran yet. Israel is pretty much out of Irondome defensive shields missiles and needs replenish it. I cannot believe that Iranian leaderships keep buying to these nonsense peace deal. To Natanyahu and US negotiations is sign of weakness period and they said it numerous time.
No mention of the genocidal zionists role in this. I suspect they are behind the scenes especially when you have the two zionists Kushner and Witkoff “negotiate” in talks. This is a sham. The zionists were behind this all along and Trump was a patsy for them. Meanwhile US citizens are paying for the zionists war.
It remind me of Loren and Hardy. On the first two round of negotiations first they reported their progress to Natanyahu and not president Trump. On the recent round of peace talk Vance and also Trump himself admitted that he’s being in contact with Natanyahu everyday. What a deal!
The US always pretends to negotiate only to reverse course and claim the other side refuses to act in good faith, meaning the other side refuses to agree to be subjugated to the empire. It’s a pattern. You can’t negotiate with fascists. You can only defeat them.
Translation: Bibi and the other psychopaths in Tel Aviv told Palantir Vance in no uncertain terms that no damn everlasting peace will ever commence with their enemy of the day.
Only way anything gets done is if those sociopaths in West Asia can be leashed up and locked down; forever.
“… but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not agreed to.” *)
to think that they could have reached a historic agreement in february ’26.
then, what happened instead?
now, we see, the same, or a similar, pattern has been repeated.
i.e. US parties to a potential treaty obviously never negotiate in good faith:
the white supremacist hegemon’s habit of hybris and hypocrisy.
____________________
*) hadn’t netanyahu told #47 that iran’s missiles, not ‘nuclear’, were the bigger issue,
although they always made it sound as though the ‘nuclear bomb’ was paramount?
Stop this guy, before he stops us!
The world is become, in this sham of diplomacy, a simply drawn comic strip: ‘the US as Lucy’ the rest of the world as ‘Charley Brown trying to kick the football’; with the major difference, of course, that the ‘joke’ results in real blood, dismembered bodies, ruined lives…and importantly vast accumulations of material advantage by the jokesters.
We ‘read’ the cartoon on the color ink pages and chuckle that Charley Brown falls for the trick every time, marvel at his simplicity and vain hope.
Thank You Jake
Let the US join the inches so that we can have peace!
Shortly after criticizing Pope Leo XIV in a lengthy social media post on Sunday, President Trump shared an apparently A.I.-generated image depicting him as a Jesus-like figure… (NYTimes.com)
Donald Trump’s MAGA coalition is crumbling after the US President shared an image of himself as Jesus Christ, sparking widespread condemnation… (MSN.com)
President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image, apparently of himself as Jesus Christ, on Truth Social Sunday night, sparking outrage… (Newsweek.com)
Donald Trump could publicly enact a perfect impersonation of actor Linda Blair as she portrayed a woman possessed by the devil in the horror film: The Exorcist, – in particular the scene where Blair is in bed and spews pea soup vomit, etc. at the priest there to save her – and his ardent supporters would clap, cheer and groan like trained seals.
Such cult-like insane, dangerous adoration comes to an abrupt halt for Trump cultists when they learn about Donald and Melania Trump’s worst possible nightmare: Amanda Ungaro.
See: (hxxps://onenessofhumanity.wordpress.com/2026/04/11/amanda-ungaro-trump-scandal-on-verge-of-erupting/)
Do you really think that Trump’s true believers will be moved by a new scandalous revelation about him? Just add it to the long list of previous scandals that failed to make a dent in their worship of him; they only served to make that worship stronger. Facts are useless against this mentality. The believers already know that Trump is a wicked, depraved man, but they believe that god sent him to us for reasons that only they can understand. They’re a hopeless bunch.
Another slippery move by the United Snakes.