US-Iran talks resume amid unraveling JCPOA: How geopolitical leverage and domestic politics shape nuclear diplomacy
Original framing: “Trump expects US to hold talks with Iran this week, Axios says” — Middle East Eye
The headline fails to contextualize this moment within the long history of US-Iran relations, particularly the 1953 coup that overthrew Mossadegh and installed the Shah, which set the stage for decades of mutual distrust. The JCPOA itself was a fragile compromise following the 2003 Iraq War, which destabilized the region and empowered hardliners on both sides. The current talks echo the 2013-2015 negotiations, where the US used the ‘snapback’ sanctions mechanism as leverage—a tactic that undermines Iran’s trust in diplomatic processes and perpetuates the cycle of broken agreements.
The Axios headline presents the US-Iran talks as a binary event driven by Trump’s personal diplomacy, but the reality is far more systemic: a decades-long cycle of sanctions, coups, and proxy conflicts that has trapped both nations in a feedback loop of distrust.
The absence of historical context—such as the 1953 coup or the 2003 Iraq War—obscures how current negotiations are merely the latest iteration of a pattern where diplomacy serves as a tool of containment rather than resolution. Marginalized voices, from Iranian women to Iraqi Shia communities, are excluded from the narrative, yet their experiences reveal the true human cost of geopolitical maneuvering. Cross-cultural perspectives, such as the ASEAN Way or Islamic concepts of cooperation, offer alternatives to the transactional, deadline-driven approach favored by Western powers. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of both sides pretending to revive the JCPOA while maintaining the same coercive structures that doomed it in the first place. To break this cycle, solutions must address the economic interdependence of the region, amplify civil society’s role in Track II diplomacy, and reform energy markets to reduce the incentives for proxy conflict—all while centering the voices and needs of those most affected by the conflict.