3 rounds of nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran failed to steer President Donald Trump {that a} way to the 2 nation’s nuclear deadlock lay in international relations, moderately than army motion. A perceived loss of development within the ultimate of the ones oblique negotiations on Feb 26, 2026, was once sufficient to instructed Trump to green-light an enormous onslaught of missiles that has degraded Iran’s offensive functions and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a number of other individuals of Iran’s senior army management.
In reaction, Tehran has introduced moves around the Center East, focused on Israel in addition to Gulf states that host U.S. airbases. A minimum of 3 American citizens had been killed.
Whilst the size of the U.S., Israeli and Iranian moves has taken some observers through marvel, the failure of the talks that resulted in them was once all too predictable.
For international relations to achieve success, all sides wish to agree at the problems matter to negotiation and in addition imagine that non violent solution is extra precious than army engagement. This obviously was once now not the case within the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks of 2025 and 2026.
A demonstrator holds a portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Los Angeles on Feb. 28, 2026.
Qian Weizhong/VCG by the use of Getty Pictures
As anyone who has researched nonproliferation and U.S. nationwide safety for twenty years and was once taken with State Division nuclear international relations, I do know that even below extra favorable prerequisites, negotiations continuously fail. And the probabilities for good fortune within the Iran-U.S. talks had been at all times slender. If truth be told, publicly said crimson traces through all sides had been incompatible with every different – that means negotiations had been at all times more likely to fail.
Iran sought after the talks confined simplest to promises concerning the civilian objective of its nuclear program, now not its missile program, improve of regional proxy teams or human rights abuses. Necessarily it sought after a go back to 2015’s Joint Complete Plan of Motion, which halted Iran’s construction of nuclear era and stockpiling of nuclear subject material in trade for lifting a couple of global financial sanctions put on Iran.
In the meantime, Trump insisted on limits to Iran’s ballistic missiles and the reducing of Tehran’s improve for regional militias. Those weren’t incorporated within the 2015 settlement, with events in the long run deciding {that a} nuclear deal was once higher than the opposite of no deal in any respect.
False hope
However, there were a slender likelihood for a leap forward of overdue.
Whilst the positions of each the U.S. and Iranian governments had ossified since Might 8, 2018 – the date when the primary Trump management withdrew the USA from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal – there were some contemporary motion through Iran, consistent with former U.S. diplomats taken with negotiations right through the Obama and Biden administrations.
With U.S. army build up within the area, Iran seemed extra keen to barter throughout the nuclear area than ahead of. There have been believable answers to the problem of Iran’s enrichment of uranium functions, together with keeping up a minimal home capability to broaden clinical isotopes and a removing of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium important to construct a nuclear bomb.
There was once much less openness on different issues of rivalry. Significantly, there was once no motion on ballistic missiles, which had at all times been a crimson line. At the eve of the spherical of discussions held in Geneva on Feb. 17, Trump said: “I think they want to make a deal.” Iran’s international minister, Abbas Araghchi, famous development over the “guiding principles” of the talks.
However a large number of this optimism looked as if it would have dissipated by the point the 2 aspects held every other spherical of talks on Feb. 26. Whilst mediator Oman’s negotiators persevered to speak of development, the U.S. aspect was once noticeably silent. Reporting since has advised that Trump was once displeased with the best way the talks had long past, surroundings the degree for the Feb. 28 assault.
Army brinkmanship
The specter of army motion was once, in fact, a persevered backdrop to the talks.
The usAbraham Lincoln service crew was once deployed close to Iranian waters in January as a sign of improve to the Iranian protesters. The usGerald R Ford service crew joined the accumulation ahead of the ultimate spherical of talks.
Trump warned Iran that “if they don’t make a deal, the consequences are very steep.”
The considering could have been that Iran, weakened through each the June 2025 U.S.-Israeli moves and lowered functions of Tehran proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, was once enjoying a vulnerable hand within the talks.
The airplane service USS Gerald R. Ford departs Souda Bay at the island of Crete on Feb. 26, 2026.
Costas Metaxakis/AFP by the use of Getty Pictures
But Iran additionally signaled a willingness to interact in army motion. Within the run-up to the ultimate spherical of talks, Iran held army workout routines and closed the Strait of Hormuz for a live-fire drill. Leaders in Tehran additionally declared that they wouldn’t restrain its reaction to every other assault. The sector is seeing that now, with a reaction that has observed Iran release missiles around the Center East and at rival Gulf international locations.
Optimism has fallen ahead of
Trump isn’t the primary president to fail to safe a nuclear deal, even supposing he’s the primary to answer that failure with army motion.
The Biden management publicly pledged to make stronger and renew the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2021. Alternatively, Iran had considerably higher its nuclear technical capacity right through the years that had handed for the reason that Joint Complete Plan of Motion collapsed. That higher the trouble – simply to go back to the former deal would have required Iran to surrender the brand new technical capacity it had accomplished for no new advantages.
That window closed in 2022 after Iran got rid of all the Global Atomic Power Company’s surveillance and tracking below the deal and began enriching uranium to near-weapons ranges and stockpiling enough quantities for a number of nuclear guns. The IAEA, the United Countries’ nuclear watchdog, maintains simplest standard safeguards that Iran had agreed to ahead of the course of action.
Optimism additionally existed for a little while in spring 2025 right through 5 rounds of oblique talks that preceded the USA bombing Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June as a part of a broader Israeli assault.
A extra risky Center East
Once I labored in multilateral nuclear international relations for the U.S. State Division, we noticed talks fail in 2009 referring to North Korea’s nuclear guns program, after six years of on-and-off development. The result of that failure is a extra risky East Asia and renewed hobby through South Korea in growing nuclear guns.
Sadly, the similar dynamic seems to be enjoying out within the Center East.
Army moves have already killed greater than 200 in Iran and around the area. A much broader struggle within the Center East is a chance, and will have to the Iranian regime continue to exist, it will decide to growing nuclear guns for the reason that the loss of them proved no deterrent to U.S. and Israeli army motion.
Talks don’t essentially want an finish level – within the form of a deal – for them to have objective. Underneath eventualities of higher army brinkmanship, talks can have helped the U.S. and Iran step again from the brink, construct agree with and in all probability broaden higher political members of the family – even supposing a real deal remained out of succeed in.
As a substitute, Trump opted to head a special course.
This text contains sections at first revealed through The Dialog U.S. on Feb. 17, 2026.
