On the table are three demands the Islamic Republic may find unaffordable: surrender its nuclear program to avert a U.S. strike, and its missiles and proxies to avert an Israeli one.
If war is not to begin—and if tensions between the United States and Iran are not to escalate into direct confrontation—then what happens today is decisive.
In Geneva, Switzerland, Abbas Araghchi and his negotiating team meet their American counterparts. Iran says it has prepared a varied “package.” But the other side does not come to the table with “packaging.” For some time now, the American side has not spoken the language of packages at all. Trump’s negotiating model on Iran is presented as starkly simple: three demands placed on the table, with Tehran left to choose between meeting them and war—three “items” that, in this framing, require no wrapping.
Diplomacy as Spectacle
The British newspaper The Guardian, in a piece published on Tuesday, February 17, 2026, by its diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour, pointed to this difference in negotiating style—one that could itself become a reason for failure. One striking line in that article is the comparison of Trump’s diplomacy to professional wrestling: the spectacle of power matters; victory must look exaggerated; blows must appear lethal and astonishing, all within a performance staged around the winner’s muscular body.
In professional wrestling, the result is decided before anyone steps into the ring; the performance is for the audience, not to alter the outcome.
In Trump’s staged bout with the Islamic Republic, he does not see himself as the loser. He would not even tolerate a “light” strike to his body. The wrestling champion only absorbs blows from an opponent of comparable stature—Russia or China, not Iran. In this reading, the current choreography of Trump’s confrontation with Ali Khamenei is an attempt to test the “possibility of absolute surrender” before the fighting begins.
For the Iranian side, however, the story is cast as entirely different. The Guardian likened the Islamic Republic’s negotiating style to bazaar bargaining: prolonging talks, testing the other side’s limits, and trying to reduce the “price” of concessions through incremental trade-offs.
But there is a difference between bargaining hard to reach your goal and not knowing what you want—getting stuck, again and again, on one point until the “possibility of a deal” evaporates. The record of the Islamic Republic under Khamenei—across negotiation files and security crises—suggests that often the negotiators, and even the decision-makers, do not actually know what they ultimately want.
An Unequal Negotiation
Still, regardless of how each side enters the room, if today is to become the foundation of a new agreement—and not the last meeting before war—both sides would have to offer the other something significant. Yet the key doubt is whether either side is genuinely willing to bend. It is this uncertainty—about whether meaningful flexibility is even possible—that fuels pessimism.
The central obstacle is the asymmetry between the two sides’ positions: one side is negotiating under emergency conditions, the other is not.
Iran wants an agreement. Why? Because the shadow of war hangs over it. Its economy is devastated. Just one month earlier, it killed protesters with ruthless brutality and fears a new round of unrest. On the Islamic Republic’s side, everything is urgent.
On the American side, the picture is entirely different. There is no comparable urgency or anxiety. What matters is achieving strategic goals and securing the legacy of Trump’s presidency. Because the Islamic Republic’s file is tied to those priorities, Washington’s room for flexibility narrows. For Trump and his national security team, taking the first steps in what they frame as a renewed “American Century” project matters. Venezuela is treated as the model; Iran, Cuba, and others must become cautionary examples.
All of this is before even getting to the nature of the bargain—and its price.
The “Grand Bargain” That Isn’t on Offer
Iran’s nuclear file, and the U.S. approach to it, sits at the heart of Trump’s identity-defining difference from presidents like Obama and Biden. Trump has long criticized concessions over Iran’s nuclear program. The Iranian side, by contrast, treats the nuclear program as the price of a “grand bargain”: the ultimate consolidation of the Islamic Republic as a mid-ranking global power. The only “logical formulation” of Ali Khamenei’s gamble, in this framing, is that the Islamic Republic expanded its nuclear program to escape the trap of regional non-status in a Middle East of endless crises—hoping to force a “grand bargain” with Washington.
Yet a major obstacle appears here as well: Trump does not treat Iran’s nuclear program as the centerpiece of a “grand bargain,” but as a security threat to be contained. That is why, in this view, he has never offered a major concession even in exchange for a complete nuclear shutdown.
Even the meaning of a “grand bargain” is disputed. In Tehran’s view, it would mean Washington accepting the Islamic Republic as a relatively peer actor with a recognized sphere of influence in the Middle East—alongside a fairly comprehensive lifting of sanctions and entry into security arrangements among “peer powers.”
At one point, the Islamic Republic believed it could achieve that status by positioning itself at the center of a triangle linking China, Russia, and the United States. The article points to remarks made on February 16, 2026, by former foreign minister and nuclear negotiator Ali Akbar Salehi, who argued Iran should place itself equidistant from the triangle’s “three vertices” in order to navigate global crises.
But to be granted a special place at the focal point of great-power confrontation, you need something bigger than a strategy of “spoiling the game.” The Islamic Republic believed—and perhaps still believes—that the same approach would work. No matter how often it smashes its head against the wall, it has not grasped that the wall is harder than it is crackable. And yet this headbutting refusal to retreat sits at the core of Khamenei’s legacy.
Three Demands, One Outcome
Washington demands zero enrichment. In exchange, it offers no concession beyond not attacking in the short term. And even zero enrichment does not necessarily restrain Israel. The price of safety from an Israeli strike, the article suggests, is surrendering the missile program and the network of regional proxies.
So there are three items on the table whose cost is, in this framing, unaffordable for the Islamic Republic: give up the nuclear program to avert an immediate U.S. attack, and give up missiles and proxies to avert an Israeli attack. And that is all. Tehran must hand over every instrument of power—every chip it has placed on the gambling table—and in return it receives only this: not being struck in the next few minutes.
This is summarized in U.S. senator Lindsey Graham’s remarks on February 16, 2026, in Tel Aviv: the Islamic Republic’s path forward is either “negotiation and regime change” or “war and regime change.”
These are two sharply different mental pictures of the Geneva talks. Washington enters with that mindset. Araghchi and his technical team arrive with their carefully prepared “packages.”
“Pearls for Candy”
Let us now return to an old phrase from the early years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, when Ali Larijani briefly served as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. Criticizing the “de-securitization” of the nuclear file after the Saadabad Agreement and the suspension of enrichment, Larijani famously said: “We gave away pearls and got candy.” In other words, Iran made a high-value concession and received only a trivial return.
Larijani has now returned to that same post two decades later—holding the nuclear file, the specter of war, and the repression of protesters. Perhaps he wishes that, in all three files, a “pearls for candy” trade were still possible. But conditions have changed.
For the current talks to succeed, the Islamic Republic would have to hand over its “treasure chest”—its most valuable leverage—without even expecting “candy” in return. Is such a deal possible? The article ends by saying the answer will become clear very soon.
