Trump meets his obstinate match in Iran’s hardball regime

US president reduced to bemoaning Tehran’s ‘unbelievable duplicity’ as he struggles to find solid negotiating ground

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The Donald Trump doctrine has always contained a tenuous relationship with the truth. It was his mentor, the infamous New York lawyer Roy Cohn , who taught the young real estate mogul always to claim victory and never to admit defeat. Unfortunately for Trump, in Iran the US president has found a counterpart just as stubborn as himself.

As Trump claims new negotiations are to begin with Tehran this week, Iran has shown it can also reignite the conflict by lobbing ballistic missiles at US bases in the region and maintaining a stranglehold on the strait of Hormuz, effectively taking initiative in the stalled peace process. And time is of the essence for Trump as the clock ticks toward a global energy crisis and a painful midterm elections for him and his Republican party.

But as soon as his latest attempt to hammer out a peace deal was announced, it was denied by Iran and the US president was left fuming once again. “Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous!” he posted to his social media site, Truth Social, saying that Iran had begged for a meeting and talks had already begun. “Nothing gets through to Iran, unless we want it to, and nothing will get through, unless a Deal, or Total Surrender, is accomplished.”

Trump has suggested dozens of times since the beginning of the war that a deal with Iran is imminent, and his latest claim that new negotiations could produce a peace deal within days has shown the administration’s desperation to reopen the strait and find a road map out of the crisis. After promising to hit Iran “very hard”, Trump made a U-turn on Sunday and claimed that talks would continue and that the “perimeters of a deal” for the opening of Hormuz and the “denuclearization of Iran” had been agreed.

Unfortunately, the Iranians don’t agree. In a statement on Monday, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson denied any peace negotiations were taking place. “We are not currently negotiating with the United States,” said Esmaeil Baqaei. “Our negotiations are with Oman to secure passage through the strait of Hormuz.”

That may result in an agreement. But that will not result in the return of the strait of Hormuz to its prewar status, Baqaei added, in effect keeping the waterway a political football for the foreseeable future. “We must ensure that the strait of Hormuz cannot be misused by parties that have committed aggression against Iran,” said Baqaei.

Little has changed since the last round of negotiations. Iran remains capable of closing the strait of Hormuz and stifling shipping – including a fifth of global oil supply – through the crucial waterway. The US remains capable of inflicting devastating strikes on Iran – despite a shortage of key munitions that could be needed for a war against key rivals like China – but has a lack of meaningful targets that could force Iran to change its policy.

The Trump administration has been signalling a desire to end the conflict since April and three ceasefires have come and collapsed since then. With just over three months left until the US midterm elections, in which the Republicans are expected to lose the House and possibly even the Senate, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll last week showed that fewer than a third of Americans support the war in Iran, and 69% believe that Trump has not “clearly explained the goals of US military involvement in Iran”.

For Iran, the strategic unpredictability has become a new weapon in a war that has counterintuitively strengthened its negotiating position, giving the regime new tools in slowing global oil supply and in attacking regional US allies in the Gulf.

Iran has concluded that its best strategy is to “maximise the pain that they can impose on the United States and its partners in the region”, said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and an expert on Middle East security issues with a focus on Iran, during the institute’s podcast last week. The view there was that Trump “is not really yet ready for a deal with Iran, not a deal that would work for the Iranians anyway”.

Iran is also facing a time crunch with a US blockade in effect halting trade out of the country.

“They are now at a point where they don’t think just sitting back and having one round after another of diplomatic talks is the best way forward,” he added. “They’re trying to shake things up to try get Trump’s attention and see if they can get a different result.”