"Just when the outcome of a war and the stability of global markets hung in the balance, the president chose spectacle over engagement." The Guardian view on US-Iran talks: Trump’s diplomacy falters as risk of war grows

An American blockade in the strait of Hormuz raises energy-market dangers after failed negotiations – pushing a fragile ceasefire closer to collapse

JD Vance in a televised address before he left Islamabad, Pakistan, on 12 April 2026, without a deal. Photograph: Sohail Shahzad/EPA

As the US vice-president, JD Vance, took to a podium in Pakistan after 21 hours of diplomacy and said no deal had been reached to end the war with Iran, his boss Donald Trump was in Miami watching a mixed martial arts fight. The contrast was stark. Just when the outcome of a war and the stability of global markets hung in the balance, the president chose spectacle over engagement. Mr Trump may intend to project strength. But the impression he creates – in Tehran and among America’s allies – is of a president less interested in the substance of diplomacy than in the politics surrounding it.

The talks in Islamabad didn’t fail accidentally; the US and Iran were talking past each other. Washington’s position is that Iran must abandon its capacity to develop a nuclear weapon, while Tehran insists it is not seeking one and has the right to a civilian nuclear programme. The US vice-president’s “final and best offer” would have required Iran to give up that capacity altogether – terms that looked less like the basis of a negotiation than an attempt to impose the conditions of victory.

Washington also wanted free passage through the strait of Hormuz, a vital global energy artery. Tehran, instead, sought control of the strait through transit fees as well as having sanctions lifted, assets unfrozen and reparations paid, alongside a wider regional ceasefire. Given the gap, the positions were never likely to be reconciled in a single round of negotiations. The result was talks without trust – and a war without resolution.

Winston Churchill rightly argued that jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Talks are preferable because fighting is destructive, unpredictable and costly. The irony is that Mr Trump is negotiating over a nuclear programme that was once contained by a deal he ripped up, while trying to reopen a strait closed by an illegal war he chose to start. A deal between Iran and America – however imperfect – would leave the world better off than continued conflict. This is especially true when markets in oil, gas and finance are so intimately linked.

Time is running out to get back to the negotiating table. The fate of the current ceasefire depends not only on Washington and Tehran, but on Israel, whose forces’ expanded campaign in southern Lebanon... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/12/the-guardian-view-on-us-iran-talks-trumps-diplomacy-falters-as-risk-of-war-grows

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