A sober examination of the widening chasm between American and Iranian negotiating positions following last week's talks leads to one stark and unavoidable conclusion: there is no deal to be made. Iran has already declared that any military strike would constitute an act of total war, to be answered with missile barrages against every US base in the Middle East — and against Israel. We know how such a conflict could begin. We do not know how it would end.
The Negotiation Dead End: No Zone of Possible Agreement
In the world of diplomacy, few concepts are as critical as ZOPA — the Zone of Possible Agreement, the overlapping range of outcomes where both parties can find common ground. When the ZOPA is empty, no amount of shuttle diplomacy, backchannel communication, or marathon negotiating sessions can produce a result. After the latest round of US-Iran talks, the conclusion is unmistakable: the ZOPA does not exist.
According to the Israel Hayom, the United States initiated the current cycle of escalation in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime and reignite the protest movements that swept the country in previous years but have since subsided. Washington paired overt military threats with signals of diplomatic openness. Iran, however, has insisted it is willing to discuss only the nuclear file — nothing more.
Even if the US were to make a dramatic concession and narrow the scope of negotiations exclusively to nuclear issues, it is nearly impossible to envision Washington accepting uranium enrichment on Iranian soil. On the other side, Tehran — deeply distrustful of the Trump administration — refuses to accept anything less than the enrichment capabilities it possessed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal Trump withdrew from during his first term.
The result: the current talks are little more than a stalling tactic. No good agreement — or even a reasonable one — can emerge from them.
What Happens When There Is No Deal?
Another essential negotiation concept comes into play here: BATNA — the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. In plain terms: what does each side do if diplomacy fails?
For Iran, the alternative is a grinding continuation of the status quo under punishing sanctions, intensified further by the activation of the snapback mechanism that reimposed UN Security Council restrictions. Over the medium and long term, this trajectory offers the regime nothing but economic deterioration and growing public discontent. In the short term, however, Iran's leadership has demonstrated a chilling willingness to survive through brutal and unrestricted repression of its own population, deploying Basij paramilitaries and security forces to crush dissent.
For the United States, the military option is explicitly "on the table." Significant forces have been moved into the region, including carrier strike groups and advanced air defense systems. American planners have reportedly been on the brink of authorizing a strike — yet it has not materialized.
The delay appears to stem from a combination of factors: insufficient operational readiness for the scale of attack required, and deep uncertainty about the desired outcome. Military strategists face a dilemma — a limited strike might not inflict enough damage to change Iran's calculus, while a large-scale assault could drag the United States into a prolonged and unpredictable regional war it does not want.
There are also more mundane reasons for delay. Reports suggest the timing has been influenced by domestic considerations, including waiting until after major events like the Super Bowl.
Iran, for its part, has issued a blunt warning: any attack will be treated as a declaration of all-out war. Tehran has pledged retaliatory missile strikes against all US military installations across the Middle East and against Israel. The implications of such a response — potentially igniting a multi-front regional conflagration involving Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, the Houthis, and other Iranian proxies — are staggering.
Four Possible Scenarios
According to the Israeli newspaper, the analysts have identified four plausible paths forward, each carrying its own risks and consequences:
Scenario 1: A New Nuclear Agreement
Iran agrees to nuclear constraints in exchange for comprehensive sanctions relief and the removal of the military threat. The chances of this are slim. The trust deficit between Tehran and Washington is vast, and even if a deal were somehow struck, experts warn it would likely be a weak agreement — full of ambiguities, lacking robust verification mechanisms, and politically fragile in both capitals.
Scenario 2: Endless Stalling
With or without formal negotiations, both sides continue in a state of hostile equilibrium. Pressure on Iran persists. In the absence of a political horizon, a new wave of protests or another internal crisis could eventually threaten the regime's grip on power. It is also possible that time and biology intervene — Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is 86 years old — and that a leadership transition could reopen diplomatic possibilities that are currently foreclosed.
Scenario 3: A Token Strike
The United States carries out a limited, perhaps even tacitly coordinated military action — symbolic enough for President Trump to declare victory and pivot his attention to other priorities. Such a strike might involve hitting a secondary military facility or a symbolic target, allowing both sides to save face. The fundamental Iranian problem, however — its nuclear program, its regional proxy network, its hostility to the existing order — would not disappear.
Scenario 4: A Significant US Attack
This is the scenario that keeps military planners, intelligence officials, and world leaders awake at night. For a major American military operation to be effective, its objective would have to extend far beyond destroying centrifuges or disabling enrichment facilities. The goal would need to be nothing less than a serious destabilization of the regime, up to and including its collapse.
To achieve this, the strike would likely need to include the elimination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself, or at least constitute an action of comparable strategic magnitude — decapitating the command structure of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, neutralizing Iran's ballistic missile arsenal, and crippling the country's air defenses and communications networks simultaneously.
Such an operation would almost certainly involve B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, submarine-launched cruise missiles, cyber operations, and potentially special operations forces. The THAAD missile defense system and Patriot batteries already deployed in the region would be activated to defend US bases and allied nations from the inevitable retaliatory strikes.
An attack of this magnitude would shake the Iranian regime to its core — but it would also risk unleashing consequences that no war-gamer can fully predict.
The Nuclear Clock Is Ticking
Lurking behind all of these scenarios is an urgent and terrifying reality: Iran currently possesses approximately 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. This stockpile, which is not under effective international oversight, is technically sufficient to produce material for up to ten nuclear weapons with further enrichment to weapons-grade levels.
Tehran now understands more clearly than ever that nuclear weapons represent the only reliable insurance policy for the regime's survival. The examples of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi — who surrendered his nuclear program and was subsequently overthrown and killed — and Ukraine — which gave up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal and was later invaded by Russia — are not lost on Iranian strategists.
All that remains, the analysis suggests, is to hope that Israeli intelligence monitoring is good enough to detect a breakout attempt in time. Because once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold and becomes a declared or undeclared nuclear weapons state, the entire strategic calculus of the Middle East — and the world — will change irrevocably.
Graphic: Israel Hayom