Seyed Hossein Mousavian
It is, at once, a time of great hope and great despair for anyone who wants U.S.-Iranian relations to improve. On the one hand, delegations from each country met in person last weekend for the first time in a decade, and they negotiated through the night in hopes of forging a lasting peace settlement. The leaders for each country’s team were not diplomats but powerful politicians—U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament—indicating just how seriously the countries are taking negotiations. But on the other hand, tensions between the two countries are extremely high as a result of the six-week U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign. And for all the fanfare, the most recent round of talks failed to produce a deal.
It isn’t hard to see why Tehran and Washington are struggling to reach an agreement despite all the energy they are investing in forging one. There is a proverbial “sea of blood” between the countries that makes compromise extremely challenging. This is largely Washington’s doing. Over the last year, the United States has gone to war against Iran not once but twice. It has killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, dozens of top military commanders, and over a thousand civilians. It does not help that the United States and Iran have both stood by their maximalist positions.
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