In 2018, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal. At the time, Iran was in full compliance. The International Atomic Energy Agency had verified it repeatedly. Every other signatory to the agreement said it was working. Trump called it "the worst deal ever" and promised he would negotiate something better.
Eight years later, the result of that promise is a shooting war, a naval blockade, a collapsed ceasefire, and a negotiating team that Iran refuses to sit across from.
How we got here
After walking away from the JCPOA, Trump reimposed maximum pressure sanctions. Iran responded by resuming uranium enrichment and advancing its centrifuge program, cutting in half the time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade fuel for a nuclear weapon. The deal Trump called weak had been doing the one thing it was designed to do. Without it, Iran's program accelerated.
The spiral continued. Iran and Israel exchanged missile strikes in 2024. In June 2025, the Twelve-Day War brought U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites. By January 2026, the largest Iranian protests since 1979 were met with a regime crackdown that killed thousands of civilians. Trump responded not with diplomacy but with the largest U.S. military buildup in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
On February 28, 2026, while negotiations between the U.S. and Iran were still technically underway through Omani intermediaries, the United States and Israel launched a surprise joint attack on Iran, striking military and government targets and assassinating senior officials including the Supreme Leader. Iran retaliated with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles aimed at Israel and U.S. bases across six countries. A regional war was on.
The negotiating team
This is where the incompetence becomes structural. Trump did not send career diplomats or nuclear policy experts to negotiate an end to the war he started. He sent Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. One is his son-in-law. The other is a real estate developer. Neither has any background in nuclear policy, arms control, or Middle Eastern diplomacy.
The Arms Control Association assessed that U.S. negotiators were "ill-prepared for serious nuclear negotiations with Iran." Former State Department Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller gave them an F in diplomacy. Senator Mark Kelly put it more plainly: "You can't send two real estate developers to negotiate peace with another region."
Iran noticed. Iranian officials described previous engagements with Kushner and Witkoff as "not constructive" and have refused to continue negotiating with them, calling them "backstabbing" negotiators and requesting alternative channels. The people Trump chose to end his war are the reason the other side will not come to the table.
Negotiating by Truth Social post
What happened in mid-April 2026 was the purest distillation of this administration's diplomatic incompetence. Pakistani-mediated peace talks had produced what sources described as genuine momentum. A deal appeared close. Then Trump started posting on Truth Social.
He told Bloomberg that Iran had agreed to an "unlimited" suspension of its nuclear program. He told CBS that Tehran "agreed to everything." Neither claim was true. None of these provisions had been finalized. Iranian officials immediately and publicly denied the claims. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said enriched uranium was "as sacred as Iranian soil and will not be transferred anywhere under any circumstances." The rising optimism was killed in a single news cycle by the president's own mouth.
Even Trump's own staff knew this was happening. Officials anonymously told Fortune that the president was "hampering efforts to make a deal" through his social media posts. Foreign Policy declared that the U.S. had "ditched professional diplomacy." Defense News called the madman theory approach a failure. CNN's analysis concluded that even Trump's "most basic claims about the Iran war can't be trusted."
Threats, not strategy
When talks collapsed, Trump did what he always does. He threatened violence. He said "lots of bombs will start going off" if no deal was reached before the ceasefire expired. He threatened to destroy Iran's power plants and bridges, statements that experts said could constitute violations of international law. Then he ordered a U.S. Navy blockade of Iranian ports after the Islamabad talks fell apart.
Iran's response was to close the Strait of Hormuz, triggering the largest oil supply disruption since the 1970s energy crisis. Oil and gas prices surged. Financial markets convulsed. Aviation and tourism across the region collapsed. The war Trump promised would be quick and decisive entered its seventh week with no end in sight.
On April 21, Trump announced a ceasefire extension, but with the condition that Iran submit a "unified proposal." Iran called the negotiations "a waste of time" and blamed "U.S. overreach and ambitions" for the failure. Vice President Vance's trip to Pakistan for a second round of talks was put on hold after Iran said it would not show up.
The cost
The human toll of this war is not abstract. Thousands of people are dead. Civilian casualties in Iran include over a thousand documented deaths, with one of the earliest atrocities being a U.S./Israeli airstrike on a school in Minab that killed 175 girls and staff. In Lebanon, the spillover conflict has killed over 2,000 people. U.S. service members are deployed across the region, exposed to retaliatory strikes on bases in six countries.
This is the "better deal" Trump promised when he tore up the JCPOA. A war he started with a surprise attack during active negotiations. A negotiating team Iran will not speak to. A president who blows up his own peace talks on social media. A blockade that has destabilized global energy markets. And a ceasefire that keeps getting extended because no one in this administration knows how to close.
Harvard political scientist Stephen Walt called Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA his "most consequential foreign-policy blunder." That assessment was made before the war. It is worse now. Every decision, from pulling out of the deal to sending unqualified negotiators to posting about classified diplomatic progress on Truth Social, has made the situation more dangerous, more expensive, and more deadly.
This is not a negotiation. It is a public demonstration of what happens when foreign policy is run by people who have no idea what they are doing.
Sources
- A Deal Seemed Close. Then Trump Started Posting on Social Media — CNN
- U.S. Negotiators Were Ill-Prepared for Serious Nuclear Talks With Iran — Arms Control Association
- Why Diplomats Fear Trump's Iran Envoys Are Making Things Worse — TIME
- Kelly Rips Witkoff, Kushner Role in Iran Talks — The Hill
- Not So Diplomatic: Witkoff, Kushner, and Trump's March to War — Responsible Statecraft
- The U.S. Has Ditched Professional Diplomacy — Foreign Policy
- Trump's Madman Diplomacy Isn't Working on Iran — Defense News
- U.S.-Iran Peace Talks Collapse — NPR
- What Was the Iran Nuclear Deal Trump Dumped? — Al Jazeera
- Trump Officials Say His Truth Social Posts Risk Killing Peace Talks — Fortune
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