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Days after a letter from President Donald Trump reached Iran's supreme leader, giving him a choice between negotiating a deal to end Iran's nuclear program or U.S. military action to destroy it, the two sides remain far apart on the conditions that would allow such a conversation, let alone an agreement.
"All options are on the table," White House national security adviser Michael Waltz said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." If Iran doesn't "hand over … the missiles, the weaponization, the enrichment" of nuclear materials, "they can face a whole series of other consequences."
Waltz's remarks followed a massive U.S. strike Saturday on Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, who last week vowed to resume their attacks on maritime traffic in the Red Sea. If Tehran doesn't end its support for them "IMMEDIATELY," Trump said in a social media post, "America will hold you fully accountable and, we won't be nice about it."
Iran quickly responded in kind. "If threatened, Iran will give appropriate and crushing responses," said Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in a Sunday post on X, wrote, "The United States government has no authority, or business, dictating Iranian foreign policy. That era ended in 1979," the year of the Islamic revolution that began with the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
In response to the Yemen strikes, the Houthis claimed Sunday to have fired 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone at the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, located with its escort ships in the Red Sea. The Pentagon referred questions about the Houthi claim to U.S. Central Command, which did not respond to several requests for comment.
While heated exchanges of rhetoric between Iran and the United States are not particularly new, Waltz said the weekend attack on the Houthis was different both in size and holding Iran responsible. "It is Iran that has repeatedly funded, resourced, trained and helped the Houthis target not only U.S. warships, but global commerce, and has helped the Houthis shut down two of the world's most strategic sea lanes," he said.
The attack came amid a number of recent events that have moved both countries closer to the brink.
A report released this month by the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran has substantially expanded its production of highly enriched uranium and is further increasing its stockpile of near weapons-grade material, shortening the time it would need to produce a nuclear device.
"If Iran wants a deal, the path starts with ceasing its escalatory nuclear activities, fulfilling its safeguard obligations, building international confidence and allowing the Agency to provide assurance that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful," Howard Solomon, the interim U.S. representative to IAEA said at the agency's March 4 board meeting.
The report elevated concern not only in the United States but among its European partners who remain in the Obama-era nuclear agreement - which traded much of Iran's enrichment program for the lifting of sanctions - that Trump withdrew from during his first term in office, calling it a "bad deal" and promising he would negotiate a better one in talks that never happened.
The Trump administration's new demands appear to have gone beyond the terms of that deal, which allowed uranium enrichment at low levels for civilian purposes. Asked what conditions would spark U.S. military intervention in Iran, National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in an email that "the Iranian Regime must demonstrate it has disbanded its nuclear enrichment and weapons program."
In Trump's letter, Hughes said, the president "said it clearly that there are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily or by making a deal. We hope the Iran Regime puts its people and best interests ahead of terror."
Britain, France and Germany have held recent closed-door talks with Iran's representatives in Geneva, seeking a solution while threatening to implement a "snapback" provision in the original 2015 agreement that would reimpose a broad array of international sanctions. That provision, along with the United Nations resolution that blessed the deal and included prohibitions against Iran's ballistic missile program, expires in October along with the rest of the remaining agreement.
The Europeans "will continue to engage," Germany's Foreign Ministry said in response to questions. "Our goal remains to pursue a diplomatic solution for the Iranian nuclear program."
Countries in the Persian Gulf are also in a position to mediate between the United States and Iran. Trump's letter to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was delivered last Wednesday by Anwar Gargash, a former United Arab Emirates foreign minister and current senior adviser to the UAE president. Araghchi met last week with his counterpart in Oman, which served as a venue for secret, but ultimately unsuccessful, U.S.-Iran negotiations under the Biden administration.
But even as Trump's letter arrived in Tehran, the administration announced new sanctions on Iran's oil industry, part of the "maximum pressure" campaign on Tehran he authorized in an executive order last month.
Khamenei denounced Trump's outreach as little more than a publicity stunt "to deceive public opinion."
It was "this person," meaning Trump, who tore up the 2015 agreement to begin with, Khamenei said in an address to Iranian students Wednesday, just before Gargash's visit. "If the aim of talks is to lift the sanctions, negotiation with this U.S. government … will not remove them." he said. While repeating his insistence that Iran's nuclear program is only for peaceful, civilian purposes, Khamenei said Iran had no intention of succumbing to "bullying governments."
Iran was still reviewing Trump's letter, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Friday. But the juxtaposition of olive branch and additional sanctions was evidence of U.S. "hypocrisy," he said, and the U.S. government would be held responsible for "the consequences and effects of such unilateral and illegitimate actions."
Trump has said that Iran is more open to a deal because its economy is failing, lessening its ability to withstand increased sanctions. Iranian currency has lost half its value and the economy has lurched from crisis to crisis since last summer's election of President Masoud Pezeshkian. This winter, the country has been wracked by electricity shortages that have shuttered government offices and triggered protests.
Pezeshkian's campaign platform of improving Iran's economy by pursuing sanctions relief appeared to resonate widely among the electorate. But while he may have been empowered to explore possible engagement with the United States, the ultimate decision on a change in policy rests with Khamenei.
Israel has made no secret of the fact that it thinks Iran's nuclear program and its support for groups including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis can be stopped only with military action that it would prefer to conduct jointly with the United States. "We have capabilities [but] the U.S. has better ones," a person familiar with Israel's views said recently. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Under former president Joe Biden, the United States twice last year provided extensive air and maritime capabilities to help Israel fend off direct missile and drone attacks from Iran. But Biden insisted that any assistance be defensive only, and that the United States would not cross into Iranian airspace or territory or launch its own attacks against Iran.
Last month, after a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "Israel and America stand shoulder to shoulder in countering the threat of Iran." He and Rubio, Netanyahu said, "agreed that the ayatollahs must not have nuclear weapons and also agreed that Iran's aggression in the region must be rolled back."
Israel, he said, had dealt "a mighty blow to Iran's terror axis" since the beginning of the war in Gaza. "Under the strong leadership of President Trump. … I have no doubt that we can and will finish the job."