If you can’t fight, you can’t talk： US sanctions can’t crush Iran, and the deadlock between the two sides is hard to solve before November.

Trump’s "olive branch" was categorically rejected by Iran.

Just before Iran recently held a routine annual military exercise in advance in the Persian Gulf, Trump, who recently sent Iran a "capital tweet" implying the use of force, unexpectedly said that he was ready to meet with Iranian leaders at any time without preconditions: "I am willing to meet, especially when I may face problems such as war, death and famine. There is nothing wrong with meeting. " "If they (Iran) want to, I am ready to meet them at any time." "There is no precondition. If they want to meet, I will. " Trump’s bizarre "olive branch" was not only categorically rejected by Iranian conservatives and moderates, but also failed to change Iran’s Persian Gulf military exercises as scheduled, and was criticized by the media at home and abroad.

Since Trump announced his withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal on May 8 this year, the diplomatic game and public criticism between the United States and Iran have never stopped. At present, the international community, especially international public opinion, is doubly concerned about whether the game between the United States and Iraq is developing in the direction of opening peace talks or evolving in the direction of opening war? Opening peace talks is undoubtedly big news, and opening war is even bigger news. This is undoubtedly another unpredictable suspense that Trump has created for the world. In my opinion, in the short term, there is no possibility for the United States and Iraq to start negotiations, let alone war. The two sides are still in the stage of diplomatic game and public opinion attack and defense between pressure and anti-pressure, sanctions and anti-sanctions.

Trump’s diplomatic "soap opera" was embarrassed.

Trump’s casual attitude is not serious, and it is naturally difficult to cause serious treatment and response from Iran. Trump’s loose talk shows that the United States and Iraq can hold unconditional negotiations, which is a manifestation of his capricious and consistent style. Just a few hours before Trump’s speech, US Secretary of State Pompeo also said that the United States and Iran would never hold unconditional talks, and Pompeo was nicknamed "the mouse in the maze" by the media.

Although Trump’s diplomacy is unpredictable, it has also formed a certain "diplomatic routine" on many crisis issues: first, it issued extreme threats, then changed its position, held talks, and finally announced its victory. The most typical case is Trump’s North Korean diplomacy. However, the Iranian nuclear issue is not only fundamentally different from the DPRK nuclear issue, but also Iran’s complicated bureaucratic system, especially the dual structure of conservative and reform forces, and the constraints of religious leaders on the president are very different from North Korea’s power structure, and the geopolitical environment in which the two hot issues are located is also very different. What’s more, the US-DPRK summit was realized under the pressure and communication of Trump for eight months after he took office.

Therefore, Trump’s loose talk about holding US-Iran talks was also accused by the media as a "diplomatic soap opera", and Iran, which has been engaged in diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear issue for 15 years since 2003, naturally will not make a positive response at will. The prospect that it is difficult for the United States and Iran to hold negotiations in the short term is just as Gerald Blank, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the United States, said: "Iran’s domestic political structure is much more complicated than that in the northern part of the peninsula, and it is not interested in diplomacy with the United States, especially after Trump asked the United States to withdraw from the multinational agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan." "At present, if anyone in the Iranian government tries to contact Trump, they are severely criticized by others."

The reaction made by Iran also proves this point. Motahari, deputy speaker of the Iranian parliament, pointed out: "After Trump made an arrogant talk to Iran, negotiation is impossible. This is an insult. " Iranian Interior Minister Fazley said: "The United States cannot be trusted. How can people trust after the United States is arrogant and unilaterally withdraws from the nuclear agreement? " Arribi, director of the Iranian project of the World Crisis Group, commented that "no Iranian leader will meet with the US president who has repeatedly threatened Iran, attacked the Iranian leadership and violated the nuclear agreement at this time."

"Old hatreds and new foes" make the United States and Iraq not qualified for negotiations.

In essence, Trump’s idea that the United States and Iran can negotiate unconditionally is more of a diplomatic strategy, which not only alleviates the international community’s widespread criticism that the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal, but also shifts the responsibility for regional tensions to Iran. At the same time, it is also a strategy to aggravate Iran’s domestic contradictions and disrupt Iran’s domestic political ecology. However, its arbitrariness and hypocrisy can be described as obvious, and Iran, which has rich diplomatic experience, will naturally not take it.

Of course, the deeper root of the difficulty in holding negotiations between the United States and Iran lies in the serious distrust accumulated by the confrontation between the United States and Iran in the past 40 years since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The contradictions between the two sides spread throughout the social system, ideology and practical interests. From the beginning of the Islamic Revolution when the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Iran to the hostage crisis, from the 1980s when the United States supported Iraq to confront Iran in the Iran-Iraq war to the Clinton administration’s containment policy, to the Bush administration’s characterization of Iran as an "axis of evil" and its long-term sanctions against Iraq, and now the Trump administration brazenly withdrew from the hard-won the Iranian nuclear deal and exerted extreme pressure on Iran, it can be said that the old hatred between the United States and Iraq has not been solved, and new hatred has been added.

