The 12-day war in June, which saw the United States join Israel in bombing Iran, was the culmination of four decades of mistrust, antipathy, and confrontation. Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic has not wavered in its anti-Americanism, and the United States has unfailingly responded by exerting greater pressure on Iran. The two have come close to outright conflict before. In 1987 and 1988, the United States destroyed offshore oil platforms and Iranian naval vessels and then mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger plane. Iran interpreted those acts as the opening salvos of an undeclared war. Washington’s attention, however, soon turned to Iraq and the Gulf War. But the hostility between Iran and the United States persisted and has only become more pronounced in the decades that have followed the 9/11 attacks. The 2020 killing of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, after a spate of Iranian provocations in the region, brought the two countries to the precipice. U.S. President Donald Trump pushed hostilities over the edge this year when the United States struck three Iranian nuclear sites with dozens of cruise missiles and 30,000-pound bombs.
Tehran and Washington seem to be implacable foes. The revolutionary regime in Iran has long cast the United States as its archenemy, the Great Satan that undermined the country’s independence by backing a military coup in 1953 and the authoritarian excesses of the monarchy that followed. In 1979, the revolution’s leaders worried that the United States would continue to interfere in Iran and stymie the great transformation underway. To prevent that outcome, the Islamic Republic decided that the United States should be extricated not just from Iran but from the broader Middle East. These assumptions set Tehran’s foreign policy on a collision course with Washington. Iran has supported states and militant groups around the region with the aim of threatening the United States and its Israeli and Arab allies. In turn, the United States has pursued a strategy of containment and pressure that has included U.S.-led regional alliances, U.S. military bases, and a tight noose of sanctions suffocating Iran’s economy. Finally, this year, that strategy widened to include overt American strikes on Iranian territory.
Many observers perceive this history as a single, unbroken thread of conflict and hostility stretching from 1979 to the present. And yet today’s hostility was not inevitable. More peaceful paths were possible, and indeed, with the right decisions in Tehran and Washington, Iran and the United States could still find ways to lower tensions and even normalize their relations. On several occasions in the twenty-first century alone, Iran and the United States had the opportunity to climb down from their mutual hostility. At each juncture, however, American or Iranian policymakers chose to foreclose those possible openings. But that history of missed chances does not condemn the two countries to a future of ever-deeper conflict. Instead, it offers a reminder that even today, Iran and the United States may yet be able to reconcile.
The 12-day war has demonstrably weakened Iran. Tehran’s strategy is no longer sustainable in the wake of the battering that it has suffered. In this moment, Washington could continue boxing Iran into a corner and allow Israel to occasionally “mow the grass,” striking Iranian nuclear and military targets to keep punishing the country and block any progress toward building a bomb. Or it could see the aftermath of the 12-day war as an opportunity to engage in that fitful American pastime when it comes to Iran: diplomacy. Now, Washington has the chance to set its relations with Tehran on a different path, to pursue fresh bargains that could change both Iran’s foreign and nuclear policies and the balance of power within Iran’s ruling establishment. The U.S. and Iranian governments have failed to take those turnings before, but even now, policymakers should not be fatalistic. The past, no matter how freighted with lost opportunities, need not be prologue.
A FALSE DAWN IN AFGHANISTAN
For at least a little while after 9/11, it seemed possible that relations between Iran and the United States could improve. Both Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mohammad Khatami condemned the terrorist attacks, and Iranians held candlelit vigils in the streets of major cities and observed moments of silence in soccer stadiums. The strategic interests of Iran and the United States were suddenly aligned. Reeling from the assault, the United States maintained as its most urgent priority the elimination of al-Qaeda. Iran’s Shiite clerical regime viewed the Sunni radicalism of al-Qaeda and its hosts, the Taliban, with deep concern. Only three years earlier, in 1998, the Taliban had killed up to 11 Iranian diplomats and journalists in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif, an atrocity that spurred Iran to mobilize troops on its border with Afghanistan. After years of antagonism, Iranian and U.S. officials found that they had some goals in common.
Iran had long backed the Taliban’s principal foes, the Northern Alliance. Only days before the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda operatives posing as journalists killed Ahmad Shah Masoud, the Northern Alliance’s legendary leader, an assassination that signaled an imminent Taliban offensive to wipe out the Northern Alliance once and for all and consolidate control of Afghanistan. Shiite Iran feared the regional ascendance of Sunni radicalism in the form of the puritanical Taliban, an ambitious al-Qaeda, and other militant factions, as well as further instability on its eastern border—Iran was then, and remains now, home to many Afghan refugees. Some estimates in recent years have placed the figure as high as eight million, roughly ten percent of the population.
Through forms of cooperation that seem incredible today, Iran abetted the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps offered intelligence assistance to the United States and provided logistical support, facilitating battlefield coordination with Northern Alliance forces. U.S. diplomats Ryan Crocker and Zalmay Khalilzad attended meetings with Iranian counterparts and top IRGC officers, including senior commanders, possibly even Soleimani. Just over two months after the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban had been chased out of Kabul and other major cities. The Taliban’s so-called emirate in Afghanistan was no more.
Iran and the United States could still normalize their relations.
Iran had a vested interest in shaping the government that would replace the Taliban. It worked closely with the United States at the Bonn conference in December 2001 that decided the future of Afghanistan. The two countries shared the same goals of crafting a new political order in Afghanistan that would unite and stabilize it through an inclusive democratic government. James Dobbins, who led the U.S. efforts at the conference, later credited his Iranian counterpart, the diplomat Javad Zarif, for building the consensus among all Afghan factions over forging a new constitution and holding democratic elections to form a new government in Kabul. And Zarif in turn credited Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guards commander, for securing compromises from the Northern Alliance to facilitate agreement in Bonn.
