Trump said he hoped negotiations with Iran could resume as early as Friday. However, the internal rifts within the Khomeinist regime risk further extending the timeframe
The situation regarding the Iranian crisis remains uncertain. On Tuesday, Donald Trump extended the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran indefinitely in the hope that talks between the two belligerents can restart. At the same time, the American president left the blockade of Iranian ports in place, to keep the pressure on the Khomeini regime high.
All this, while on Wednesday he hoped that a new round of negotiations could be held as early as Friday. Nonetheless, an American official told Axios that the White House intends to set some limits. «Trump is ready to grant another three or five days of ceasefire, to allow the Iranians to get back on their feet. This will not be an indefinite ceasefire,” he said. The American president finds himself facing a double problem.
On the one hand, it needs to end the conflict quickly, albeit in a way acceptable to Washington. This means that Trump wants to make a better nuclear deal than Barack Obama, but he needs to do it quickly, to lead to a rapid decrease in energy prices. Let’s not forget that the high cost of gasoline in the United States poses a significant vulnerability for the Republican Party ahead of the November midterm elections.
On the other hand, Trump does not have a compact interlocutor in front of him. The Khomeinist regime is in fact divided between two currents. The first is the dialogue one: a current which, led by President Masoud Pezehkian, fears Washington’s economic pressure on Tehran and which would therefore like to hurry to reach an agreement with the United States. The second faction, however, is headed by the Pasdaran and does not want to hear about dealing with the White House. The Revolutionary Guards aim to keep Hormuz closed in the hope of dealing Trump a major blow in the November elections. In the middle, there is the figure of the president of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has long been trying to find a synthesis between these two positions which are difficult to reconcile.
The paradox therefore lies in the fact that the weakness of the Khomeinist regime, internally torn apart, risks having negative repercussions on a White House which, as mentioned, needs to quickly close the conflict and reopen Hormuz. From this perspective, Trump is betting everything on the fact that the maritime blockade will further bring Tehran to its knees, leading to the isolation of the Pasdaran and their consequent loss of influence on the fate of the negotiations. We’ll see whether, in the next few hours, the situation will begin to unblock or not.