Therefore, negotiations between the United States and Iran are not realistic at all, just as Mehmetali Jaafari, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said: "Iranians will not allow government officials to meet with the Great Satan." of course，Contact between the United States and Iran through a third party is not excluded. Some analysts pointed out that Oman’s foreign minister visited Tehran and Washington one after another last month, which is likely to play an information communication role between the United States and Iran.After Rouhani came to power in 2013, it was Oman that brokered the bridge between Iran and the United States, which finally led to the resumption of US-Iran contacts and Iranian nuclear talks. According to reports, Trump had sent the message of holding bilateral talks to Iran eight times before. However, the United States kept pressing and shouting about the talks. In addition, the Iranian nuclear deal involved China, the European Union and Russia, which made Iran not easily hold bilateral talks with the United States, and even more afraid of falling into the diplomatic trap set by Trump.

Judging from the future trend, the possibility that the United States and Iran will return to negotiations will not be ruled out even if the United States exerts certain pressure on Iran and forces Iran to compromise in some areas of the 12 conditions put forward by the United States (such as Syria and other issues), but this will not happen overnight, and it is difficult for Iran to abandon other parties in the Iranian nuclear deal and negotiate with the United States alone.

The weight of war: the United States and Iraq can’t bear it.

From the perspective of the United States, although Trump has changed the Middle East policy during the Obama era since he took office, he has continued to exert his strength on the three hot issues of Syria, Palestine and Israel, but its essence is still to maximize the benefits with the minimum investment, and its core is to consolidate the alliance with Saudi Arabia and Israel and profit from it by shaping Iran into a regional core threat. However, Trump, who gives priority to the interests of the United States, revives the domestic economy and ensures the victory of the mid-term congressional elections, has no systematic plan to go to war with Iran rashly. This may be one of the specific reasons why Trump recently said that the United States and Iran can negotiate unconditionally. Its purpose is to cool down the situation in the Gulf region, which is becoming more tense in the context of Iran’s recent military exercises.

In essence, the United States should be well aware of the disastrous consequences of going to war with Iran. If it chooses a "preemptive" war to completely overthrow the Iranian regime, it will trigger regional turmoil and even a full-scale war, and will impact the international energy market and the whole world economy. If limited military strikes involving Israeli, Saudi and other allies are chosen, the United States will not be able to change the Iranian regime in a short period of time, and Iran will definitely choose to threaten to block the US military bases in the Strait of Hormuz and intensify the conflicts in Syria, Yemen and other regions in an all-round way, and the forces fostered by Iran in the Middle East will continue to create troubles. Iranian President Rouhani warned that the war between the United States and Iran would be "the mother of all wars", and this is the profound meaning. The strategic depth of Iran and the Persian nationality’s resistance to power will also be feared by the United States, and the lessons of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan are just around the corner. Therefore, if Trump is still rational, it is unlikely that the United States will choose to launch a war against Iran.

Iran is facing more serious challenges. The contradiction between Iran’s conservatives and reformists has intensified after the United States restarted sanctions, and the people’s livelihood crisis aggravated by a large number of foreign capital fleeing, currency depreciation and soaring prices has made Rouhani face the phenomenon of "second term curse" of the president in Iranian politics (that is, both reformist and conservative presidents will hit a wall in their second term and end up in a bleak way, and hostile factions will come to power in the next presidential election) more serious, while the United States has become Rouhani’s "second term curse". At present, coping with economic difficulties internally and alleviating the economic crisis; Saving the Iranian nuclear deal from the outside world and easing the pressure of U.S. sanctions are the top priority of the Rouhani administration, which makes it not take the initiative to choose war at all. At present, although Iran has held a very high-profile military exercise, Iran will not easily take actions such as blocking the the Strait of Hormuz to aggravate tensions without a comprehensive or limited military strike by the United States.

Based on the above factors, in a certain period of time in the future, the United States and Iran will continue to struggle mainly in the fields of diplomacy, economy and public opinion, supplemented by mutual deterrence in the military field, and even the friction between the two sides in a third-party battlefield such as Syria will not be ruled out, but it is unlikely that the two sides will engage in direct local wars and total wars.

Of course, the United States will hope that Iran’s economic collapse and even regime collapse will be caused by extreme pressure, and Iran’s political and economic difficulties will naturally continue to intensify. However, Iran’s political toughness is much higher than that of Arab countries where regime changes have taken place before. The political system of the Islamic Republic, which combines religious centralization with democratic elections, a relatively complete bureaucratic system, the mutual restriction between the two forces of reform and conservatism, the absolute loyalty of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the regime’s ability to resist pressure for a long time under war and sanctions, are all factors that enable the Iranian regime to maintain its resilience.

Therefore, before the end of the mid-term elections in the United States this year and the deadline set by the United States for the termination of trade relations with Iran (November 4), the relationship between the United States and Iran will remain in a stalemate, and its future development remains to be observed and evaluated.

(The author is the director and professor of the Middle East Institute of Shanghai International Studies University)