In retrospect, this rare collaboration was an opportunity to improve relations between Iran and the United States. Working together in Afghanistan could have served as a significant confidence-building measure, as well as the impetus for the de-escalation of tensions and then potentially even the gradual normalization of relations. Success in Afghanistan could have placed the relationship on a different course.
That did not come to pass. In January 2002, almost immediately after the Bonn conference, Israel intercepted an Iranian arms shipment to Hamas. For Iran, cooperation with the United States in Afghanistan did not constitute a reorientation of Iranian strategy that would apply to all aspects of Iran’s regional policy. What happened in Afghanistan was just a tentative opening that had yet to fully bear fruit; Tehran would not so quickly reverse its Middle East policy, and it would still build up its proxies. U.S.President George W. Bush signaled outrage and alarm. He then decided against using the opening in Afghanistan to embrace Iran and gently push for change in its regional policy. Instead, he cast Iran as an implacable enemy and dispensed with the goodwill generated by developments in Afghanistan. In his State of the Union address in January 2002, Bush famously included Iran among the members of the “axis of evil.”
Fresh from what seemed a swift and sure victory in Afghanistan, a buoyant Washington devoted its energies to the prosecution of the so-called war on terror. And in that war, Iran could only be a target, not an ally; its cooperation in Afghanistan no longer counted for much. After all, as many U.S. officials believed, Islamist ideology became a global phenomenon because of the success of Iran’s revolution in 1979 (never mind that the Iranian regime’s resolute Shiism separated it from the Sunni militancy of groups such as al-Qaeda). Islamism, according to this view, would not be defeated until the Islamic Republic had been toppled. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in March 2003, many Iranians feared that it was only a matter of time before American forces came for them. In the words of Hassan Kazemi Qomi,Iran’s first ambassador to Baghdad following the U.S. invasion and the fall of Iraq’s ruler Saddam Hussein, “After Iraq was Iran’s turn.” So Iran tried to placate the United States. In May 2003, Khatami, the country’s reformist president, sent Washington a proposal for talks and a road map to resolve “all outstanding issues between the two countries,” including, notably, Iran’s nascent nuclear program and its broader policy in the Middle East. The White House did not even acknowledge receiving the offer.
People protesting the U.S attack on Iranian nuclear sites in Tehran, June 2025 Majid Asgaripour / West Asia News Agency / Reuters
The rebuff led the Islamic Republic to harden its positions and prepare itself for conflict. In stark contrast to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. invasion of Iraq produced no opening with Iran, but rather placed the two countries at odds. With good reason, given the number of Bush administration officials who viewed Tehran as a grave threat,Iran believed it had to protect itself. In the chaos that followed the fall of Saddam, Iran possibly partnered with Syria to deepen the quagmire that the United States now faced in Iraq. The Sunni insurgency, supported by Syria, and the Shiite militias, supported by Iran, battled U.S. forces. As violence consumed Iraq, the American project there was doomed to failure.
Iranian leaders thus averted what they feared most: a triumphant U.S. military in Iraq continuing its campaign east into Iran. But American views of Iran only grew darker. Iran, for its part, concluded that it could best manage the American threat by bogging down U.S. resources in various theaters around the Middle East. Exhausted by protracted conflict, the United States would grow weary of the region and not seek war with Iran. Washington’s decision to pull forces out of Iraq in 2011 seemed to vindicate this line of Iranian thinking. The more U.S. officials talked of leaving the region, the more Iran saw wisdom in its strategy.
This strategy also had the effect of transforming the balance of power within Iran. The security forces at the forefront of the fight against Washington gained control of Iran’s foreign policy. In the crucible of Iraq, the Quds Force, the expeditionary division of the IRGC that oversees unconventional military and intelligence operations, grew from one of its smallest units into an expansive regional force that would dominate Iran’s foreign policy decision-making. The Quds Force commanders, Soleimani and his deputy Esmail Qaani, had worked with U.S. counterparts in Afghanistan in 2001. During the Iraq war, they would turn the force into a military network to battle the United States across the Middle East.
BREAKOUT OR BREAKTHROUGH?
The false dawn in relations with the United States after the 9/11 attacks convinced Iranian leaders that Washington would never be willing to accommodate revolutionary Iran. Tehran understood U.S. policies, including the building of military bases in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, and Central Asia and the strengthening of sanctions on the Iranian economy, as all aimed at engineering regime change in Tehran. In the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war, Iran’s rulers surmised that they had to resist and deter the United States through enacting aggressive regional policies, building a nuclear program, and strengthening Iran’s drone and missile capabilities. The country’s economy, state institutions, and politics had to be organized in the service of that resistance.
Another revelation had further poisoned the well: Iran’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons. Its nuclear program had come to light as the United States was preparing for the Iraq war. At the time, after the inclusion of Iran in the “axis of evil,” U.S.-Iranian relations were already on a downward slope. The discovery of a clandestine nuclear program only increased the prospect of conflict. Iran assumed that the United States would make this nuclear program a casus belli, as it had in its justification of the invasion of Iraq. Washington, for its part, did not want a member of the “axis of evil” to acquire nuclear capabilities. But by the end of the Bush administration in 2009, U.S. officials had grown disinterested in military solutions to their Iran problem as the United States continued to founder in Iraq. Diplomacy, not war, would have to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions. And so opened another opportunity for Iran and the United States to edge away from conflict toward a more peaceful relationship.
The United States could have taken this path sooner. In 2003, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom negotiated a deal with Iran that would have halted the growth of its still small nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The Bush administration forced the deal to collapse in 2004, insisting that Iran give up the entirety of its nuclear program and offering no concessions in return.
