Three weeks into a war that has reshaped the Middle East, the United States and Iran are offering flatly contradictory accounts of whether they are talking to each other at all — a dispute that may itself reveal more about the conflict’s trajectory than either side intends.
Donald Trump said Sunday that Washington was in discussions with Tehran, but that Iran had not yet reached the point of being willing to end the fighting. Iran’s foreign minister said the same day that no such talks existed, and that his government had no interest in starting them.
“Yes, we’re talking to them,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “But I don’t think they’re ready. But they are getting pretty close.”
The comments were the most direct acknowledgement from the US president that any form of diplomatic contact was underway since the conflict began on February 28 with coordinated American and Israeli strikes on Iran. Trump offered no details about the nature of the discussions, who was conducting them, or through what channel.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected the framing entirely. Iran was not engaged in any talks with the United States, he said, and saw no reason to start. “We don’t see any reason why we should talk with Americans, because we were talking with them when they decided to attack us,” Araghchi told CBS’s Face the Nation in an interview aired Sunday. “There is no good experience talking with Americans.”
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He pushed back on any suggestion that Iran was under pressure to negotiate, saying the country remained capable of defending itself and had no need of American terms. “We are stable and strong enough. We are only defending our people,” he said.
The exchange underscores one of the war’s defining complications: Iran’s leadership structure has been catastrophically disrupted, making it genuinely unclear who holds authority over any potential negotiating position. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the strikes, along with dozens of senior Iranian officials. Trump acknowledged Sunday that the question of who Washington would even be dealing with gave him pause. “Nobody even knows who you’re dealing with,” he said, “because most of their leadership has been killed.”
That uncertainty cuts in multiple directions. It may explain why Trump expressed ambivalence about pursuing a deal at all — negotiating a ceasefire requires a counterpart capable of delivering on its commitments, and whether Iran’s surviving leadership structure can do that remains an open question. It also raises the possibility that back-channel contacts are real but informal, conducted with figures whose authority to speak for the Iranian state is itself unclear.
Araghchi, who has remained one of the most visible Iranian officials since the February 28 attacks, appeared in Sunday’s interview to be projecting institutional continuity — a government still intact, still in command, still capable of making strategic decisions. His denial of talks with Washington and his framing of the conflict as a defensive struggle served that narrative. Whether it accurately reflects the situation inside Iran’s battered government is harder to assess from the outside.
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Trump, for his part, seemed to be threading two messages at once. The claim that Iran “wants to make a deal badly” fits a pattern he has employed in previous confrontations — projecting strength while dangling the possibility of an off-ramp — but it sits awkwardly alongside his admission that the counterpart he would be dealing with is unclear. A leadership that wants a deal badly is a weakened adversary; a leadership whose composition is unknown is a diplomatic vacuum. Both cannot be fully true simultaneously.
The war is now entering its fourth week with no public ceasefire framework on the table and the Strait of Hormuz still largely closed to commercial shipping.
Oil prices have surged roughly 40 percent since the conflict began, and the economic pressure on oil-importing nations has prompted the International Energy Agency to authorise its largest-ever coordinated release of strategic reserves. Japan began drawing down its stockpiles on Monday; European and American releases are expected by the end of March.
On the military front, US forces have struck Iran’s Kharg Island oil export terminal and conducted sustained operations along the Hormuz shoreline, while Iranian forces have continued drone and missile attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure. Trump said last week that the United States would escort tankers through the strait and has urged major oil-importing nations, including China, France, Japan, South Korea and Britain, to send warships to help secure the passage.
The diplomatic picture that emerges from Sunday is of a conflict with no clear exit, between a US president signalling openness to talks while casting doubt on their viability, and an Iranian foreign minister dismissing the premise of negotiation while conducting media interviews that suggest some desire to shape international opinion. Neither posture is that of a party fully committed to fighting indefinitely.