Trump's announcement that the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the US has come to an end was widely portrayed in the media as the collapse of a diplomatic track. At the strategic level, however, it reflects not the death of diplomacy but a change in its function. A common misconception is to interpret every withdrawal from an agreement as the abandonment of negotiations, whereas in the tradition of US foreign policy, negotiations have never been an end in themselves but a tool for securing a favorable balance of power.
What has unfolded since the recent hostilities points to a shift in the method of applying pressure, not in the objective. Washington continues to seek to influence Iran's behavior, but now aims to do so through a combination of military pressure, economic sanctions, political threats, and regional mediation. In other words, whereas an agreement was once viewed as the prelude to easing pressure, pressure is now being used as the prelude to returning to an agreement.
This shift is not without reason. US military operations, both during the 40-day war and in the period following the ceasefire, failed to deliver the political gains their planners had anticipated. Iran's decision-making structure remained unchanged, and Tehran did not retreat from its stated positions. Meanwhile, the economic consequences of the crisis, from rising energy prices to growing concerns over the security of oil shipping routes, quickly took on an international dimension, increasing the cost of continued tensions for many actors.
That reality also explains why multiple mediators became active simultaneously. The diplomatic efforts of Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, and even parallel consultations involving several Arab states are less a sign of an imminent agreement than an effort to prevent the crisis from spiraling out of control. As the costs of war rise for all sides, preserving channels of communication becomes a strategic necessity rather than a political choice.
Washington's conduct also reveals a clear contradiction. On one hand, the US president has declared the understanding over while simultaneously imposing new sanctions on Iran, steps that Tehran, alongside the military attacks, views as violations of US commitments, particularly Article 9 of the memorandum of understanding. On the other hand, the same administration has kept mediation channels open, with reports indicating that indirect contacts may continue. This dual approach is no coincidence; it reflects the model of coercive diplomacy, in which pressure and negotiations are employed simultaneously to bring the other side back to the negotiating table under different conditions.
Against this strategy, Iran's stated position is equally significant. Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi has stressed that Iran has honored its commitments and that the only viable path forward is for both parties to adhere to the provisions of the memorandum of understanding. The importance of this position lies in the fact that Tehran, contrary to narratives declaring diplomacy dead, does not reject negotiations themselves. Rather, it ties the credibility of any future dialogue to compliance with existing commitments. In other words, the dispute has shifted from the principle of negotiations to the credibility of commitments.
From this perspective, the most important development since the recent hostilities is the change in the agenda of any future negotiations. Whereas technical and nuclear issues previously dominated the talks, the more fundamental question now is how to guarantee implementation of commitments and prevent another cycle of pressure, agreement, and violation. Without addressing that issue, even renewed negotiations will not necessarily produce a durable understanding.
A more accurate description of the current situation, therefore, is that the US has shifted from agreement-based diplomacy to coercive diplomacy, a strategy in which sanctions, threats, and military power are not substitutes for negotiations but instruments for shaping them. The defining question is no longer whether the two sides will negotiate again, but whether, under such a framework, practical mechanisms can still be established to bind the US to its commitments and make a lasting agreement possible.
NOURNEWS