President Donald Trump is determined to hold direct nuclear talks with Iran, while Iran insists the negotiations will be indirect.
Middle East envoy Stever Witkoff is expected to visit Oman for potential meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who has asserted the talks will involve a third party.
Iran expert Behnam Ben Taleblu suggests that the disagreement over the format of the discussions is merely a strategic move by both sides to gain leverage.
“Both sides have an incentive to either overrepresent or underrepresent what is happening,” he told Fox News Digital. “These are often the negotiations before the negotiations.”
“The regime has its back against the wall,” Ben Taleblu said. “A military option, given what has been happening in the Middle East since Oct. 7, 2023, is an increasingly credible option against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
“And the regime is engaging, now, to delay and prevent a military option from ever materializing,” he added. “They are hoping to use talks with the Americans as a human shield against the Israelis.”
“So long as you’re talking to America, the Israelis aren’t shooting at you,” Ben Taleblu continued.
Trump this week said that it would be Israel who would take the lead on a military strike on Iran, not the U.S., should nuclear talks fail, which again could be a negotiating tactic as Israel has already demonstrated it will not hesitate to militarily engage with Iran.
“Pursuing wholesale disarmament of the Islamic Republic of Iran is incredibly risky, and it doesn’t have a great track record of succeeding,” Ben Taleblu said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks to President Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office on April 7, 2025. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The Iranian expert said the only way to actually take on the Islamic Republic would be through a “broader” and “more holistic” strategy that focuses not only on nuclear nonproliferation but removing the “Axis of Resistance,” scaling up sanctions and having a “ground game” to counter the regime through cyber, political and telecommunication strategies “for when Iranians go out into the street and protest again.”
“What the Islamic Republic would always want is to have you focus on the fire and not on the arsonist, and the arsonist is quite literally a regime that has tried to kill this president,” Ben Taleblu said.