Nuclear diplomacy should be the floor, not the ceiling, of the relationship.
In hindsight, the veto proved a mistake. Unconstrained, Iran’s nuclear program continued to expand as the anti-American bombast and Holocaust denial of the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made diplomacy much more difficult. Tehran also grew further convinced that Washington was not interested in meaningful diplomatic engagement, even on the nuclear issue. Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in 2003, Hassan Rouhani, would try his hand at nuclear diplomacy when he became president in 2013, after he succeeded Ahmadinejad. But in 2004, he and other Iranian leaders concluded that the United States had so swiftly dismissed the European-negotiated deal because Iran’s program was too small to be worthy of American diplomacy and concessions. Iran would need a much bigger program to compel the United States to the negotiating table. That presumption undergirded Iranian activities during the Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations. And at each turn, failure to forge a lasting nuclear deal would only encourage Iran to expand its program even more.
Had Washington supported the European effort, Iran’s nuclear program would likely have remained small, and the deal itself might have had transformative consequences. It could have led Tehran to fear Washington less, and as a result, Iran would then have behaved differently in Iraq and not so readily courted American enmity. Instead, the U.S. veto further convinced Tehran that its reading of American intentions was correct. Washington would be impressed only by might. To deter the United States, Iran had to both build a larger nuclear program and widen its asymmetric warfare in Iraq and beyond.
Iran was right to assume that a larger nuclear program would change Washington’s calculations. By 2011, Iran’s program had grown significantly, and although estimates vary, it was still not close to the breakout stage. That failed to reassure Israel. Spooked by the pace of Iran’s progress, Israel threatened to attack Iran to prevent it from getting any closer to a bomb. But the last thing the Obama administration wanted was entanglement in another Middle Eastern war. It determined that the only way to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power was through diplomacy.
President Barack Obama paved the way for negotiations by first increasing economic sanctions on Iran in 2010 but then adopting a different tone, making it clear to Tehran that Washington was not seeking regime change. Obama understood that sweeping ultimatums and coercion would not get Iran to dispense with its nuclear program. The United States thus agreed to negotiate limits on Iran’s program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Khamenei attends a mourning ceremony after Iran’s war with Israel, in Tehran, July 2025 Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader / Reuters
For their part, Iran’s rulers were conflicted about Obama’s offer. The IRGC and its political allies were skeptical that the Obama administration would differ much from its predecessor. They thought diplomacy would not yield meaningful results but would signal weakness and divert attention from the threat that the United States posed to Iran. But a moderate faction, led by Rouhani, who became president in 2013, argued that successful diplomacy with the United States would lower tensions, ease pressure on Iran’s economy, and reset relations between the two countries. This faction hoped that diplomacy would yield the positive outcomes that had eluded Iran in its prior attempts at rapprochement with the United States: its cooperation in Afghanistan in 2001, its offer of talks in 2003, and the nuclear deal signed with Europe in 2003 but scotched after Washington refused to go along with it.
Two years of intense talks followed among Iran, China, Russia, the United States, and the three European powers that had negotiated the prior deal. They culminated in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In exchange for sanctions relief, the JCPOA placed strict limits on the scope of Iran’s nuclear activities for at least a decade and subjected those activities to stringent international inspections. There has been much debate since on whether the deal effectively curbed Iran’s nuclear ambitions and whether the United States could have made sterner demands on Iran at the negotiating table—a doubt echoed in Tehran by the deal’s detractors there who believed that Iran had given too much away in exchange for too little. But the deal did roll back Iran’s program, and in 11 separate reports, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, attested to Iran’s compliance with the terms of the JCPOA. The JCPOA was significant in another important way: it represented a breakthrough in U.S.-Iranian relations. After decades of hostility, the United States and Iran had finally concluded a deal and, at least as far as Iran was concerned, successfully implemented it.
The JCPOA was a major accomplishment in trust building. Had it lasted, the deal could have served as the basis for subsequent agreements on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and its regional policies. The relaxation of sanctions on the Iranian economy could have changed political dynamics within Tehran by strengthening the hand of moderate factions reliant on middle-class votes and weakening the influence of conservatives and hard-liners in foreign policy decisions. In time, relations between Iran and the United States could have moved toward greater normalization.
And yet the deal did not deliver the widening thaw that some of its proponents hoped for. Agreeing to the JCPOA did not immediately change Iran’s broader strategy. The IRGC and its political allies in the parliament and in powerful parastatal economic and political institutions thought that despite the diplomatic breakthrough, there was no evidence of fundamental change in U.S.-Iranian relations. The United States still posed an urgent threat and had made no effort to change that perception. Hard-liners in Tehran pointed to the furious domestic opposition to the JCPOA in the United States as proof that U.S. policy toward Iran would remain unchanged. In the months following the signing of the deal, Washington dragged its feet in lifting sanctions on Tehran, and that steadily soured the mood in Iran. Iranian hard-liners argued that it had all been a ruse to strip Iran of its nuclear assets, making it vulnerable to U.S.-backed regime change. Iran should therefore continue with those regional policies—such as its commitment to supporting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, the Houthi rebellion in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and various militias in Iraq—that since 2003 had been indispensable in deterring American aggression.
The convulsions of the Arab Spring further complicated Iran’s calculus. Tehran saw the popular unrest that swept across the Arab world as a new opportunity to expand its regional footprint. That opportunity came with new dangers. The fall of Assad in Syria, an Iranian ally, would have been a significant strategic loss. It would have isolated and weakened Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah. A resurgent Sunni government in Syria backed by Western powers and other Arab powers could have rolled back Iran’s gains in Iraq, too. Iran sensed that the United States was trying to hack off the tentacles of the octopus—before chopping off its head in Tehran. Iran’s rulers, particularly the IRGC and its political allies, concluded that the real aim of American efforts to topple Assad was the end of the Islamic Republic. The IRGC would resist that outcome at all costs. As its commander in charge in Syria put it, “What we lose in losing Syria exceeds what we have at stake in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.” Iran thus forcefully intervened in Syria to save Assad starting in 2011, and in the same year also threw its full support behind Houthi forces in Yemen that had gained the upper hand in civil war there.
