One of the biggest obstacles to peace negotiations with Iran is history. Three quarters of a century of experience with the United States has taught Iran caution, starting with the 1953 betrayal that took out the popular and democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in a U.S. supported coup. During the current rounds of war and negotiation, American perfidy has repeatedly interrupted talks with missiles.
“Due to the experiences of the two previous wars, we have no trust in the opposing side,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of Iranian Parliament and one of the leaders of the Iran negotiating team. “The opposing side ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this [first] round of negotiations.”
Yet, it is CIA Director John Ratcliffe who, with the United States having signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran and being on the verge of a lasting peace, is counselling President Donald Trump not to trust Iran. Radcliffe is advising Trump that “evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raises serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions the U.S. is seeking in any final deal.” In high-level meetings, he has “expressed concerns and raised questions” about the Memorandum of Understanding that Trump signed. Radcliffe says U.S. intelligence agencies have gathered intel suggesting that Iranian officials are talking one way to American mediators and a different way among themselves.
While Vice President J.D. Vance has argued in favor of the memorandum, Radcliffe has been joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in questioning it.
This is an unsurprising trio of saboteurs. The three have been hawks generally, and Iran war hawks specifically, since before day one. Rubio has a hawkish history on nearly every issue, as Cubans and Venezuelans can testify. Though it was demonstrably working, Rubio favored illegally pulling out of the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran. He advocated the authorization of force without limits against Iran, including sending U.S. forces. In 2015, Rubio said that the U.S. “should never, ever take off the table the notion that it may be necessary to conduct some sort of nucle – uh, military strike against their nuclear ambition.”
When Trump appointed Ratcliffe head of the CIA, he praised his appointee as a “fearless fighter” who will ensure “PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.” Better known as a China hawk, Ratcliffe is an Iran hawk as well. He has a history of arguing that past U.S. administrations have not been tough enough on Iran.
Hegseth has personified that transition from Department of Defense to Department of War. He has implemented war on Iran without rules of engagement, quarter or mercy. He has advocated for “negotiat[ing] with bombs.”
Radcliffe has a shaky interpretation of purported Persian conversations; Iran has the historical record.
Trump says the historic achievement of the Memorandum is that Iran has agreed that “they will not develop, purchase [or] acquire a nuclear weapon.” But Iran has repeatedly made that promise. They made it legally when they signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Agreement. They made it religiously and morally when first Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and then Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled that nuclear weapons are unlawful in Islam. Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa that declared nuclear weapons to be forbidden by Islam. Iran made the promise again with the 2015 signing of The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Though Trump says that the JCPOA “was a road to a Nuclear weapon for Iran” and that “Our Deal is a WALL against Iran ever having a Nuclear weapon,” that is not true. The very first paragraph of the JCPOA states that “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.”
Iran was consistently and demonstrably in compliance with all their commitments under the agreement. It was Trump who broke faith, betrayed Iran and unilaterally and illegally pulled the United States out of the agreement.
When, despite this history of nuclear negotiations with Trump, Iran returned to the negotiating table, the U.S. three times bombed Iran while negotiating.
On February 27, 2026, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who was mediating the talks, said that “a peace deal is within our reach” if diplomacy were given “enough room and enough space.” He was “dismayed” when the U.S. bombed Iran the next day, saying that “Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined.”
In the most recent round of negotiations, the U.S. did it again, bombing Iran at a crucial stage in the promising talks; though Trump said he “felt badly that we had to [go] back on the attack for two nights”.
Each time Iran has negotiated a nuclear agreement with a Trump administration, whether in the first term or the second, the United States has delivered betrayal and broken promises.
Other negotiations with the U.S. have also taught Iran distrust. When President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani exerted Iran’s influence to help win the release of American hostages in Lebanon, President H.W. Bush promised that, in return, Iran’s help would “be long remembered” and that “goodwill begets goodwill.” But it wasn’t, and it didn’t. Instead, Bush betrayed Rafsanjani, and the U.S. broke its promise, sending word that Rafsanjani should expect no American reciprocation.
And yet, it is the American CIA Director who is counselling distrust of Iran. So deep is Iran’s distrust of America that Iran’s President, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, commented that the reason the majority of members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council approved the text of the Memorandum was so that “America’s genuine commitment to respecting the rights of the Iranian nation could be tested in practice.”
