Commentary: Forget another big US-Iran deal. They need to start small
Safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz remains the obvious first test. It is easy to observe and hard to fake, says international security professor Stefan Wolff.
People drive near a billboard depicting US President Donald Trump on a building in Tehran, Iran, Aug 31, 2026. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
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BIRMINGHAM, England: From the same podium where President Masoud Pezeshkian made Iran’s case to the United National General Assembly last week, United States President Donald Trump had – just a day earlier – mused about whether to strike a deal or “annihilate the Islamic Republic”.
The two countries later held talks for the first time in months. By Saturday (Sep 26), Trump said he had rejected Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end their war within a week. But whether anyone in Tehran can agree to a deal, and then make it stick, is far from clear.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held Qatari-mediated talks with Trump envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Araghchi is now their point of contact, and it was he, not Pezeshkian, who set out Iran’s latest seven-day roadmap.
In April, Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf led Iran’s delegation at the Islamabad talks. Pezeshkian signed the memorandum that resulted from these talks and then saw it lapse in August.
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Above the three Iranians, in theory, sits Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei who has not appeared in public since his appointment in March. Nor is it clear to what extent Khamenei directs and coordinates any diplomatic efforts and how much access Iran’s civilian and military leaders and diplomats have to him.
WHO CAN MAKE A DEAL AND MAKE IT STICK?
Below them though, parts of the security apparatus appear able to act on their own.
According to the New York Times, the July attacks on merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz that wrecked the June memorandum were ordered by a hardline faction around Hossein Taeb, the cleric now in charge of the Basij militia.
Neither Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Vahidi nor the Supreme National Security Council knew in advance. Pezeshkian reportedly found out after the fact and phoned Vahidi in anger.
Pezeshkian does not call the shots, but neither, it seems, does anyone else.
EASIER TO HURT, HARDER TO NEGOTIATE
Part of the explanation lies in how the Iranian system works, part in how the war has been fought. Coercive diplomacy needs someone on the other side who can weigh the cost of holding out against the cost of settling, and who can then impose a concession on the sceptics in their own system.
For 37 years, that person in Iran was Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who could keep the Revolutionary Guards in check and absorb the domestic price of compromise, as he did when he allowed the 2015 nuclear deal – in which Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear programme – to go ahead.
After the strike that killed him on Feb 28, his son inherited the title but, as far as anyone on the outside can tell, not the authority.
Now, few in the system will want to be remembered as the person who gave up the nuclear programme or strategic control of Hormuz to the adversary that killed the old supreme leader.
Every new Trump threat reinforces the hardliners’ scepticism about negotiating, while making a diplomatic solution harder for Pezeshkian to defend at home.
From Washington’s perspective, the war has made Iran easier to hurt and harder to negotiate, let alone settle, with.
SMALL STEPS RATHER THAN A GRAND BARGAIN
If there is a way forward, it will probably not be another high-level goal-setting exercise like the June memorandum. Any deal would need to proceed in smaller steps: limited agreements that can be checked and, if necessary, reversed – each one testing whether anyone in Tehran can deliver.
Iran’s seven-day roadmap points in that direction, with Hormuz reopening on day six. But it frontloads American concessions and leaves open who in Tehran would guarantee that the sides ever get to day six.
Safe passage through the strait remains the obvious first test. It is easy to observe and hard to fake.
And it matters to the Gulf states and China, both of which have leverage in Tehran that Washington lacks. When he hosted his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the White House last week, Trump asked for China’s help in isolating Iran and reopening the strait. Xi urged both sides to return to the Islamabad memorandum instead, which is precisely what Tehran has been asking for.
Pakistan, Qatar and Oman, the mediators, could verify each step. A commitment kept would show who in Iran actually commands, while one broken would expose the spoilers without bringing down the whole framework.
Washington has a credibility problem of its own. Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear deal in 2018 and declared his own memorandum with Iran “over” less than three weeks after signing it.
The critical structural difference between the two capitals is that Tehran has many points of failure, Washington only one – but who can drop a deal as fast as he made it.
COUNTING DOWN TO NOVEMBER MIDTERMS
The other problem now is time. The two sides are working to opposite clocks.
Pezeshkian wants Washington back in the memorandum before November: “We don’t want it to get to the midterm elections.” Trump has said a deal will come “right after the election”.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump has also told aides that renewed bombing is likely after the midterms. For hardliners, talk of renewed bombing after the midterms confirms that American commitments last only as long as one man’s patience or attention span. For Pezeshkian, it is an argument for settling before November.
The coming weeks will show whether the mediators can carry anything back from Washington beyond Trump’s rejection, and whether anyone in Tehran can keep ships moving through Hormuz without Vahidi’s Revolutionary Guards or Taeb’s Basij militia deciding otherwise.
Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham and co-founder of Navigating the Vortex.
Source: CNA/ch
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