Iran did not cause the JCPOA to collapse. The United States did.
Tehran, in effect, chose a precarious balancing act: it shrank its nuclear program but protected and expanded its regional footprint in confrontation with the United States and its Arab allies, notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Those allies saw little benefit in the nuclear deal but had much to fear from Iran’s regional power play. They wanted the United States to focus on containing Iran’s regional influence rather than just the country’s nuclear program. They joined hands with Israel, which also opposed U.S. diplomacy with Iran, to lobby against the JCPOA in Washington almost as soon as the deal was signed in 2015. These efforts were rewarded when Trump formally removed the United States from the JCPOA in 2018.
Iran’s foreign policy between 2014 and 2018 was deeply conflicted. In the words of Zarif, the foreign minister during that period, Iran was paralyzed by a struggle between diplomacy and the battlefield—the latter being his euphemism for the IRGC and its regional strategy—and it suffered for “favoring the battlefield over diplomacy.” For its part, U.S. policy fixated on the actions of the Revolutionary Guards rather than on what nuclear diplomacy had just achieved. Washington did not consider then the possibility of using success at the negotiating table as the basis for influencing Tehran’s regional posture. It succumbed to the idea that the JCPOA was insufficient because it had not encompassed Iran’s regional policies. Rather than abandon diplomacy to punish Iran for its regional behavior, the United States could have held on to its diplomatic gains even as it pushed back against Iran’s regional policies. In other words, it could have stayed in the JCPOA and used that leverage to pursue a further deal that would have curtailed Iranian aggression in the region.
If the United States had followed this path, Iran’s nuclear program would have remained limited by the parameters established by the JCPOA; even after Israeli and American bombing, Iran’s nuclear program is probably much closer to breakout than it was in the past decade, at least in terms of know-how and the ability to rebuild an advanced program. The longer the deal had stayed in effect, the more trust it would have built between Iran and the United States, which Washington could then have used to influence Tehran’s regional behavior.
A successful nuclear deal could have lowered Iranian perceptions of a threat from the United States. That, in turn, would have allowed Iran to roll back its troublesome regional activities and even discuss limits on its missile program. The economic gains that would have come with remaining in the JCPOA would have convinced Iran to comply with the deal and not use the cover of diplomacy for further provocations. Despite frustration in Tehran with the slow pace of sanctions relief, Iran did not cause the JCPOA to collapse. The United States did. That remains the most significant lost opportunity for repairing relations between the two countries.
A FATEFUL WITHDRAWAL
The disintegration of the JCPOA drastically escalated tensions between Tehran and Washington. After scrapping the deal, Trump imposed intense sanctions on Iran as part of a campaign of “maximum pressure.” The stated aim of that campaign was to force Iran back to the negotiating table. But Iran perceived Trump’s ploy as nothing short of a bid to bring about regime change by strangling the country’s economy and degrading its state institutions to encourage popular rebellion. Iran responded by vigorously resuming nuclear activity, enriching uranium beyond levels allowed by the JCPOA. It also took more aggressive actions across the Middle East in 2019, starting with an attack on oil tankers in the waters of the United Arab Emirates in May, then the downing of a U.S. drone in June, and then an attack on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia in September. This escalation of violence spurred a seismic event: Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani, the Quds Force commander, in January 2020, while the general was in Iraq. His death outraged Iranians. The Islamic Republic retaliated by striking a military base in Iraq that housed American troops. Iran and the United States then stood on the brink of war. In under five years, the hope of a new opening in relations had given way to open conflict.
The election of Joe Biden as president in 2020 and the return of a Democratic administration in 2021 could have halted the spiraling tensions. During the campaign, Democratic candidates, including Biden, had signaled their willingness to revive the JCPOA. Once in office, however, Biden demurred. Rather than revert to the Obama-era policy, he embraced Trump’s position of maximum pressure. The administration insisted that Iran had to first fulfill all its obligations under the JCPOA, and only then would the United States consider returning to the deal. In the meantime, maximum pressure sanctions would remain in place. The early months of the Biden administration coincided with the tail end of Rouhani’s presidency. Rouhani and his team had been architects of the JCPOA and wanted to see it restored. But they did not find a willing partner in Biden. What Tehran saw was continuity; Biden, like his predecessor, wanted regime change in Iran.
The United States did agree to talks with Iran in Vienna in April 2021. But by then, Iran had concluded that there would be no real change in U.S. policy. Iranian leaders announced that the country would start enriching uranium to 60 percent purity. The escalation was alarming because it would bring Iran much closer to breakout. In the face of this threat, the Biden administration changed course to put greater emphasis on talks with Iran, discussing concrete steps that would bring the United States back into the JCPOA and remove sanctions on Iran in exchange for its full compliance with its obligations under the deal. By then, however, the Rouhani presidency was at its end. He was soon to be replaced by a hard-line opponent of the JCPOA, Ebrahim Raisi.
