US-Iran talks not dead despite Trump remarks, Israeli officials say

Israel does not currently believe negotiations between the United States and Iran have completely collapsed, despite sharp remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier Thursday suggesting Washington no longer needs an agreement with Tehran. According to the assessment in Jerusalem, Iran has stood firm and has not moved even slightly from the conditions it has set. At the same time, U.S. officials increasingly understand that the chances of reaching an agreement under the current terms are extremely low.

Washington nevertheless needed to make another diplomatic effort so that, if military action is ultimately taken, the administration can argue that it exhausted every opportunity to reach an agreement first. The central question now is which course Trump chooses. One option is to follow Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, one of the leading advocates of the U.S. economic pressure campaign against Iran, and continue tightening sanctions and financial pressure in an effort to further squeeze Tehran.

The other option is renewed military action, a course backed by senior defense figures including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper, according to the Israeli assessment. Trump earlier said he had instructed Vice President JD Vance to step away from the Iran negotiations and focus instead on what the president described as crime and corruption in Democratic-run U.S. states and cities. “We don’t need a deal with Iran.

Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, hundreds of billions of dollars, and we’ve got their Strait! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Trump wrote. Trump did not formally announce an end to the indirect talks being conducted through intermediaries, but his comments appeared to pull Vance away from a diplomatic initiative the vice president had been pursuing in recent days. A day earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that Vance was considering face-to-face talks with Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, after sending him a letter last month proposing renewed negotiations aimed at ending the conflict.

Vance has recently taken a more active role in Iran diplomacy than Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are heavily involved in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. In recent days, Trump had told senior administration officials that he was open to Vance renewing talks with Tehran. Rezaei, however, rejected the possibility of direct negotiations and described the idea as “imaginary talks.” He also laid out hardline conditions at odds with U.S. demands, saying Iran would not remove even a fraction of its enriched nuclear material from the country.

Vance has also publicly argued that the war with Iran contributed to Republican losses in the midterm elections. Trump has said he understands that position but added that he would make the decision to go to war again. Senior Cabinet officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Hegseth have defended the president’s decision to go to war. Rubio and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller support maintaining pressure on Tehran until it gives in.

For Israel, the immediate conclusion is that diplomacy has not formally ended, but the gaps remain enormous. Tehran has shown no willingness to retreat from its core demands, while Washington increasingly sees little prospect of an agreement on those terms. The decision now rests with Trump: continue tightening the economic vise and wait for Iran to bend, or conclude that diplomacy has run its course and return to military action.