On every significant issue dividing Washington and Tehran, the two sides are not negotiating over terms - they are negotiating over incompatible realities. That is the verdict Carnegie Endowment fellow Karim Sadjadpour delivers in The Atlantic, arguing that Vice President J.D. Vance is walking into the Islamabad talks with no mathematical path to a workable deal.
"Trump demands zero nuclear enrichment; Iran calls it a sovereign right," Sadjadpour writes in the piece published by The Atlantic, as "Hvylya" reports. "Trump demands that Iran abandon its proxies; Iran calls them 'the heroic Islamic Resistance.' Trump demands that Iran suspend its use of ballistic missiles; Iran doesn't mention them, because they are nonnegotiable." On sanctions, Trump offers partial relief as a reward while Iran demands full removal as a starting point. On reparations, Trump offers nothing and Iran demands payment for the war.
Sadjadpour contrasts the timeline with the last serious U.S.-Iran agreement. The Obama administration spent nearly two years negotiating a deal limited solely to the nuclear program. Trump has given his team two weeks to resolve the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran's nuclear program, its missile arsenal and its regional proxies simultaneously. "The best achievable outcome in Islamabad is not resolution but reversion," the scholar writes - "a cold conflict to replace a hot one."
Iran's own leaders have not disguised their position. The Islamic Republic's Supreme National Security Council called the Islamabad meeting a ratification of battlefield victory: "Within a maximum of 15 days, the details of Iran's victory on the battlefield will also be cemented in political negotiations." The cease-fire, it added, "does not mean the end of the war." Sadjadpour reads this as a statement of intent: "Vance is not flying to Islamabad to make a deal. He is flying there to hear Iran's terms."
Sadjadpour describes the political bind Trump has transferred to his vice president in stark terms. "A bad deal damages him, no deal damages him, and a good deal is the only outcome that helps him, but Iran has no intention of offering one." Trump himself has telegraphed who will take the fall. "If a deal doesn't happen, I'm blaming J.D. Vance," the president said in remarks Sadjadpour cites. "If it does happen, I'm taking full credit."
The Carnegie scholar closes with a warning rooted in Republican critiques of past Democratic negotiators. "Being overeager for a deal, the negotiators walk into the bazaar having already announced that they must have the rug," he writes. The war, he argues, "significantly diminished Iran's capabilities but hardened its intentions," leaving Vance's first major diplomatic test dependent on the goodwill of a regime that believes it just won.
Earlier "Hvylya" reported how Foreign Affairs analysts detailed the way Iran's own missile salvos handed Israel a decisive strategic advantage during the conflict.