It was in this context that Iran decided to back Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine in 2022. Iran had developed close intelligence and military ties with Russia during the Syrian civil war (Russia also took the side of Assad), but it now saw its strategic partnership with Moscow as vital to surviving determined American efforts to isolate and crush the Islamic Republic. This support for Russia, in turn, alienated Europe and gave Washington even more reason to pressure Tehran. U.S.-Iranian relations thus became entangled with the United States’ and Europe’s clash with an expansionist Russia. Had the Biden administration concluded a deal with Iran before Russia attacked Ukraine, Tehran would have seen too much at stake in its relations with Europe to contemplate helping Russia in Ukraine. But since Biden was not willing to break with Trump’s policy to restore the deal agreed to by Obama, Iran decided it needed to strengthen its ties with Russia, and that in turn made the job of diplomacy all the more difficult. Both Iran and the United States trusted the other even less than before, and Washington had to contend with a more intractable Tehran. Indirect talks between Iran, the United States, and other JCPOA signatories could not produce a breakthrough. The Biden administration would not guarantee that a deal would last, since any agreement could be undone after a change of government, and the hard-liners at the helm in Tehran were unwilling to risk another U.S. withdrawal from a negotiated deal.
FROM THE RUBBLE
In the subsequent years, Iran’s regional position has unraveled significantly. After the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023, Israel has systematically pummeled Iranian proxies in the region, doing serious damage to Hamas in Gaza and defanging Hezbollah in Lebanon. The collapse of Assad’s regime, in December 2024, left Iran without one of its most useful regional allies and raised the prospect of the emergence of an anti-Iranian, Sunni-led Syria. In 2024 and 2025, Israeli forces struck deep into Iranian territory, exposing huge intelligence vulnerabilities in Iran’s security establishment as well as the Islamic Republic’s relative inability to hurt Israel with its arsenal of missiles and drones. And yet even after the devastation unleashed on Iran’s nuclear sites by Trump, much remains unknown about the state of the Iranian nuclear program and the possibility that Iranian leaders, bludgeoned into a corner, could still scramble to develop a bomb.
President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the national security team meet in the White House Situation Room in Washington, D.C., June 2025 Daniel Torok / Reuters
If Trump does not want Iran to follow the example of North Korea and become a nuclear state—and does not want to continue to go to war with Iran to prevent that outcome—then his administration must look for a diplomatic solution. Iran, likewise, does not want war with the United States, and it cannot quickly or easily build an arsenal of nuclear weapons to deter Israeli and U.S. attacks. Tehran has little choice but to take diplomacy seriously. Iran and the United States have been at similar junctures before, picking between confrontation and compromise. The two countries should embrace diplomacy not only to conclude an urgent deal on Iran’s nuclear capabilities but also to build trust and chart a new course for their relations. Nuclear diplomacy should be just the beginning—the floor, not the ceiling, of the relationship.
The Trump administration believes that the 12-day war has inflicted enough punishment on Iran to force true soul-searching among Iranian leaders. But if Tehran is to arrive at the right conclusions—and feel able to relinquish its nuclear ambitions and its aggressive regional policy—then it must see diplomacy as a credible path to realizing gains that have thus far eluded it. As unlikely as it may seem, Trump’s bombing campaign could lead to a breakthrough, but only if both countries can put their history of missteps behind them and approach diplomacy with vision and patience.
At least 62,004 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, the Health Ministry said on Monday.
In its daily update, the ministry said 60 people were killed and 344 injured over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of injuries to 156,230.
The ministry also reported five new deaths from starvation and malnutrition, including two children, raising the total number of famine-related deaths to 263 since October 2023, including 112 children. Rescue efforts remain severely hindered in Gaza as many victims are still trapped under rubble or lying on the streets, with emergency teams unable to reach them due to relentless Israeli bombardment and lack of equipment.
Since March 18, when Israel resumed its military campaign after breaking a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement, the ministry said 10,460 Palestinians have been killed and 44,189 injured.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces continue to target Palestinians attempting to access humanitarian aid. In the past 24 hours, 27 people were killed and 281 injured in such attacks.
According to the Health Ministry, Israeli forces have killed 1,965 Palestinians and injured 14,701 others while trying to reach desperately needed food and supplies since May 27.
Israel’s blockade, which has fully sealed off the Gaza Strip since early March, has created catastrophic conditions for the territory’s 2.4 million residents, leading to famine, widespread disease, and the collapse of essential services.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its war on the enclave.
If there was a sign that Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t going to be immediately voted off the island of the Donald Trump diplomacy show, it came early on when a familiar voice commended his choice of attire, writes Andrew Roth in his sketch of how the White House meeting unfolded.
“President Zelenskyy, you look fabulous in that suit,” said Brian Glenn, a pro-Trump pundit and member of the White House press corps, who had attacked him for wearing military fatigues during the infamous Oval Office meeting in February. “I said the same thing,” Trump added.
“You are in the same suit,” Zelenskyy shot back, earning smiles and laughter from the room including the US president. “I changed, you did not.”
Thus did Zelenskyy survive his first media appearance at the White House with Trump on Monday as the US president focused less on belittling the leader of a wartime ally than boasting – and in many cases exaggerating – his exploits as a peacemaker in world conflicts.
Zelenskyy and Trump in the Oval Office on Monday. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
You can read all of Roth’s piece here:
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy both said they hoped Monday’s gathering would eventually lead to three-way talks with Vladimir Putin, whose forces have been slowly grinding forward in eastern Ukraine.
In a social media post late on Monday, Trump said he had called the Russian leader and begun arranging a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, to be followed by a trilateral summit among the three presidents.
Trump told European leaders that Putin suggested that sequence, Reuters cites a source in the European delegation as saying.
The Kremlin has not publicly announced its agreement, but a senior Trump administration official said the Putin-Zelenskyy meeting could take place in Hungary.
The pair will meet within the next two weeks, according to German chancellor Friedrich Merz.
