Trump claimed talks happened. Iran denied them. But the discrepancies go even deeper

On Monday morning, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in all caps that “The United States of America, and the country of Iran, have had, over the last two days, very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities.”

That is, he claimed direct talks between the two countries. He further claimed that resolution was at hand. Stock-market futures jumped wildly on the supposed news.

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Trump’s post continued to say that that he had “instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”

Thirty minutes later, sources in Iran flatly denied any talks had taken place.

What actually appears to have happened was carefully reported by the Wall Street Journal late on Monday night: Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan had gathered before dawn the previous Thursday in Riyadh, attempting to find a diplomatic off-ramp. Their first problem was that they couldn’t find a viable Iranian counterpart to negotiate with, because Israel had assassinated Ali Larijani, who had been considered the most viable partner for Western engagement.

But Egyptian intelligence managed to open a channel with the IRGC and floated a proposal for a five-day pause to build confidence for a ceasefire. Those preliminary discussions — conducted entirely through intermediaries, with no direct U.S.-Iran contact — made their way to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend. Trump learned of them Saturday, after he’d made threats to bomb Iranian energy facilities, and he was receptive. The WSJ further reported that a direct meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials has been proposed, but has not taken place.

Arab mediators involved in the actual discussions privately expressed skepticism that a deal was anywhere close. Iran’s own parliamentary speaker — one of the few senior officials left standing — said the same day that there had been no negotiations, and that Trump’s optimism was “used to manipulate the financial and oil markets.”

So it does not appear to be true that any direct talks took place

In other words, Trump claimed direct talks had happened that did not happen, and further claimed that those talks were “very good and productive” when they seem never to have occurred at all. Also, the third-party intermediaries involved believe no ceasefire is immediately coming. That’s the full, available record as it now stands.

But there were reasons to be skeptical even before closer investigation of Trump’s claims ever aired.

Perhaps most telling was simply the extremely implausible nature of one of his main claims. The U.S. and Iran have been in a state of active hostility for roughly 40 years. A “complete and total resolution of our hostilities” after four decades? During an active bombing campaign that began four weeks ago during the last round of actual, established-as-fact negotiations? It’s unlikely on its face, and the claim grows even more unlikely the longer one considers it.

Still, the media provides cover for the President

In a separate op-ed that ran on Tuesday, the Journal acknowledged that “reporting points to preliminary exchanges of messages via Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt.”

That’s an admission, carefully hedged, that Trump lied about the talks. That Iran denied them. That the two sides remain far apart. And also that nobody knows if the man that third parties are now attempting to liaise with — Parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf — can speak for the Iranian regime. Even as the Journal’s reporters worked to establish these facts, the Journal’s editorial board framed it all as the “fog of diplomacy” because “Mr. Trump’s incentive is to calm markets with news of diplomatic progress.”

Major news outlets are stuck in a bind, carefully working to parse truth from lies in Trump’s claims while maintaining access to official briefings and, likely, the sort of back-channel sourcing that news organizations often develop with administrations. Why their editorial boards step in to launder untruths is a separate question, one that’s difficult to answer. They’re at once acknowledging that the President is deliberately lying to manipulate financial markets during an active war and excusing it.

Still, the public record alone is sufficient to assess how plausible any imminent resolution actually is.

For starters, Iran has little reason to trust the U.S. is negotiating in good faith

A “complete and total resolution” requires two parties who believe a deal is possible and that the other side will honor it. On the available evidence, neither condition is currently met.

The U.S. began bombing Iran on February 28th — just two days after the most recent round of active negotiations, in which the Omani foreign minister had described "substantial progress "and said agreement might be within reach. Technical talks were scheduled for March 2 in Vienna. Then the bombs dropped.

The Arms Control Association reported that Trump had likely already decided to go to war before that final round of talks ended, meaning the negotiations weren’t a genuine attempt at resolution but a cover while the military operation was being finalized. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council noted explicitly afterward that “this occurred once again during negotiations.” It was a reference to the same pattern playing out during the June 2025 Twelve Day War, when the U.S. also struck Iran while diplomacy was nominally underway.

This is the context in which Iran is now being asked to trust American assurances. But the institutional memory of every Iranian negotiator is that American agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.

The U.S. appears unable to model Iran’s rationale and behavior

The ACA reporting paints a devastating portrait of how ill-informed American negotiators were during the February negotiation talks, and how ill-informed they continue to be. Key American officials, including envoy Steve Witkoff, lack a firm grasp on relevant details of Iranian nuclear programs, making it all the more difficult for the U.S. to accurately assess threats or possible future moves by the Iranians.

Further, the assumption that bombing would produce either quick capitulation or quick regime collapse — neither of which has happened — suggests decision-makers who modeled Iran as a rational actor that would respond to overwhelming force by folding, rather than as an institution that has spent 40 years preparing for such scenarios and has deeply internalized the lesson that showing weakness invites destruction.

IRGC commanders once fought human wave attacks against Iraq’s better-equipped army for eight years rather than accept terms. These are not people whose behavior is usefully modeled on how a normal government responds to military pressure. They’ve been under sanctions, cyberattacks, assassinations, and proxy wars for decades and they’re still pursuing their own aims. The idea that four weeks of bombing would produce a “complete and total resolution” suggests not just optimism but a total failure to engage with the adversary one is actually fighting.

Furthermore, domestic political incentives don’t appear to favor negotiation in other, equally pressing ways. Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei — whose father, sister, wife, and son were killed in recent American attacks — needs to establish legitimacy with IRGC hardliners. Sitting down with American representatives weeks after his own family was killed would be domestically unsurvivable. It would very likely read, inside Iran, as capitulation.

Iran retains control of a powerful weapon

Iran has control of a powerful weapon through which it is currently achieving some of its aims: the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait’s closure is giving Tehran genuine leverage over the global economy in a war it is losing badly on conventional military terms.

Any serious negotiation would require reopening it — at which point that leverage would evaporate. Iran has no rational incentive to give it up without guarantees from an administration that has twice now bombed them during active negotiations.

Each side’s demands are nonstarters for the other side

Trump’s demands haven’t changed: Zero enrichment, dismantle the missile program, end proxy support for militias. But Iran rejected all of these before the war started. Four weeks of bombing hasn’t made the demands more acceptable. If anything, the hardliners now consolidating power are less likely to accept them than the diplomatic track that existed before February 28.

Likewise, Iran’s demands are nonstarters for the U.S. Per NBC, Iran’s conditions include a complete halt to “aggression and assassinations” by the U.S. and Israel, recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, reparations and compensation for wartime losses, security guarantees, and the expulsion of U.S. forces from the region. Every single one is a nonstarter for the U.S. The Hormuz sovereignty demand alone is something no U.S. administration could accept.

So where are negotiations, in fact?

Speaking of nonstarters, this morning, Iran rejected a U.S. 15-point plan that was apparently delivered through Pakistani intermediaries. A senior Iranian military official taunted even the idea of talks, asking whether “the level of your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves.” Meanwhile, Trump announced the deployment of more than 1,000 additional paratroopers to the region and told reporters “we’ve won this, this war has been won.” Iran fired cruise missiles at the USS Abraham Lincoln. A drone struck a fuel tank at Kuwait International Airport.

That, in fact, is where negotiations are, and how close the world is to “A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.”

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