It took 21 hours for the American negotiators in Islamabad to confirm what we’ve known about the regime in Iran for the last 47 years. The IRGC won’t ever negotiate in good faith.
And this time, even J.D. Vance had enough. In a presser from Islamabad, the Vice President announced he would withdraw from talks after the Iranian regime refused to come off of their list of demands. Vance told reporters that he left our “best offer” on the table and said it would be up to Iran to figure it out.
No deal reached, @VP tells us after a marathon negotiation session with Iran pic.twitter.com/ymq5GF33IX
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) April 12, 2026
As Hugh Hewitt commented on X, it’s a replay of the Reykjavik conference between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan shocked the then-Soviet leader by walking away from the table rather than make a bad deal on arms limitations. The difference in this case is that Gorbachev was a rational leader who miscalculated Reagan’s desire for a political win, but still understood the stakes involved,
The Iranians have never seemed to grasp reality. They believe themselves to be a superpower. Either that, or they just thought that Vance’s rumored skepticism over the war would allow Abbas Araghchi to wear him down into making face-saving concessions as an off-ramp for Trump.
Looks like they miscalculated Vance as well as Trump … for the second time in six weeks. They didn’t even budge on nuclear enrichment, the main issue that touched off the war when Araghchi refused to discuss it in February:
“But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,” Vance told reporters. “That is the core goal of the president of the United States. And that’s what we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations.”
It’s not yet clear whether the entire team will leave Islamabad, or whether Vance will leave on his own. It doesn’t matter much; the Iranians demanded Vance’s attendance because they thought – probably correctly – that Vance wanted a deal more than Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, or even Trump himself. If Vance is leaving, Araghchi has to deal with an angry and motivated Witkoff instead while knowing that the most potentially sympathetic player on the American side has just left in a huff.
So what happens next? Perhaps talks will continue, but they won’t go anywhere. Araghchi recently bragged that the regime likes to negotiate like “bazaar merchants” (his words), stringing people along and essentially exhausting them. That only works when (a) the person really wants to buy the carpet, and (b) the merchant will agree to part with it. The Iranian regime isn’t willing to sell anything, and Trump isn’t all that concerned about buying anything other than his own shopping list.
[more to come]
Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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