An Army commando stands guard at a checkpoint near Pakistan's foreign ministry ahead of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan,, on Thursday.Anjum Naveed/The Associated Press
Some of the most important negotiations of the century begin Saturday in Islamabad with stakes far beyond Iran. They will affect the Middle East, to be sure, but will also shape the postwar world − its economy, its energy profile, its power politics, its leadership.
Donald Trump has declared victory, but for all the firepower he possesses and all the destruction American forces have wreaked, he is suddenly on the defensive. Iran has declared a victory of its own, but in a way may have more forward momentum than the United States. Pakistan may be emerging as a new power in the Islamic world. And the composition of MAGA and the political destiny of U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, once closed matters, are now open questions.
Opinion: The U.S. and Israel have already lost the war in Iran
The world may have stood still watching the conflict in Iran, and for a 36-hour period all seemed settled. Since then, cracks in the ceasefire have emerged, and now many geopolitical factors are in motion, with no predictable outcomes.
In the Middle East, Iran still has cards to play.
It was Mr. Trump himself who introduced the power of playing cards in global politics. In his February, 2025, Oval Office harangue of Volodymyr Zelensky, he told the Ukrainian President, “You have to be thankful − you don’t have the cards.” Mr. Trump still has the most powerful hand: the efficient, technologically advanced U.S. military. Iran has seen the power of a force that is the equivalent of a royal flush.
But Iran has cards, too − in a way, giving it several options. One is radioactive: the uranium it is husbanding somewhere. The U.S. thinks it knows where it is. Iran knows where it is and may have some secreted away. No one can doubt that Iran’s nuclear physicists and military technicians thought they might well reach this juncture and, with caution and cunning, made plans for just this eventuality.
People gather under a large portrait of Iran's new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, during a memorial for his slain father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday.Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
An ironic possibility looms: that the war, despite the continued threat of sanctions, may actually have improved Iran’s economic prospects.
Yes, the country is in ruins. (Its theocracy has shown no signs of caring for the individual welfare of its citizens.) Yes, its energy-production facilities are compromised. (The extent may not be as great as the U.S. claims and in any case may not be beyond repair.)
But no, the country is not an economic basket case. It has all that oil. There is no sailing through the Strait of Hormuz without Iranian consent − its permission, in a phrase often used in the sort of negotiations with which a certain real-estate tycoon surely is familiar, may be reasonably, or unreasonably, withheld − and it may actually charge tolls for passage through the waterway. (There are legal obstacles to assessing the kind of tolls Egypt extracts in the Suez Canal and Panama does with its isthmus canal, but Mr. Trump’s threats and actions in recent weeks underline the fragility, if not the irrelevance, of international law.)
American domestic politics are in flux.
Sitting at the table in Islamabad will be Mr. Vance. He’s slightly scarred when it comes to big things (his clear opposition to the war Mr. Trump was keen to prosecute, a venial sin at the very least in the Church of Trump) and small ones (his forthcoming book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, is about his conversion to Catholicism. Yet on the cover is an evocative picture of the Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Elk Creek, Va.)
Trump’s critics question how the U.S. is better off after war with Iran
Moreover, he is being eclipsed within the Republican Party by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and chastised by a powerful voice in conservative circles, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for his interference in Hungarian politics on behalf of Viktor Orbán, who is not known as a leading evangelist for democratic values. “Mr. Vance isn’t winning many friends for America,” the Journal wrote, “by treating Hungary’s election like it’s the Iowa caucuses.”
At the same time, as criticism of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on Iran (especially the comment that “a whole civilization will die tonight”) mounts in Republican circles, multiple strains of MAGA are becoming ever more apparent. Visible figures within the movement are increasingly skeptical of Trump-era international engagements.
Donald Trump pretends to aim a sniper gun while speaking with reporters in the White House on Monday.Julia Demaree Nikhinson/The Associated Press
Mr. Trump’s reputation as a peerless negotiator is itself undergoing an unexpected revisionism.
The President already bears a TACO reputation, for there is substantial evidence that, as the term suggests, “Trump Always Chickens Out.” (Many Americans are glad he does, but that is another matter.) Now his judgment is being questioned.
“We have been looking at a classic game-theory situation in this Iranian street fight,” said Barry Appleton, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen who is co-director of the New York Law School’s Center for International Law. “The President has done everything to push the needle as much as possible to convince Iran to give up. The problem is that you need deeply credible threats and also need to believe the other side will understand the costs involved. No one actually believed the Americans would destroy Iranian civilization. He no longer is credible.”
Correct − up to a point.
Mr. Trump has often employed Mao Zedong’s “paper tiger” in reference to feckless countries in battle. Surely he knows another of the Chinese Communist leader’s aphorisms: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” The U.S. President still has many of them.