The last direct talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Turkey in June. Putin declined Zelenskyy’s public invitation to meet him face-to-face there and instead sent a low-level delegation.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said after his Washington meeting with Donald Trump and European leaders that security guarantees for Ukraine would likely be worked out within 10 days, adding that they would include the purchase for Ukraine of a package of US weapons.
“There indeed is a package with our proposals worth $90bn,” the Ukrainian president said. “And we have agreements with the US president that when our export opens, they will buy Ukrainian drones. This is important for us.”
As Warren Murray writes in our latest Ukraine war briefing, reports earlier suggested that Ukraine would promise to buy $100bn of US weapons financed by Europe – lucrative for US suppliers – as part of a deal to get guarantees from the US for its security if there is a peace settlement with Russia.
The Financial Times added that Ukraine and the US would also strike a $50bn deal to produce drones with Ukrainian companies. The drone news may partly repeat recent similar announcements.
You can read the full briefing here:
British prime minister Keir Starmer has described the talks at the White House as “good and constructive” and said they produced “real progress”.
Speaking after the summit, Starmer said: “There was a real sense of unity between the European leaders that were there and President Trump and President Zelenskyy.”
Starmer highlighted “two material outcomes” from the talks – first, that the coalition of the willing “will now work with the US” on security guarantees.
“That’s really important for security in Ukraine, for security in Europe, and for security in the UK,” the prime minister said.
Keir Starmer during the leaders’ meeting at the White House. Photograph: Shutterstock
Starmer continued:
The other material outcome was the agreement that there will now be a bilateral agreement between President Putin and President Zelenskyy, that was after a phone call between President Trump and President Putin during the course of this afternoon, followed by a trilateral that will add in Trump.
That is a recognition of the principle that on some of these issues, whether it’s territory or the exchange of prisoners, or the very serious issue of the return of children, that is something where Ukraine must be at the table.
These were the two outcomes that were the most important coming out of today. They’re positive outcomes, there was a real sense of unity. We’ve made real progress today.
Opening summary
Welcome to our live coverage of the latest diplomatic efforts to find an end to the war in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has agreed to face-to-face talks with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to Donald Trump and European leaders, although the Kremlin has yet to confirm a meeting will take place.
After talks at the White House with the leaders of Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Finland, the European Union and Nato, the US president said he would coordinate security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a deal and claimed that arrangements were under way for a Zelenskyy-Putin meeting. He said a trilateral meeting would happen between the two, along with Trump, after that.
Finnish president Alexander Stubb said the main agreement from the White House meeting was that the killing had to end and that it remained to be seen if Putin had the courage to meet Zelenskyy. “Putin is rarely to be trusted,” Stubb said.
The Russian president has previously resisted a one-on-one meeting with Zelenskyy. Ukraine’s president said it was ready to meet with Russia in “any format” and that territorial issues are “something we will leave between me and Putin”.
Here are some of the latest developments:
German chancellor Friedrich Merz said Putin told Trump in a call during the White House meeting that he was ready to meet Zelenskyy “within the next two weeks”. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Putin and Trump only discussed the “idea” of direct Russia-Ukraine talks in Monday’s phone call.
Trump told Zelenskyy the US would help guarantee Ukraine’s security in any deal to end the war, though the extent of any assistance was not immediately clear. “I believe this is a major step forward,” Zelenskyy said, also saying security guarantees for Ukraine would probably be worked out within 10 days.
The US president ruled out a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war during a meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House, despite last week warning Moscow of “very severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin didn’t agree to halt the fighting. Trump said while sitting with the leaders on Monday: “All of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace. Maybe something like that could happen. As of this moment, it’s not happening.”
Trump described his meeting with Zelenskyy and the leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Finland, the European Union and Nato as “a very good, early step for a war that has been going on for almost four years”. He also said on social media that vice-president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff were “coordinating with Russia and Ukraine”. “Everyone is very happy about the possibility of peace for Russia/Ukraine,” Trump said.
French president Emmanuel Macron called for stepping up sanctions against Russia if Putin does not move forward on peace with Ukraine. Merz said Ukraine should not be forced to surrender its Donbas region to Russia in talks, likening it to the US giving up Florida.
Trump, however, seemed clearly swayed by Putin from their talks in Alaska last Friday and echoed the Russian president’s talking points, saying several times on Monday that ending the war was “up to” both Zelenskyy and Putin – rather than just Putin, who invaded Ukraine. Trump also said: “We also need to discuss the possible exchanges of territory, taking into consideration the current line of contact – that means the war zone.”
Ukraine will promise to buy $90bn of US weapons financed by Europe as part of a deal to get guarantees from the US for its security if there is a peace settlement with Russia, Zelenskyy said. “There indeed is a package with our proposals worth $90bn,” the Ukrainian president said. “And we have agreements with the US president that when our export opens, they will buy Ukrainian drones. This is important for us.”
In stark contrast to the heated exchange during Zelenskyy’s first trip to Trump’s White House in February, the Ukrainian president’s charm offensive this time around looked to pay off, allowing him to emerge unscathed. Zelenskyy – who wore a black military-style suit and presented a letter from his wife, Olena Zelenska, for Melania Trump in response to her letter to Putin – said this meeting with Trump was his “best” so far.
Donald Trump greets Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington. Photograph: Bryan Dozier/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
White House meeting is over – now we await details on Zelensky-Putin meeting and security guaranteespublished at 03:59 British Summer Time
03:59 BST
Stuart Lau Live page editor
Welcome to our continued live coverage, as the political discussions continue following the White House meeting between the American, Ukrainian and European leaders yesterday.
If you’re just joining us, a key outcome is the possibility of direct meetings between Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, and Zelensky and possibly Trump. That comes after Trump made a call to Putin as the White House meeting was going on.
