Negotiations between the United States and Iran are now openly acknowledged by both sides, but the opening position Tehran presented through the Wall Street Journal suggested a government either deeply disconnected from its military situation or engaged in performative posturing for domestic consumption. Iran’s stated demands included the closure of all American bases in the Gulf, reparations for strikes carried out against Iranian territory, the right to collect transit fees from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a halt to Israeli operations against Iranian proxy forces, the lifting of all sanctions, and the preservation of its missile program free from any negotiating constraints.
Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to assess where the negotiations actually stand beneath the public positioning.
Schanzer said the most accurate description of the current moment is that President Trump has deliberately given himself maximum flexibility, running military operations and diplomatic talks simultaneously, engaging the Iranian side both directly and indirectly through Pakistani intermediaries, and keeping multiple outcomes on the table at once. The underlying dynamic, he argued, remains fundamentally favorable to Washington. Iran is weak, its leadership structure has been decimated across multiple tiers, and whatever figures are now attempting to negotiate on the regime’s behalf are trying to find a way out of the conflict without suffering total humiliation.
Trump offered a notable signal over the weekend, describing an unspecified gift from the Iranian side that he said was oil and gas related, involved the Strait of Hormuz, and demonstrated to him that the people he is dealing with are credible interlocutors who say what they will do and then do it. The identity of those interlocutors remains unclear. Reports have pointed to Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander and former mayor of Tehran, as a figure who has positioned himself as a potential pragmatist capable of negotiating a settlement while remaining part of the regime’s institutional structure. Schanzer compared the dynamic loosely to what occurred in Venezuela with figures who raise their hand as willing to deal without fully breaking from the system that produced them.
Despite the diplomatic activity, military deployments are continuing on schedule. Defense officials have told the New York Times that senior commanders are considering deploying a brigade combat team from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, with 2,500 Marines, 2,000 sailors, 3,000 paratroopers, and three amphibious ships already in motion. Schanzer described the deployments as consistent with Trump’s broader approach of maintaining credible military pressure as a negotiating tool, noting that Iran has absorbed something on the order of ten thousand strikes over the course of the campaign and has no appetite for continued escalation. Liberating the Strait of Hormuz, he said, is a non-negotiable American objective given its direct impact on global oil prices, natural gas markets, and the stock market wobbles the administration is watching carefully.
The conversation turned to the status of the IRGC and the question of what conditions would need to exist on the ground for either a negotiated settlement or a popular uprising to take hold. Schanzer noted an analysis by Hudson Institute scholar Zi Baroa describing the IRGC’s chain of command as actively compromised and its actions as sporadic and strategically incoherent, having managed to alienate virtually every Gulf state neighbor in the process. He also referenced a suggestion made in a previous program by analyst Jonathan Tobin that special forces seizure of the roughly thirty-one IRGC munitions depots used to maintain domestic control could, if combined with the existing air campaign, help create conditions for a popular revolt.
On the question of whether full regime change is the actual objective, Schanzer identified what he sees as a meaningful divergence between American and Israeli goals. Trump has been careful throughout the campaign to frame American objectives in terms of ending Iran’s nuclear program, neutralizing its missile capacity, dismantling its proxy network, and reopening the strait, stopping short of explicitly calling for the regime’s elimination. Israel, Schanzer said, wants the entire regime gone, a view he suspects the Gulf states now share after witnessing the scope of Iranian aggression. His read is that Trump might declare his objectives achieved once the strait is open and the nuclear program is eliminated, then step back and allow Israel to continue operations independently, giving the administration a clean exit while the Israelis finish what they see as unfinished business.
The risk in that scenario, Schanzer acknowledged, is the one Proft raised directly: without a replacement government that the United States has some confidence in, America could find itself back on what he called the hamster wheel, facing a reconstituted or successor regime that becomes aggressive again within a few years. He said that tension, between the isolationist wing of the Republican coalition that is deeply resistant to any ground presence and the strategic logic that argues lasting change requires putting something stable in place of what has been destroyed, is precisely what Trump is still working through. The president has not yet decided, Schanzer said, and is keeping his options open until he has a clearer picture of what kind of government, if any, is capable of emerging from the wreckage of the Islamic Republic.