Tehran emerged from the collapse of the Islamabad peace talks projecting confidence rather than anxiety on Sunday, with senior Iranian officials framing the failure of 21 hours of negotiations not as a setback for Iran but as proof of American intransigence — and insisting that the ball now lies firmly in Washington's court.
The talks, the longest direct engagement between Iranian and American officials in over a year according to Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei, ended without an agreement in the early hours of Sunday. But where Vice President JD Vance cast the outcome as Iran's refusal to accept a reasonable final offer, Tehran's narrative was strikingly different: Iran came with constructive proposals, the United States came with maximalist demands, and diplomacy — in Tehran's framing — never truly ends.
'Excessive Demands': Tehran's Core Charge
The sharpest Iranian characterisation of the talks' failure came from Tasnim News Agency's correspondent on the ground in Islamabad: the American team had sought, through the negotiating table, what it had failed to achieve through 38 days of airstrikes — namely, control over the Strait of Hormuz and the removal of nuclear materials from Iranian soil.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who led the Iranian delegation under the designation "Minab-168," confirmed that the talks had been substantive but ultimately blocked by the American side. "My colleagues in Iran's delegation presented forward-looking initiatives, but the other side ultimately failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of negotiations," he said in a statement on Sunday. He had made clear before negotiations began that Iran entered with goodwill but without trust: "Due to the experiences from the previous two wars, we do not trust the other side."
Ghalibaf's post-talks posture was notably assertive. "We believe that diplomacy of power is another approach alongside military struggle for the realization of the rights of the Iranian people, and we will not cease our efforts to consolidate the achievements of forty days of national defence by the Iranians for a moment." The formulation — "diplomacy of power" as a parallel track to military action — encapsulated Tehran's strategic self-presentation: not as a party seeking relief from pressure, but as one negotiating from a position of demonstrated strength.
Foreign Minister Spokesman Baqaei acknowledged that the two sides had reached "an understanding on a number of issues" while remaining divided on "two or three important" matters. He described the atmosphere as one of "mistrust and suspicion" — a consequence, in Tehran's reading, not of Iranian conduct but of American diplomatic history. "These negotiations were held after 40 days of imposed war," Baqaei said. "It is natural that we should not have expected from the beginning to reach an agreement within one meeting. No one expected that either." His conclusion was emphatic: "Diplomacy never ends."
The Trust Deficit: A Structural Iranian Grievance
Running through every Iranian official statement was a consistent leitmotif: American untrustworthiness as a negotiating partner. Baqaei invoked it in notably charged terms, declaring that "diplomacy for us is the continuation of the sacred jihad of the defenders of the land of Iran. We have not forgotten and will not forget the experience of America's breaches of trust and malevolence. Just as we will not forgive the heinous crimes committed by them and the Zionist regime during the second and third imposed wars."
This framing — the United States as a repeat violator of diplomatic commitments — was reinforced at the presidential level. In a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian recalled what he described as Washington's history of breaching negotiated agreements and said the US had "imposed two wars and committed numerous crimes against the Iranian nation." Pezeshkian reiterated that Iran had never sought conflict and consistently supported dialogue on the basis of international law, while stressing that Tehran would not hesitate to defend its legitimate rights.
The trust deficit was further contextualised by Iranian officials as rooted in a specific sequence of events: indirect nuclear talks in Oman and Rome in 2025 were followed, in June of that year, by an Israeli military campaign that devastated Iran's military command structure. A second round of diplomacy in Switzerland in February 2026 was followed days later by the joint US-Israeli strikes on February 28 that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and ignited the current war. From Tehran's perspective, two rounds of good-faith engagement were met with military aggression both times — a pattern that structurally conditions how Iran approaches any new round of talks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told his German counterpart before the talks commenced that Tehran was entering negotiations with "complete distrust." The phrase became something of a leitmotif for the Iranian delegation throughout the Islamabad process.
The Strait of Hormuz and the Nuclear File
On the most immediately consequential issue — the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — Iran's position was unambiguous and strategically deliberate. An informed Iranian source told Tasnim News Agency that "nothing will change in the Strait of Hormuz until the United States agrees to a reasonable agreement," adding pointedly: "Iran is in no hurry."