But a noncommittal statement from Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov on Monday night said only that it was “worthwhile” to “explore the possibility of raising the level of representatives” from the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in negotiations.
Another major talking point is on security guarantees. Trump says security guarantees for Ukraine would be “provided” by European countries with “coordination” by the US. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has told the BBC that the UK negotiators will shortly be arriving in Washington for further planning on this.
Stay with us as we bring you further updates throughout the day.
Watch: Key moments from Zelensky, Trump White House talks
The optics could not have been more different this time.
Unlike the shockingly ill-tempered previous meeting in February, US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky seemed determined not to look confrontational – despite their remaining differences.
Zelensky wore a collared suit (although not of the classical variety), and Trump complimented his attire. The Ukrainian president also repeatedly said “thank you”, which must have pleased his host, too.
At his opening appearance in the Oval Office, Zelensky spoke little – or maybe he was not keen to, fearing that what he had to say was different from what Trump wanted to hear.
Differences showed later, when the US and Ukrainian presidents appeared before journalists together with European leaders.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron both said a ceasefire in Ukraine should be the next step, even though Trump had argued that it was not necessary before a more permanent solution is found.
Zelensky remained conspicuously quiet on the issue.
Getty Images
What we heard from the leaders suggests that their discussions behind closed doors focused on security guarantees for Ukraine and prospects for a meeting between Zelensky and Putin.
No details were revealed about what guarantees were discussed, or how being face-to-face in the same room with Putin will help end the war.
But following the day of talks, Zelensky described security guarantees as a necessary “starting point for ending war”.
At an earlier news conference outside the White House, he said security guarantees could include a $90bn (£67bn) deal between Kyiv and Washington to acquire US weapons, including aviation systems, anti-missile systems and other weapons he declined to disclose.
Zelensky also said the US would purchase Ukrainian drones, which would help boost domestic production of the unmanned aircraft. Though no formal agreement has been reached, Zelensky said a deal could be worked out over the next 10 days.
The Ukranian leader, however, was more willing to talk about his possible meeting with Putin,telling reporters he was ready to meet directly with his Russian counterpart, and if Moscow agreed, Trump could join the negotiations. Putin has so far resisted a direct meeting with Zelensky.
“Ukraine will never stop on the way to peace,” he told reporters, adding that no date had been set.
One issue the leaders seemed reluctant to bring up before the media were possible territorial concessions by Ukraine.
Zelensky also mentioned how he showed his US counterpart a map of Ukraine, stressing that Russia has managed to occupy less than 1% of the Ukrainian territory in the last 1,000 days. This was news to the White House, he said. And it helped swing Trump’s mood, apparently.
“I have been fighting with what is on that map,” Zelensky told reporters, adding that he pushed back on what the Oval Office map showed as Russian-captured territories.
“It isn’t possible to say this much territory has been taken over this time. These points are important.”
The Ukrainian leader seemed mostly upbeat about his latest White House appearance, describing his meeting with Trump as “warm”. His optimism, however, appeared deliberate as he sought to avoid a repeat of his last Oval Office visit and convince his American hosts to embrace the European position on ending the war.
But perhaps thekey outcome of the trip was that it helped Ukraine to buy more time. The call that Trump had with Putin following his first meeting with the European leaders suggests that Russia has managed to do just the same.
Despite widespread fears, no catastrophe has happened at the summits in Alaska and Washington – at least nothing from what has been made public.
Iga Swiatek captured her first Cincinnati Open title on Monday by beating Jasmine Paolini 7-5 6-4, with the Pole third seed sending a powerful message ahead of the U.S. Open.
The six-times Grand Slam winner did not drop a set on her way to the title and was clinical in the final, converting all six of her break points to clinch her 11th WTA 1000 crown and first since last year’s Italian Open.
She is now the second all-time winner in the WTA 1000 format history, trailing only Serena Williams (23). “I want to thank my team. I don’t know why I won tournaments that were like the last ones in terms of where I thought I would be playing well,” Swiatek said.
“Thank you for forcing me to become a better player and learning how to play on these faster surfaces. I’m shocked and super happy.”
Paolini made the brighter start, surging to a 3-0 lead and pushing Swiatek to the brink of a double break. Yet the Pole responded with a five-game run and, after squandering her first chance to serve out the opening set, closed it on her second attempt.
Swiatek carried her momentum into the second set, saving two break points at 4-3 before holding firm to move within one game of the title. She sealed victory at the first opportunity with a big serve, extending her perfect record against the Italian to 6–0.
The win ensures Wimbledon champion Swiatek will climb back to world number two, securing the second seed for the final major of the year at Flushing Meadows, where singles action begins on Sunday.
Swiatek is also set to team up with Norway’s Casper Ruud in the new U.S. Open mixed doubles event.
Earlier in the day, Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz claimed the men’s title after top seed Jannik Sinner retired in the first set.
WHEN most European countries and Volodymyr Zelensky were praying together with American neocons for the collapse of Vladimir Putin’s Alaska summit with Donald Trump, India was vocal in hoping for its success. The Indian idea was laudable, only the argument was a tad self-regarding. If the talks ended on a positive note, assorted Indian analysts reasoned, the impugned oil trade with Russia would no longer draw Trump’s ire. Putin would have saved the day for New Delhi.
On a wing and a prayer, the Modi foreign policy has bodily lifted its model from international sports contests where the ousted team pulls out its pocket calculators to desperately speculate its chance of returning to the contest should some other team beat another team. China is also affected by Trump’s frowning on its Russian oil imports. But the Communist Party-backed Global Times headline seemed in no tearing hurry to eye Beijing-centred success or failure in the otherwise important US-Russia talks. All the paper said was: “Trump and Putin addressed a joint press conference.”
