Mark A. Fowler is a retired CIA case officer and Iran specialist.
Vice President JD Vance flew out of Pakistan this weekend after more than 20 hours of negotiations from Saturday into Sunday, pulling the plug on the talks with Iranian officials after failing to produce an agreement to end the war with Iran. Within hours, an Iranian official said more talks were still possible. No telling how potential discussions will be affected by the naval blockade of Iran that President Donald Trump announced on Sunday out of frustration over the failed negotiations.
Welcome to bargaining with the Islamic Republic. Some years ago, I was speaking with an Iraqi Shiite businessman in the Persian Gulf about doing business with Iranians. He had dealt successfully with his fellow Shiites, and by default the Iranian government, for decades on energy projects. I asked whether his counterparts were indeed the formidable negotiators their reputation suggested. With a chuckle of resigned frustration, he said, “For Iranians, signing a contract is seen merely as a starting point to continue negotiating.”
Vance and team didn’t even get to the contract stage. Even if negotiations restart and a paper is signed in the days remaining before the current two-week ceasefire expires on April 21, that won’t mean the agreement is set in stone.
In my own experience as a CIA case officer dealing with Iranians, I was selling treason, not the business deals offered by my Iraqi acquaintance. But I found the process — constantly negotiating, then renegotiating — equally frustrating. And even when an Iranian had agreed to become a U.S. intelligence asset and proved productive, the frustrations didn’t end. Any number of problems could crop up, but usually they concerned money. The joke among CIA Iranian ops officers was that every time you told an Iranian asset that you were done talking about money, this signaled to them that it was time to talk further about money.
Vance and the U.S. negotiators have essentially said, ending the marathon talks, “We’re done talking about details,” which to the Iranians means it’s time to talk about details. The question is whether the two sides will correctly interpret the signals being sent, reengage and get to an agreement, however provisional it might be.
The challenge, and danger, of the constant bargaining with Iranian intelligence assets was that they had a tendency to hear what they wanted to hear. Sometimes purposely, as a bargaining tool. Sometimes as a way to avoid the hard issues, remaining content for both sides to talk past each other. Case officers are cautioned to be specific, to say what they mean and mean what they say. That was the only way Iranian contacts came to understand, and to believe, that we could be trusted, leading to a productive relationship.
Maybe that sort of directness characterized the U.S. negotiators in Islamabad over the weekend, but it unfortunately wasn’t a feature of the rhetoric in the run-up to the talks. Instead, both sides were publicly negotiating with wild threats and exaggerated claims — let’s call it hyperbolating. The excessive rhetoric may have made reaching a durable ceasefire harder.
Trump hasn’t helped matters by demanding “unconditional surrender” (conditions are the building blocks of peace agreements) or threatening that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if his demands aren’t met.
But in a way, he appears to believe his hyperventilating gives him room to maneuver: hoping that when he climbs down from his maximalist demands, he will end up with a better end result than if he hadn’t staked out such extreme positions.
Unfortunately, the Tehran regime also relishes tossing apocalyptic bombshells, and has been doing it for decades, with a sinister cynicism. The government that denounces the United States as the Great Satan stokes terrorism around the world and slaughters its own people when they dare to protest the brutal oppression and disastrous economic conditions they’re forced to live under. Before the negotiations in Pakistan began, an Iranian official said, “Negotiation in no way involves an ultimatum, a crime or a threat to commit war crimes.”
A new twist in Iranian propaganda is slick, clever online productions lampooning the U.S. president. As a tool for negotiating with the notoriously prickly Trump, that might be unwise.
Before leaving Islamabad, Vance said, “We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms,” adding that the proposal — its terms aren’t public — was still on the table. “We’ll see if the Iranians accept it.” That seems like a long shot. And maybe Vance understands that his counterparts will interpret his position, even after more than 20 hours of apparently intense negotiations, as the opening U.S. offer. But they may interpret it as an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith.
Even if an agreement is eventually reached, based on the multiple versions of proposed 10- or 15-point “frameworks” floated before the meeting in Pakistan, it is hard to envisage anything more than a short-lived cessation of hostilities. To achieve a remotely workable peace, the Trump administration must be clear, specific and, yes, flexible in its terms. But even that might not be sufficient if Iran won’t drop its maximalist demands. The more likely outcome is both sides declaring victory and the U.S. withdrawing, leaving the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian people in a severe state of flux, at the mercy of an enraged, wounded regime.
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