Trump's Shifting Iran Rhetoric After Midterms Leaves Mideast Diplomacy in Limbo

On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump posted a message telling Vice President JD Vance to give his "complete and total attention" to the administration's domestic anti-fraud campaign. The post declared that the United States no longer needs a deal with Iran. Vance had served as Trump's chief negotiator in earlier peace talks with Tehran. According to a person familiar with the matter, he had been weighing a return to the table with senior Iranian negotiators.

The post came the morning after The Wall Street Journal reported that Vance was considering resuming talks. That person, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said Trump knew about Vance's deliberations and believed the Iranians were not acting in good faith.

It was the latest turn in a week of mixed signals. Since Republicans were badly beaten in last week's midterm elections, which cost the party control of Congress, Trump has spoken at length about the 8-month-old war in reporter exchanges, broadcast interviews and social media posts. He has stepped back from more strikes and from more talks at once. The day after the election, he conceded that the war and the global economic disruption it caused were partly to blame for the losses, while insisting that launching it was the right call.

Early this week, after meeting Qatar's prime minister at the White House, Trump said new major strikes were highly unlikely and that the war was "militarily effectively over." By Thursday he was questioning whether he needed to hurry toward an endgame. He also warned that the military is "locked and loaded" and watching Pickaxe Mountain, a site linked to Iran's nuclear program, for signs of activity. "If something does not work out, I would not hesitate" to act, he told broadcaster Hugh Hewitt.

Qatar, the chief mediator, is still working on an interim agreement that would restore traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf, while keeping the door open to further U.S.-Iran discussions. Two Middle East diplomats familiar with the process said things looked on track after the Qatari prime minister's meeting. Thursday's post changed that. One diplomat said it raised questions about why Trump seemed to be sidelining Vance, who was skeptical of the war but ultimately backed it. The other described the peace push as a holding pattern, with mediators and Iranians unsure whether Trump was abandoning a deal or posturing after the elections.

The strait itself remains dangerous. The United Nations reports that October saw the most incidents against commercial ships there since February. Even so, the person familiar with Trump's thinking said he is increasingly confident he can claim his military objectives were met. With oil shipments near prewar levels, he could leave Gulf states to negotiate with Iran over governing the waterway.

Tehran has not softened. Iran's deputy U.N. ambassador, Gholamhossein Darzi, told the Security Council on Friday that Iran "has never closed the door to diplomacy," but warned of "an immediate and decisive response" if the U.S. or Israel resumed bombing. Iran refuses to discuss its nuclear program until the U.S. accepts several core conditions it wants in any ceasefire. Trump insists the nuclear differences be resolved in any deal.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the White House's approach is collapsing Iran's economy. "The economic pain that we are inflicting on that regime is so great that there's no need for military action," he told the Federalist Society on Friday. Earlier in the week he said the U.S. does not oppose continued mediation: "If there's a deal to be done, the president will be the first one to be in favor of it," but not "a bad deal." The White House declined to comment directly on Trump's postelection remarks.

Democrats were sharper. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, speaking Friday at the party's postelection gathering in Denver, said Trump "is now acting like an arsonist who has set ablaze our foreign policy," and "now he just wants to walk away." Allies, who were not consulted before the war, are still struggling with its economic fallout.

Michael Singh of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy expects the stalemate over Hormuz to persist, along with the monthslong U.S. naval blockade limiting Iranian crude exports. He called patience and pressure the most sensible path, adding that Trump could reverse course on Vance if Tehran proves serious. Next week Trump travels to the Philippines and then to APEC meetings in Shenzhen, China, where he is to hold an unprecedented three-way summit with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Iran and the three powers' nuclear stockpiles are expected on the agenda.