And that is more or less what we know did happen. Much else is speculative. It is evident, Prime Minister Modi’s foreign policy prefers to ride piggyback on future outcomes over which it exerts no control. This is not how it used to be. A vital difference has emerged between then and now.
Indira Gandhi took Soviet help to bridge military and economic gaps. Yet she censured Moscow when the ally invaded Afghanistan. Nehru had the best of relations with Britain and even made India a member of the Commonwealth for which he was criticised roundly by his leftist supporters. Majrooh Sultanpuri found himself writing some memorable songs for the blockbuster movie Andaz from prison where he was sent for penning an acerbic poem against Nehru’s Commonwealth membership. But even as a member of the Commonwealth Nehru stoked the anti-colonial fervour in Asia and Africa, which won him lifelong friendships in the Global South.
Why is it so difficult to instil a simple, inexpensive idea for diplomacy?
Nehru supported the rise of China as a major post-colonial power but was misled by a combination of historians and cartographers into laying claim on tracts of Tibet that China had refused to accept during British rule. Nehru paid the price for his decision, until his grandson travelled to shake hands with Deng Xiaoping in a memorable move in 1988. Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee decided for better or worse to accept the heavy cost of declaring India a nuclear power even though he slipped up by explaining to Bill Clinton that the bomb was aimed at China. Everyone did what they deemed good for the country, which can’t be said of Narendra Modi. He has been doing whatever he could to appease the US until Trump poured cold water on the enthusiasm.
And yes, Indira Gandhi waged a decisive war on Pakistan but bore no ill will towards its people. She had a landmark meeting with Z.A. Bhutto in Shimla. Likewise, Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto had a widely cheered rendezvous in Pakistan. Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh came close to resolving the Kashmir issue and, importantly, they did so with the help and support of their people, not of a foreign prompter. That’s what is missing in the pocket calculator diplomacy today, the engagement of the people on both sides of the equation, be it with Pakistan, or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. India’s military has a problem with Pakistan’s military. But it’s Pakistan’s people that are known to have shown the door to many dictators, military or civilian. Modi has sidelined people on both sides. Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s daughters were denied visas for the first time in India’s history. Now, Modi has announced an iron dome-like project to protect the country from enemy attacks. Many see it as a wasteful idea given the hammering a heavily guarded Israel took from Iran recently.
Why is it so difficult to instil a simple, inexpensive idea for diplomacy? Why not let the masses — as opposed to state-backed mobs — take the initiative to build inevitable excellent ties, and see the menace called terrorism vanish in a jiffy?
Many current foreign policy preferences are, of course, rooted in Modi’s ideological pursuit of Hindutva. Or more accurately, it’s about marrying big business with Hindutva and passing it off as national interest. Of course, other than pervasive corruption, this has led to little else, as can be gleaned from the criminal cases in the US involving a major tycoon.
Bureaucracies, too, play a role in the wrack and ruin of India’s fair name. Inured to the social costs that state policies incur, they formulate or conjure ‘national interest’ from personal expediencies or biases, which currently seem to be heavily tilted towards the West. Much has been said about Modi’s Mittyesque media, which cut a sorry figure in the recent military engagement with Pakistan. But what does one make of respected current and former diplomats? One such served in Islamabad as high commissioner. In his view, in the absence of a decisive military victory, India should periodically “mow the grass” in Pakistan, a phrase used by Israel for periodically raiding Gaza and killing Palestinians before the events of October 2023. Mow the grass in nuclear Pakistan?
India has experienced many economic woes, mostly caused by oil price fluctuations. When the prices went through the roof in 1990, and the USSR had all but disappeared, the country pawned gold reserves to stave off defaulting. People accepted it. V.P. Singh was prime minister when the oil crisis began. He announced rationing on petrol. People understood. There were regulations about using cars. People took it in their stride. Something has changed today. It’s more about guarding the interests of this or that business house refining Russian oil to ship it off to Europe. From the dominant Indian perspective, the Alaska summit was about Russian oil, sadly, not about saving the world from nuclear annihilation.
RECENT efforts in Geneva by some 183 countries on a global plastics treaty ended in stalemate. There were deep divisions between nations pushing for production caps and those prioritising recycling and waste management. Now, without any consensus, the world remains without a binding agreement to curb the worsening crisis of plastic pollution, which has left not only our oceans and soil contaminated, but also our bloodstreams. Pakistan’s delegation at the conference took a strong line, highlighting equity and justice concerns. Climate Minister Musadik Malik highlighted how it is developing nations that suffer disproportionately from plastic pollution while wealthier states — often the largest producers and consumers — benefit most from green financing. Pakistan pressed for fair access to funds, technology transfer and capacity-building, and even floated the idea of a plastic credits market to support recycling and the livelihoods of waste workers. Furthermore, by seeking to build alliances across the Global South, Islamabad pointed out that poorer countries cannot shoulder the burden of transition without adequate support.
However, Pakistan’s advocacy on the global stage must be matched by discipline at home. While all the provinces have issued decrees banning single-use plastic bags, the flimsy carriers still change hands in bazaars from Karachi to Peshawar. Our understanding of and emphasis on recycling is rudimentary, waste is rarely segregated and collection has become the burden of poorly paid, unprotected waste pickers. The state must prove it means business: enforce provincial bans, punish violators and back the spread of biodegradable packaging. Changing entrenched consumer habits needs sustained awareness drives, while investment in proper garbage collection and waste segregation is essential to stem the tide of plastic litter. Policymakers must encourage innovation in packaging, nurture a viable recycling industry and bring the informal army of waste pickers into the formal economy with protections and pay. Calls for fairness abroad will carry more weight if they are backed by action at home.
