Is Iran’s negotiating position stronger than when US-Israeli war started?
Tehran believes so, and will seek to extract concessions that the US and Gulf nations can’t agree to, analysts caution.
Published On 25 Mar 202625 Mar 2026
United States President Donald Trump has said that Washington is engaged in “productive” talks with Iran. Publicly, Iranian officials have rejected Trump’s claims, calling them fake news designed to ease oil prices.
Behind the scenes, Egypt, Turkiye and Pakistan have established an indirect channel of communication between American and Iranian officials in the past few days, two senior diplomatic sources in the region told Al Jazeera. Still, regardless of the small window for diplomacy that may have emerged, experts The Iranian leadership’s stance on what concessions to extract from the US appears to have hardened since the start of the war on February 28, when the US and Israel attacked Iran, killing its then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The US and Israel insist that their nonstop attacks since then have significantly “degraded” Iran’s military capabilities – the Pentagon says 90 percent of Iran’s missile capacity has been wiped out. But Iran has shown it can still fire when it wants, and with precision.
In the Strait of Hormuz – a waterway through which a fifth of global oil exports pass – hundreds of vessels remain paralysed. And across the region, Iran has adopted an “eye for an eye” policy to re-establish deterrence and make sure that any threat is followed by action.
Just last week, Iranian forces hit Qatar’s main gas site – wiping out 17 percent of its export capacity – immediately after an Israeli attack on Iran’s South Pars field. After an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear power plant, two Iranian ballistic missiles pierced through Israel’s defence systems, hitting the southern cities of Arad and Dimona, wounding more than 180 people.
Iran’s aim now, say experts, is not merely a ceasefire but a post-war order that restores deterrence and secures long-term economic and security guarantees.
Iran’s new red lines
Iran’s political and military officials have said in recent days that they want payment repatriations, firm guarantees that Iran won’t be attacked again and a new regulatory framework for passage in the Strait of Hormuz.
Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based Center for International Policy, says Tehran would seek to end the war on its own terms while extracting sanctions relief, reparations for damage and economic leverage.
“This chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz is now giving them ideas – ‘maybe we can charge passage fees like some other places in the world’ – there are Iran is unlikely to forfeit that leverage without major concessions, analysts say. That is especially so, given how Iran feels the war has helped it win some economic relief that it didn’t get through diplomacy. On Friday, the Trump administration temporarily waived sanctions on the purchase of 140 million barrels of Iranian oil at sea in an attempt to ease oil prices, in those discussions in Iran,” Mortazavi said.
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