Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has been on a strategic tour to prepare for two dramatically different paths that could unfold in the coming days — a return to diplomacy or a resumption of the war with the US and Israel.

While President Donald Trump has claimed that the Iranian government is in a state of internal chaos and his administration is waiting for Iran to capitulate, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site News that Tehran is establishing the conditions under which a new round of direct talks could take place.

“We’re currently moving forward with our own design, and we feel continuing negotiations doesn’t make sense until the US government lifts the maritime blockade,” said the official who has direct knowledge of internal diplomatic deliberations in Iran.

He requested anonymity because he is not authorised to publicly discuss the negotiations.

“The scope of the conflict has expanded, and naturally the issue is no longer purely nuclear.”

Tehran, the Iranian official said, remained firm in its demand that the US naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz be lifted as a condition to move forward. If that happens, a formal second round of top level direct talks can happen.

“Araghchi is Iran’s top diplomat. So even if there’s a 1 percent chance for a breakthrough, he would embark on it,” said Hassan Ahmadian, a prominent Iranian analyst and associate professor at the University of Tehran.

A multi-phase outline
He told Drop Site that Iran has crafted a multi-phase outline for ending the war: A real ceasefire must be imposed on Israel in the region, specifically Lebanon, and a settlement must be reached in the Strait of Hormuz “without harming Iran’s national security and also regional security.”

Once these conditions are met, comprehensive negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme and a long-term non-aggression agreement could commence.

“The Iranians are saying time is working in our favor for the three Ms: munitions, markets, and the midterms. These three Ms help Iran in its position and weaken US positions,” Ahmadian said.

“Obviously in the US, they want something to say, ‘We squeezed Iran and we got this.’ My perception is that the Iranians are keen to deny the United States that — they wouldn’t give what Trump wants as a victory.”

While White House officials claim Iran presented the US with a “new” proposal over the weekend and pushed this narrative through their preferred media outlets, the Iranian official said the characterisation was false.

Trump claimed Iran softened its stance over the weekend, but not enough for a deal. Ahmadian said there has been a recent Iranian shift, but it is toward a clearer set of conditions for resuming negotiations, not acceding to American demands on its nuclear programme.

“There are changes, as I understand,” he said. “The main change is for Iran to insist on the stop of the war regionally. That’s pivotal in Iran agreeing to discuss other issues.”

Unprecedented challenge
As a practical matter, Tehran is facing an unprecedented challenge in dealing with Trump. Twice in one year, Israel and the US have bombed Iran in the middle of negotiations.

Trump is erratic and frequently contradicts himself — vascillating between expressing optimism for a deal and claiming Iran has surrendered to sweeping US demands only to turn around and threaten to destroy Iranian civilisation and to carpet bomb its civilian infrastructure.

Iran also believes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been given unprecedented influence over US intelligence estimates and White House decision-making.

“Our country has had negotiations with the Americans at various levels over the past 30 years — formal and informal, public and back-channel,” the senior Iranian official said, referencing previous US-Iran negotiations that involved months — at times years — of diplomacy and technical talks.

“It’s as if they are showing up to a football match with rugby rules.”

Iran has total disdain for Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and views him as both oblivious of diplomatic processes and totally ignorant of technical issues. Kushner is viewed by Iran as Israel’s man at the table.

Iran, the senior official said, does not see any reason to deal with these two without a figure like Vice-President JD Vance present.

Flurry of speculation
Last week, the Iranian government announced that Araghchi would be visiting Islamabad for bilateral talks with Pakistani leaders. This set off a flurry of media speculation that a new round of negotiations would happen.

Trump announced that Vance was en route to Islamabad and once again characterised Iran as pleading for new negotiations. But Vance, it turned out, was not on a plane, and Iran continued to deny it had any intention of meeting with US officials in Pakistan.

Trump then said he was dispatching Witkoff and Kushner, and the media was flooded with stories about a meeting with Iran. Some news outlets, citing White House sources, claimed that planes were en route to the meetings, and the White House suggested Iran was lying about the forthcoming talks.

