Just days ago, President Trump had appeared to embrace hopes for a diplomatic end to the war between Israel and Iran, holding off on immediate U.S. strikes and saying he might wait as much as two weeks to give negotiations a chance to work.
Less than 48 hours later, American bombers dropped their largest and most destructive conventional payloads on two of Iran’s nuclear facilities and fired missiles at a third, casting fresh doubt on the possibility that diplomats might get both sides to lay down their arms.
Mr. Trump had suggested for months that he wanted to avoid military action against Iran — but was prepared to take it if necessary. In mid-April, the president authorized 60 days of direct negotiations, which all but collapsed when Israel attacked Iran on June 13. Even then, Mr. Trump stopped short of threatening a strike, calling for Iran to surrender diplomatically.
The result was an extended Washington case of “will he or won’t he,” fueled in part by Mr. Trump’s own running commentary about his intentions toward Iran. Asked last week about ordering strikes, he told reporters that “I may do it. I may not do it,” adding proudly, “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
The revelation of the U.S. strikes on Sunday, code-named Midnight Hammer, left Iranians and much of the world struggling with basic questions: Was the president’s public hesitation to embrace military force actually a feint designed to lull Iran into complacency while the Pentagon prepared its assault? And if so, what does that mean for the prospect of future attempts to find a negotiated end to the fighting?
“There are concerns in the Middle East that the U.S. is now complicit in derailing the diplomatic efforts and that these were never authentic to begin with,” said Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow in Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute.
Dr. Ozcelik said “there is still some hope that diplomacy will work” because the Iranian leadership may conclude that the only route to survival is by avoiding an escalation of the war. But she said, “This is yet another demonstration, from the hard-line Iranian point of view, that America can’t be trusted.”
That was clearly how Iranians interpreted the president’s words, according to its top leaders. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, who just days ago was meeting with European leaders about the possibility of a negotiated end to the fighting, said in a news conference on Sunday that Mr. Trump and the United States had “betrayed Iran” and “deceived his own voters” after campaigning on a promise to end American forever wars.
In a social media post, Mr. Araghchi said that the U.S. attacks “will have everlasting consequences” and that “Iran reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interest and people” though so far, there has been no evidence of Iranian retaliation against Americans.
It is also unclear how honest Iranian negotiators have been about reaching an agreement that would address the concerns about its nuclear program expressed by Israel, the United States and many other countries around the world.
Top U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, insisted on Sunday that the president had been genuine in his push for a negotiated agreement that would have ended Iran’s nuclear capabilities. They accused Iran’s leaders of stalling and, in Mr. Trump’s words, “tapping us along” during the negotiations.
“We felt very strongly that the Iranians were stonewalling us,” Mr. Vance said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “They weren’t taking this seriously. They were trying to draw this process out as long as possible so that they could rebuild their nuclear weapons program without the threat of American action.”
At a briefing at the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseth said the president remained “fully committed” to a peace process with Iran. But he said that the Iranian government must agree to abandon its nuclear ambitions completely.
“He wants peace,” Mr. Hegseth said of the president. “There needs to be a negotiated settlement here. We ultimately demonstrated that Iran cannot have a nuclear capability.”
In the days leading up to the U.S. attacks on Sunday morning, some of the president’s political allies had cited his longstanding criticism of America’s involvement in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as evidence that he wanted to embrace diplomacy and negotiation instead of a new military conflict.
And yet in announcing the strikes, Mr. Trump rejected those urging him not to insert the United States directly into a war that could escalate throughout the region. His decision suggested that the prospects for renewed discussions to end the war had become even more elusive.
In Europe, numerous political leaders renewed their calls for de-escalation and urged Iran to resume talks with the United States despite the strikes.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said that “we call on Iran to return to the negotiating table and reach a diplomatic solution to end this crisis.” The European Union’s top diplomat said the group’s foreign ministers would meet on Monday to discuss the situation.
In Mr. Trump’s remarks to the nation shortly after he made the strikes public on his social media site, he said that Tehran “must now make peace” and that he did not want to send the military back to Iran for more attacks, adding: “Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope that’s so.”
But the president did not make a specific proposal for new talks. Instead, he threatened escalating attacks inside Iran if the country’s leaders do not agree to demands by Israel and the United States.
Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, said that Mr. Trump’s attacks were unlikely to convince Iran’s leaders to embrace negotiation in the near future.
He said in a statement that the president’s speech “is more likely to be viewed by the Iranian regime as another threat rather than as an opening for diplomacy,” adding, “Iran is unlikely to believe it can simply capitulate to the United States — given that hard-liners in the Iranian regime might view such a decision as inappropriate.”
Mr. Panikoff said that “without something to be able to claim a reason for a lesser response, hard-liners in the Iranian regime may ultimately win the day, which could lead to a much more dangerous outcome.”
In Turkey, Mr. Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said as much to reporters. Asked whether the door to diplomacy was still open, he said, “This is not the case right now.”
For his part, Mr. Trump appears to have concluded that Iran was never serious about a negotiated resolution after more than two months of failed diplomatic talks aimed at convincing it to give up its nuclear ambitions.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York, and Eric Schmitt from South Orange, N.J.
Michael D. Shear is a senior Times correspondent covering British politics and culture, and diplomacy around the world.
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