{"id":163250,"date":"2026-06-16T17:38:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T17:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/163250\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T17:38:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T17:38:21","slug":"iran-will-enter-nuclear-talks-with-the-trump-administration-feeling-emboldened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/163250\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Will Enter Nuclear Talks With the Trump Administration Feeling Emboldened"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the days after Iran and the United States reached a preliminary agreement<\/a> to pause their war, Iranian politicians, generals, and clerics from a range of political factions described the deal as a victory that showed Tehran\u2019s resilience against a far more powerful enemy.<\/p>\n

That is the position Iran\u2019s leaders are pushing even though the country lost a slew of its top political and military figures, suffered a battering to its stock of ballistic missiles and was left with an economy strained even further<\/a> by a naval blockade.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran has taken a major step toward final victory,\u201d Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker<\/a> of the Iranian Parliament who has played a major role in negotiating the deal, wrote on social media on Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As negotiators were nearing an agreement, Sadegh Amoli Larijani, chairman of a powerful appointed council that supervises the work of the government, wrote on social media<\/a> on Saturday that Iranians had shown a \u201crenewed spirit of resistance\u201d and defeated U.S.-Israeli plans to overthrow the Islamic republic.<\/p>\n

Some of the backslapping is most likely aimed at presenting a united front both abroad and at home, where a vocal hard-line minority has protested the agreement as a betrayal of those killed in the war.<\/p>\n

The comments also reflect the genuine perception of Iran\u2019s leaders, who can point to the fact that the terms of the agreement, though still not fully known, will fall far short of what President Trump had previously declared as his goals in starting the war: \u201ctotal and complete victory\u201d for the United States and \u201cunconditional surrender\u201d for Iran.<\/p>\n

The style of Iran\u2019s leadership has also changed as a result of the war. Some pragmatic figures, such as the national security official Ali Larijani, were killed, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps \u2014 the military force that defends Iran\u2019s system of clerical rule \u2014 has consolidated power<\/a>. The long-term impact of those changes is still to be seen, but the shifts raise the question of how willing the military, now even more powerful, will be to make serious concessions at the negotiating table.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s rhetoric also appears to be adding to Iranian leaders\u2019 confident tone. The American president has publicly excoriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a> of Israel for mounting attacks on Lebanon that nearly derailed the U.S.-Iran deal, and he has described Iran\u2019s current leadership, including the supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei<\/a>, as pragmatists.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said Iran\u2019s leadership was now \u201crational,\u201d compared to, in his view, the leaders who were killed at the outset of the war.<\/p>\n

According to Mr. Trump\u2019s account of the deal, Iran is to allow shipping through the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 a return to the status quo before the war. But in what is perhaps an indication of the leverage Iran feels it has, Tehran has indicated that it intends to charge ships<\/a> for passing through the strait, which it did not do before the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran is certain to be emboldened by this deal,\u201d said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, an Iran expert at Missouri University of Science and Technology. \u201cI cannot recall another instance in which Iran suffered such serious military setbacks yet emerged with what could be considered a diplomatic victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Iran, much of this narrative is a familiar one, honed during eight years of war with Iraq. That war, which began in 1980, was framed by Iranian officials as an underdog struggle against a foreign invader and its powerful allies.<\/p>\n

Iran may have achieved more now than it did in the aftermath of that war, said Hamidreza Azizi, an Iranian security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time, its role in the Strait of Hormuz has, to some extent, been de facto recognized, while regional countries appear to be seeking accommodation with Iran rather than confrontation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Iranian negotiators have even felt emboldened enough to insist that Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting Iran\u2019s ally Hezbollah, be included in the agreement, Mr. Azizi added. Iran has claimed<\/a> the deal would extend to stopping fighting in Lebanon, though Israel has pushed back, saying its forces would remain there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Iranian leadership sees itself as being able to dictate terms that, in its view, should be binding not only on the United States but on Israel as well,\u201d Mr. Azizi said.<\/p>\n

The agreement punted the most vexing disputes between Iran and the United States \u2014 the fate of the Iranian nuclear program and what kind of sanctions relief the country should receive in return for limiting it \u2014 to later rounds of talks, expected to begin on Friday in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

With Iran entering those talks feeling confident, its negotiators may be unwilling to make compromises on the key points of disagreement, including the future of Iran\u2019s current stockpile of enriched uranium.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nuclear negotiations will be the real test of the durability of this arrangement,\u201d Mr. Boroujerdi said. \u201cIf tensions in the Strait of Hormuz have subsided by that stage, Trump may find it more difficult to extract major concessions from Tehran.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the days after Iran and the United States reached a preliminary agreement to pause their war, Iranian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[2415,4064,1743,34,90,29199,876,269,101,69,392],"class_list":["post-163250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tehran","tag-benjamin","tag-donald-j","tag-international-relations","tag-iran","tag-khamenei","tag-mojtaba-1969","tag-netanyahu","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-tehran","tag-trump"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116761008740749730","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}