The IRGC Navy reinforced that position with a formal warning on Saturday: any attempt by military vessels to transit the strait would be met with "a decisive and forceful response." Only non-military vessels would be permitted passage, and only under specific regulations. When US CENTCOM announced that two destroyers — the USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. and the USS Michael Murphy — had transited the strait as part of a mine-clearance operation, Iran's military flatly rejected the account. Lieutenant Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, stated categorically that "the permission for the transit of any vessel is within the authority of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Iran's position on the strait goes beyond tactical leverage. The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters cited Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei as saying that Iran would move the waterway's management into "a new stage" following the US-Israeli aggression — framing Hormuz not as an instrument of crisis to be relinquished at the negotiating table, but as a permanent assertion of Iranian sovereignty and regional centrality. Ali Akbar Velayati, the supreme leader's adviser on international affairs, stated that Iran "holds the keys to the Strait of Hormuz" and would pursue war reparations as part of any settlement.
On the nuclear issue, Tehran's public position — consistent across official statements — held that Iran's right to peaceful nuclear technology is non-negotiable under international law as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iranian officials characterised Washington's demand for the removal of the entire near-bomb-grade uranium stockpile, and for zero enrichment on Iranian soil, as goals the US had "failed to achieve through war" and was now attempting to achieve through diplomacy.
Baqaei confirmed that the nuclear issue was among the agenda items discussed over the past 24 hours, alongside the Strait of Hormuz, war reparations, the lifting of sanctions, and the complete end of the war against Iran and in the region. The Iranian negotiating team — which included Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Araghchi, and senior adviser Ali Baqeri, alongside technical expert committees — is described by Tasnim as having "prevented the realisation of US excessive demands" on both the nuclear and Hormuz fronts while "preserving the fundamental rights of the people in various political, military fields and peaceful nuclear technology."
Pezeshkian, Macron, the European Dimension and the "Forever War" Frame
President Pezeshkian's call with Macron on Saturday added a European dimension to Tehran's diplomatic framing. France's condemnation of the war "from the outset" and Macron's support for a ceasefire aligned, at least rhetorically, with Iranian positions on the illegitimacy of the US-Israeli campaign. Pezeshkian condemned ongoing Israeli strikes in Lebanon as war crimes, including attacks on non-military sites such as a childcare centre, and called for international pressure on both Washington and Tel Aviv to halt the assault. He also described Iran's missile programme as a "defensive necessity" and criticised the United Nations and European Union for what he called inaction in the face of unlawful attacks on Iran and the region.
The most analytically expansive Iranian-perspective account of the talks' failure came from Press TV commentator Alireza Hashemi, who argued that the primary obstacle to a diplomatic breakthrough was what he called the "forever war" logic guiding US and Israeli policy toward the region. Hashemi contended that the definition of an "imminent threat" from Iran is a "moving goalpost" — perpetually adjusted to sustain a continuous state of confrontation regardless of what Iran does or does not concede. He cited President Trump's own prior declaration that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been "obliterated" in the June 2025 war, only for US officials to subsequently claim Iran was again approaching a critical nuclear threshold months later.
Iran's Deputy Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref had framed the choice starkly before the talks: a deal was possible if Iran faced representatives of "America First" in the negotiating room, but not if it faced representatives of "Israel First." The distinction, in Tehran's reading, mattered enormously — and the outcome appeared to vindicate the pessimistic scenario.
'The Ball Is in America's Court'
With no date or venue set for a next round of talks, and the two-week ceasefire due to expire on April 21, Iran's public posture as of Sunday afternoon was one of deliberate patience. "Iran has put forward reasonable initiatives and proposals. The ball is in America's court to look at the issues realistically," an informed source told Tasnim. The source warned that the US had repeated in negotiations the same "miscalculations" it had made in the conduct of the war itself.
Ghalibaf's closing formulation — "The United States understood our logic and principles, and now it is time to decide whether it can earn our trust or not" — was calibrated to place the burden of the next move squarely on Washington, while signalling that Iran remains, in principle, open to continued diplomacy. Baqaei's parting line echoed it: "Diplomacy never ends. This tool is for protecting national interests, and diplomats must perform their duties both in times of war and peace."
Whether Washington draws the same lesson remains, as of Sunday evening, an open question.