Negotiation Deadlocks: How Washington and Tehran Navigate the Tug-of-War Across Every Issue?

The Memorandum of Understanding did not constitute a comprehensive or definitive settlement of the nuclear issue. Rather, it served as a temporary truce to freeze military strikes and maritime and nuclear threats, buying time to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that would address the enrichment crisis at its roots. These developments come in the wake of the collapse of the 2015 nuclear agreement following the United States' withdrawal in 2018, which gave Tehran considerable room to expand uranium enrichment, restrict international inspections and accumulate large quantities of uranium enriched to levels approaching those required for the production of a nuclear weapon.   Against this backdrop, the nuclear programme stands out as the Iranian leadership's principal bargaining chip. Although Tehran does not currently possess a nuclear weapon, it has accumulated the technical expertise, established the necessary infrastructure and secured the enriched uranium needed to produce one within a relatively short period should the political decision be taken to do so. This reality underscores that Iran's leverage at the negotiating table is no longer merely theoretical. It is tangible leverage, rooted in Tehran's ability to move rapidly towards weaponisation.   On the operational front, despite US and Israeli strikes targeting nuclear facilities inside Iran, assessments have confirmed only limited damage. Tehran is still strongly believed to retain substantial capacity to continue uranium enrichment. However, experts remain divided over the true extent to which the attacks have set back its nuclear programme. These assessments indicate that military action alone has failed to resolve the nuclear issue, naturally increasing the likelihood of an eventual resumption of negotiations and a return to the diplomatic track.   Against this complex backdrop, a fundamental question remains: will the terms governing the nuclear issue be revised in any future memorandum, or will they remain unchanged from those set out in the "Islamabad Memorandum"? If the parties move towards introducing new amendments, how far can each side go in making concessions to negotiate an end to this chapter?

Negotiations between Washington and Tehran are entering an increasingly complex strategic juncture, with most of the 60-day timeframe established under the "Islamabad Truce" having elapsed without a decisive agreement. This has been accompanied by renewed hostilities and the Strait of Hormuz once again closing to international shipping.   These developments on the ground coincide with intensive international diplomatic efforts to contain the repercussions of an open military conflict that has clearly weighed on regional and global economic growth.   At the heart of this negotiating landscape is the conspicuous absence of the regional proxy issue from both the draft preliminary agreement and the current talks. Rather than signalling that the issue has been sidelined, this absence raises fundamental questions about the future of the complex network that has for decades formed a central pillar of Iran's deterrence doctrine.   Current political dynamics suggest the proxy issue is no longer a secondary matter that can be deferred or ignored. Instead, it has become a structural fault line that cuts across each side's conception of security and stability, as well as the limits of any viable settlement.   Its exclusion from the initial formulations reflects a clear recognition of how difficult it would be to incorporate the issue without directly confronting red lines at the intersection of Iran's deterrence doctrine, the US vision of regional security, and Israel's efforts to translate military pressure into irreversible negotiating gains.   The dilemma takes on even greater significance in light of recent macroeconomic analyses indicating that the costs of proxy involvement have extended well beyond direct military losses, striking at the heart of the global economy. Proxy-related operations along critical maritime corridors, particularly in the Red Sea, have severely disrupted supply chains and inflicted tens of billions of dollars in losses on international trade through unprecedented surges in shipping and insurance costs. They have also created unconventional threats to the security of digital infrastructure, most notably subsea fibre-optic cable networks.   Security experts emphasise that the structural attrition the Axis of Resistance suffered during the intense confrontations of 2024 and 2025 prompted Tehran's leadership to reassess its tactics and instruments, but not to abandon them.   The crisis stems from a fundamental divergence in the actors' perspectives. Iran regards its network of proxies as a forward line of defence and an integral component of its national security, integrating these groups with its missile and drone capabilities. Washington and Tel Aviv, backed by regional powers, by contrast, view dismantling and disarming these groups as a mandatory precondition for any new regional security architecture.   This reality places the proxy issue at a critical intersection between three complex levels: Iran's pursuit of strategic depth for its defence; US efforts to neutralise sources of asymmetric threat; and regional and international concerns that link market stability and freedom of navigation to ending the activities of these groups around maritime chokepoints and in the Eastern Mediterranean. Any settlement that fails to define the place and functions of these proxies would therefore amount to little more than a fragile truce vulnerable to rapid erosion.   This section examines the divergent perspectives of the key actors on the regional proxy crisis. It assesses how these competing positions may clash or converge behind closed doors at the negotiating table. The paper asks a central question: will these discussions translate into strategic trade-offs that underpin a comprehensive and sustainable settlement, or will divergence between the parties' red lines reduce the anticipated agreement to little more than a temporary tactical freeze before an even more violent round of conflict?   This issue was written on August 2, 2026

