Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed in recent days that the Iranian government is not currently willing to engage in substantial negotiations over ending the U.S.-Israeli war, according to U.S. officials.
This has been published in a report by New York Times minutes after Trump’s speech in which he indicated that the war on Iran would continue.
According to NYT, Trump told reporters on Tuesday that the U.S. military would wrap up its campaign against Iran in two to three weeks. But any decision by Iran that it should continue fighting would complicate that objective. The president said in a speech on Wednesday night that “if there is no deal,” the U.S. military would strike “each and every one” of Iran’s power plants, an act that would be widely considered a war crime.
The Iranian government could engage diplomatically under the right conditions, said two Iranian officials and a Pakistani official. Tehran wants to see that Washington is willing to talk seriously about ending the war and not just negotiate a temporary cease-fire, they said. They added that the language in public statements from Iran has been harsher than that of private messages it has passed to the United States.
Those officials and American ones spoke on the condition of anonymity for this article because of the sensitivities around wartime diplomacy and intelligence.Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday that Iran’s “New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!” But he said he would not consider that until Iran allowed ships to safely cross the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranian military has effectively closed by attacking oil tankers.Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said on Wednesday that Mr. Trump’s claim that his country had asked for a cease-fire was “false and baseless,” according to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, or IRIB, the state news organization.
The dilemma over the strait has become a pivot point in the war, as its closure roils global markets and forces countries around the world to make plans to ration fuel.
It was also unclear to whom Mr. Trump was referring when he said “New Regime President.” The initial attacks by the United States and Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and some senior officials, but the president of Iran since 2024, Masoud Pezeshkian, is alive and remains in office. Iranian clerics have appointed a new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the hard-line son of the deceased ayatollah who suffered leg injuries in the first strikes and has not been seen in public, according to Iranian and Israeli officials.
The United States and Iran are exchanging messages through intermediaries and perhaps directly, but are not in negotiations over terms of a cease-fire or ending the war, U.S. and Iranian officials said.Mr. Trump has repeatedly spoken of the possibility of ending the war with a diplomatic settlement, but he has also threatened to escalate the war and expand the range of U.S. targets to energy infrastructure and desalination plants, attacks that many legal experts say would be war crimes.
The intelligence assessments, which appear in multiple reports, have been consistent since the beginning of the conflict, one official said.
Senior Iranian officials continue to resist making the kinds of concessions on its nuclear program and ballistic missile production that the Trump administration has demanded.
Iran says it has a right to build a civilian nuclear program by enriching uranium, which U.S. officials oppose. And Iranian officials see the military’s ballistic missiles as the country’s main form of deterrence, analysts say. Iranian officials perceive the United States and Israel pressuring Iran to give up both of those as an infringement on the country’s sovereignty.he assessments say the Iranian government believes it is in a strong position in the war and does not have to accede to America’s diplomatic demands, the officials said. And while Iran is willing to keep channels open, they said, it does not trust the United States and does not think President Trump is serious about negotiations.
In the last year, Mr. Trump has ordered attacks on Iran twice in the middle of negotiations over the country’s nuclear program.
The assessments align with recent statements from Iranian officials, who reject Mr. Trump’s assertion that the two sides are making progress in discussions mediated by other countries. A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the government in Tehran had not asked for a cease-fire, despite a statement from Mr. Trump that morning that it had, an Iranian state news agency reported.
