Middle East & Africa | Middle East peace talks

Trump v Iran: a negotiation made in hell

The president is unreliable. The Islamic Republic is inflexible

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attends a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister.
Photograph: Getty Images
|DUBAI|5 min read

ABBAS ARAGHCHI is no stranger to the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva. He spent time there in 2013 working to negotiate an interim deal that froze parts of Iran’s nuclear programme. It paved the way for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a more detailed agreement signed two years later. The latter was supposed to eliminate both the threat of an Iranian bomb and the threat of Israel attacking Iran. It did neither, because Donald Trump withdrew from the pact in 2018.

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