Both the U.S. and Iran have given mixed signals in recent days regarding the status of negotiations to bring an end to the war between them. According to Tasmin, a semi-official Iranian news agency, ‘The Iranian negotiating team will suspend talks and the exchange of texts through mediators.’ The Speaker of Iran’s Parliament threatened to end negotiations, but stopped short of actually saying Iran had done so.

U.S. President Donald Trump has issued several statements in the past few days suggesting he believes Iran and the U.S. are closer to a permanent end to the war, even though U.S. forces have carried out additional attacks against Iran. 

Negotiations between warring countries are often fraught with uncertainty and confusion. When the countries in question are led by officials who frequently change their minds or have competing factions within their own governments, negotiations can become disjointed and inconsistent.

That appears to be the case with the U.S. and Iran. Due to competing domestic government factions in Iran and an erratic U.S. President, reading the status of negotiations between the two warring nations has become difficult…

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On the Iranian side, several different reasons have been given for the failure of negotiations to bring an end to the war. Some Iranian officials have indicated they see recent U.S. attacks as a violation of the ceasefire agreement, while others have expressed anger at Israel’s continued attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Who exactly is in charge of Iran’s government remains unclear. While the new Supreme Leader is supposed to be in command, just how much control he really has over Iran’s government is a matter of speculation. 

From the United States perspective, President Trump has shown a pattern of posting that much progress has been made one day, then that negotiations are on the verge of collapsing the next day. While he is not the first U.S. President to change his mind on critical policy decisions during crisis situations, he does appear to do so with greater frequency and less explanation than his predecessors. The frequent changes of official statements make it difficult to determine what he really wants from the Iranians. 

Such disjointed negotiations have helped prolong the conflict because neither side has been consistent or clear about what it would take to end the war. Without a clear mutual understanding of the conditions needed to bring the war to a close, it is likely the conflict will drag on. 

There is an old adage in the military that wars are much easier to start than to stop. War is by definition unpredictable, and when warring countries don’t communicate clearly or have steady leadership, ending a conflict can be even more difficult. It is possible the conflict with Iran could usher in a new era of intermittent exchanges of hostilities that could last for years. Under such conditions, there would be pauses in the fighting, only to be broken by occasional attacks by one side on the other.