“The Iranians want to talk, they want to talk in person,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Friday. “Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out.”

Iran continued to reject suggestions that any talks would happen.

“No meeting is planned to take place between Iran and the US,” Iran’s Foreign Minister spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said soon after Araghchi arrived in Pakistan. Iran, he said, discussed a range of issues, including trade.

On Sunday, Islamabad announced it was expanding the transportation of third-country goods through Pakistan destined for Iran. While the transit routes had been under discussion since 2008, the timing — with Trump claiming his naval blockade was “strangling” Iran — was impossible to ignore.

Scrambled to spin
After Araghchi left Islamabad on Saturday and flew to Oman, Trump scrambled to spin the narrative and control the damage, claiming he had actually called off the planned negotiations.

“Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership.’ Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”

Trump then claimed that as a result of his refusal to send his emissaries, Iran had softened its stance, submitting a new proposal to the US. “They gave us a paper that should have been better. And interestingly, immediately, when I canceled it, within 10 minutes, we got a new paper that was much better,” Trump said.

Trump continues to claim that he extended the initial two-week ceasefire agreed on April 7 because Iran’s leadership was in a state of disarray and infighting. This narrative has been widely parrotted in Western media.

“That’s part of the cognitive warfare on Iran,” said Ahmadian. “It’s targeted at the society, the elites, and the position of the Supreme Leader. It’s not news, it’s not intel that they’re talking about.

“It’s basically an agenda to create what they are calling division. And I think the main aim within Iran is to increase mistrust and decrease trust among elites, which I think the Iranians are now very well aware of.”

Ahmadian said that Iran’s perception is that it is the US leadership that is in deep disarray, as evidenced by Trump’s flip-flops, unrealised threats and the recent chaos over which officials would be heading to Islamabad to negotiate with Iran.

Clear Tehran message
During the first round of direct talks held in Islamabad on April 11, the Iranian team arrived with “a clear message coming out of Tehran, with a team that represents all of the system, and it came with a very strong case for showing the unity within the country,” Ahmadian said.

He added that the Iranian side left the talks with the impression that there were stark differences between Vance on the one hand and Witkoff and Kushner on the other.

“The Iranians see Witkoff and Kushner as representatives of the Israeli interests, not those of the United States, as opposed to Mr Vance, who is representing the US interests in those talks,” he said.

“They were divided in their way of approaching the Iranians.”

Jeremy Scahill is a journalist at Drop Site News, author of the books Blackwater and Dirty Wars. He has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other countries.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Most of Iranian oil — 96.7 percent — is destined for China. If you note this figure, you will realise that the Americans are really trying to choke off the supply of Iranian oil to China by blockading the Strait of Hormuz.

This is a major part of the American containment strategy against China.

Now that America will most likely lose control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, they are shifting their attention to the other most critical chokepoint in the world — the Strait of Malacca.

About 80 percent of China’s imported oil has to pass through the Strait of Malacca. Vessels come down the Strait, sail past Singapore which is at the southernmost tip of the Strait, before they swing upwards into the South China Sea to go to the Philippines and East Asia, including China.

The two most important countries which border the Malacca Strait are Indonesia and Malaysia, one on either side of the Strait.

A very interesting development took place on Monday in Washington when the Defence Minister of Indonesia Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin signed a cooperation agreement with US War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Speculation on details
People are speculating about the details of the agreement:

• Will it allow the Americans to base troops in Indonesia and use Indonesian airspace for their air assets?
• Will American naval vessels be allowed to dock at the old Dutch port of Belawan, near Medan, in Northern Sumatra, which is near the opening to the Strait?
• Will the Malacca Strait now become the focal point in this great power struggle between America and China?
• What will Indonesia’s other BRICs partners, principally China and Russia think of Indonesia’s move in signing this agreement with the Americans?

To spice things up, Indonesian President Probowo Subianto was in Moscow a few days ago meeting with President Putin.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

This US naval blockade is meant to strangle the Iranian economy by preventing it from exporting oil — the economic lifeline of Iran. It will do nothing of the sort.