Iran's missile programme and drone arsenal constitute one of the Middle East's principal security determinants. Before the outbreak of military hostilities in February 2026, Iran possessed the region's largest stockpile of ballistic missiles. Estimates varied, placing its inventory at between 2,500 and 6,000 long-range missiles capable of striking deep inside Israel at speeds approaching 17,000 kilometres per hour. This coincided with Tehran consolidating its position as a leading developer of drones, particularly the various Shahed models, the Karrar series, and the latest Kaman variant unveiled in January 2026.   The strategic significance of these capabilities became evident during the war, when they became a top priority for U.S. and Israeli strikes. Production facilities, storage sites, and launch platforms were targeted in an effort to degrade Iran's deterrent capabilities and neutralise the threat they posed to Israel. This military escalation was consistent with the pre-war U.S. position, which had signalled its intention to prevent Tehran from acquiring ballistic missiles and stressed the need to incorporate this issue into the nuclear negotiations. In practice, this was reflected in the simultaneous targeting of the infrastructure underpinning both the missile and nuclear programmes.   However, the launch of the negotiation process introduced a new strategic dimension to the issue through the Islamabad Memorandum. Contrary to expectations that Iran's military capabilities would be incorporated into the initial agreement, both the missile and drone programmes were excluded from the preliminary understanding.   The Trump administration subsequently announced a departure from its previous position, stating that it was not seeking to prevent Tehran from rebuilding its missile capabilities, citing Iran's sovereign right to self-defence. This shift reflects a strategic trade-off based on temporarily overlooking the missile programme in exchange for containing the nuclear programme and restricting the funding of armed groups across the region.   This exclusion is not merely a procedural feature of the negotiations. Rather, it raises fundamental questions about the trajectory of the sixty-day transitional period and the strategy each party is likely to pursue thereafter. This situation requires an assessment that goes beyond measuring battlefield losses to understand how these capabilities have evolved from mere weapons systems into a fundamental pillar of the regional balance of power, imposing themselves on regional strategic calculations.   This issue was written on July 2, 2026

The Strait of Hormuz is no longer merely a disputed maritime passage, nor simply a recurring flashpoint between Iran and the United States. It has instead evolved into a central arena for testing the meaning of sovereignty in the region. While Washington continues to regard the strait as an international waterway governed by the principle of freedom of navigation, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps treats it as a sovereign zone under its direct administration, subject to military rules imposed through effective ground control. Accordingly, the core of the crisis no longer centres on the question, "Is the strait open or closed?" Rather, the more consequential question has become: what is the future of the strait in light of the ongoing negotiations?   Recent developments, particularly following the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to what it described as violations of the terms of the memorandum of understanding, especially about the Lebanese file just days after the memorandum was signed, reveal that the issue has not been resolved but has instead grown more complex. The memorandum treated the strait as a technical issue that could be managed through arrangements governing passage and transit to prevent friction. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, by contrast, approached it as a symbol of sovereignty, power, and the right to set the rules. This divergence rendered the understanding itself incapable of resolving the underlying dispute, because the disagreement between the two sides lies not in procedural details, but in who holds the authority to determine those procedures in the first place.   Although the United States and Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz immediately after signing the preliminary agreement, this does not necessarily mean that maritime traffic will return to pre-war levels. Implementing this provision presents complex challenges related to the mechanism for reactivating the shipping corridor, the arrangements required to resume vessel traffic, and the restrictions that may persist during the sixty days allocated to negotiate the final agreement. These challenges are further compounded by the dispute over which party will assume responsibility for regulating and managing maritime traffic through the strait. Taken together, these obstacles suggest that reopening the strait may prove one of the most complex aspects of the agreement, particularly given the ongoing divergence between the American and Iranian visions for the future control of this strategic waterway.   The crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, therefore, cannot be understood merely as a dispute over borders or the passage of ships; it is fundamentally a crisis of authority: the authority to set the rules, to impose exceptions, and to exercise the final say in determining whether this waterway remains open, closed, or conditionally accessible. For this reason, the question of the strait should no longer be viewed as a secondary file within the broader Iran–United States conflict. Rather, it should be recognised as one of the most consequential issues shaping and redefining the very concept of sovereignty, both within Iran itself and in the evolving structure of relations between regional and international powers.