Please study the infographics below. Before the war started, Iran was furiously loading tankers with oil at 3 times the normal rate and sending them off to the Far East, with the ultimate destination being China.

China buys 90 percent of Iranian oil, with many of its private refineries — known colloquially as “tea pot” refineries — depending on Iranian crude.

There are presently at least 158 million barrels of Iranian oil sitting in some 96 tankers anchored near the Malaysian state of Johor. There, ship-to-ship transfers take place, before the shipments go off to their final destinations in China.

So this naval blockade will cost the Americans billions of dollars to maintain, but the only thing it will achieve is to make countries dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf such as Australia, Britain, Europe, Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh cry.

American voters will get mad at Trump for the surging prices at the pump and give the Republicans a shellacking in the mid-terms.

Iran rolling in cash
Iran will be rolling in cash from the sale of these 158 million barrels of oil already at sea and far away from any naval blockade, and the Iranians will be laughing at the stupidity of the Americans.

Isn’t this the classic illustration of the saying  “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted”?

Let us see how long Trump can afford to keep up with this charade.

You would think that American intelligence would have the wherewithal to better advise their President what a harebrained idea his naval blockade is.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

AMY GOODMAN: Ship traffic has halted again in the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump ordered the US military to begin a naval blockade of all Iranian ports and coastal areas starting on Monday.

Iran denounced Trump’s move as an illegal act amounting to “piracy”. Iran has threatened to strike Gulf ports in retaliation.

Trump ordered the blockade after the US and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war following 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The negotiations marked the highest-level talks between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. US Vice-President JD Vance headed the U.S. delegation, which included US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Iranian negotiators had flown to Pakistan on a plane they called “Minab 168” as a tribute to the 168 people killed in a US missile strike on an elementary school in the city of Minab on February 28. The plane carried images of the dead schoolchildren, along with blood-stained school bags recovered beneath the rubble.

Global oil prices jumped after Trump announced the blockade.

We’re joined now by Ervand Abrahamian, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the author of several books, most recently, Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d’État. His forthcoming book is 1979: An Inevitable Revolution.

So, your response to what transpired in Pakistan, the deal that was not reached between Iran and the United States, and what this means, Professor?

Trump orders naval blockade of Iran            Video: Democracy Now!

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, I think both sides actually presented, basically, ultimate demands which the other side couldn’t accept, so it was a false start. But the implications of the failure is going to be actually quite drastic on the United States, because Trump’s main concern has been to actually put a limit, a lid, on the oil prices going up, and they’ve already jumped from $88 a barrel to over $100. They’re going to increase more with the present crisis, with the embargo on the Strait of Hormuz.

And as the crisis escalates, I think the US will start bombing Iranian oil installations. Iran will retaliate by bombing the Gulf’s oil installations, gas installations. The oil prices then could really zoom up.

Some people expect it to reach $200 a barrel. In that case, you know, it will have long-term implications for Wall Street and the whole American economy, not to mention the world economy. So, things that Trump has tried to avoid, he has got, actually, himself into the major crisis, economic crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: You have Robert Malley, who had previously been involved with talks with Iran, saying, “Twenty-one hours was 20 hours too many if the goal was to reiterate a demand Iran had already rejected. It was many hours too few if the goal was to negotiate.” Your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: He’s exactly right. And I think, I mean, what Iran sees as the present crisis is an existential one, because although the talk has been regime change, the Israeli policy, clearly, in the last 10 years has been more than regime change. It’s basically been the destruction of the Iranian state, Iranian nation. So Iran sees this as an existential threat.

There was a speech that Trump made when he launched the attack on Iran a couple of weeks ago. It was actually quite an interesting speech. He talked about various ethnic minorities being oppressed in Iran, and they were dying to be liberated from Iranian control. And he listed obvious ethnic groups, but then there was one ethnic group that, really, I’d never heard of.

So I scratched my head. What is this group? And I did what most people do: You google. And lo and behold, this ethnic group actually exists in the other side of the Caucasus Mountains in Dagestan.

So you wonder what reason they had for putting this ethnic group that doesn’t exist in Iran as one of the ethnic groups, unless there’s some sinister idea the Israelis have of a civil war in Iran, where they will recruit, actually, mercenaries from the other side of the Caucasus to bring into Iran.

Of course, this sounds far-fetched, but this is what actually happened in Syria. You had a lot of Chechens actually brought in to fight against Assad. So, the Israelis may be thinking in those terms of actually a long civil war in Iran, where they would be bringing in mercenaries from outside. So, for this reason, I think Iran sees this as a real, serious, existential war. It’s not just a question of a minor sort of fine tuning of relations with the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve written about oil in Iran a great deal. Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, tweeted on Sunday, “Enjoy the current pump figures. With the so-called ‘blockade’, soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4-$5 [per gallon] gas.”

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the price could go up to $200 a barrel, even more than that, if, basically, the Gulf oil — it’s not just Iranian oil, but the whole Gulf oil and gas — is actually cut off from the world market.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about what Iran wants right now and what the US wants. Ten o’clock am — we’re broadcasting right before that — Eastern time is when the US Navy blockades, apparently, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

What exactly does this mean? How will the Gulf nations be affected? How will Iran be affected? Because it both exports oil, but, of course, it needs oil and makes a great deal of its own oil.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yeah, I mean, it won’t break Iran, because it has — Iran has other ways of actually exporting oil. It’ll obviously be a hardship, but it’ll be a much worse hardship on the Gulf states, if Iran actually dismantles their oil installations.

And that affects directly United States economy, because so much of Gulf oil money, gas money actually goes into high-tech United States. And much of the American, basically, modern technology is funded by subsidies from the various Gulf states. So it would have drastic repercussions on US economy.

AMY GOODMAN: What does Trump want? His latest, and what Vance said — right? Vance leaves the Hungarian prime minister, campaigning for him, Orbán, who was soundly defeated, and then goes to Islamabad to lead this negotiation. He says it’s all about nuclear weapons. Vance said, “The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them [to quickly] achieve a nuclear weapon.” Your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Exactly. I mean, that’s exactly what the Obama agreement was.

AMY GOODMAN: That Trump pulled out of.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yes, which Trump pulled out of. But if you look at that agreement, basically, it said Iran had the right to enrich, but it had to be supervised to make sure it couldn’t enrich to the level of nuclear weapons.

So, Netanyahu cries it was vague agreement. In fact, it was very precise. Iran could enrich to 3.67 percent of uranium. That’s as precise as you can get. It was limited to 200 grams of enriched uranium. And also, it was — everything was supervised.

There were 140 international monitors, including American monitors. So, this was an incredibly tight procedure to make sure that Iran would actually fulfill its promise not to go into nuclear weapons.

When Trump pulled out of that, he basically unwound the whole system. And the best he can get is going back to that. So, demand that Iran should have no nuclear enrichment is a nonstarter. The best he could get is to go back, permit Iran to have enrichment, but with monitoring that it would not be weapon enrichment.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute. In a call with the Russian President Putin, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said a deal is, “not out of reach.” So, if you can talk about whether — where you see this all headed?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, there are people in Iran in the — basically, in the National Security Council, including Pezeshkian, who think that they can make a deal with the United States. And they’ve been there a long time.

But there are also people now, I think, hardliners, who are stronger now than before the war, who are arguing that you can’t make a deal with Trump. Even if Trump makes a deal, he could, the following week, decide he’s going to pull out. So it’s a nonstarter, from their point of view, unless US can actually make full commitments. And I don’t see how they can do that, because Trump is basically untrustworthy.

So, from their point of view, I think the hardliners in Iran could argue, persuasively, the more the pressure they have, the more the prices are going to go up; the more it goes up, sooner or later, the patient will have a heart attack or a stroke. So they have an upper hand at the moment.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz