Iran-US talks to end war beset by tension, mistrust

US Vice President JD Vance declared Monday that a "very good foundation" had been laid for a successful final deal with Iran following direct talks between the two sides at a mountain-top resort in Switzerland.   

The talks were the first stage of a two-month negotiating period set out under a preliminary deal agreed last week, aimed at ending the war launched by the United States and Israel on February 28.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on X that there had been "major progress to end the Lebanon War," in reference to the clashes between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.

He also said Tehran had secured waivers for oil and petrochemical exports, the release of some of its frozen funds and the launch of a reconstruction and development plan for Iran.

While Iran's top negotiators left for Tehran after the talks, the technical team — led by Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi — is still in Switzerland and will continue talks, Iranian state media reported.

The peace process between the US and Iranian officials, however, has been under pressure from multiple directions since before the talks began. Hardliners in Iran denounced negotiations as a retreat. In the United States, parts of the memorandum of understanding faced criticism for offering too much to Iran while leaving key questions unresolved.

At the same time, Israel has continued its strikes in Lebanon, even as Tehran insists that a ceasefire there is part of the interim deal.

A delicate and fragile ceasefire

The negotiations got off to a rocky start on Sunday, with the Iranian delegation briefly pausing talks after US President Donald Trump threatened in a social-media post to restart attacks on Iran if Tehran doesn't rein in its allied proxies in Lebanon.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Tehran's chief negotiator along with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, responded by saying that Iran did not take American threats seriously and warned Washington to be careful with its words.

"They better be careful with their statements, our armed forces are ready to respond in a different way," he said on his X account. "Whatever they say, we are the ones who will act."

The exchange underscored the difficulties in turning the shaky diplomatic gambit into a durable agreement.

Kambiz Ghafouri, a Finland-based political analyst, told DW that the basic ideological contradiction between the two sides has never been resolved.

"The Iranian government is still a revolutionary government," he said.

"It still has a supreme leader of the revolution, it still has the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and it still chants against America and Israel. Under these conditions, it has to be clear how Iran wants to negotiate with a country it still defines in those terms."

In his view, this tension is not simply a diplomatic issue, but rather a problem of political identity, as a system built around permanent hostility cannot easily pivot to stable coexistence without creating internal strain. One of the clearest signs of that strain is the fighting in Lebanon, he said.

Iran unlikely to abandon Hezbollah?

Iran has treated the Lebanon ceasefire issue as part of the negotiation framework, while the American side has tried to narrow the talks and separate regional escalation from the core deal.

But events on the ground have made that separation difficult.

Analyst Ghafouri said Iran is unlikely to abandon Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite political party and militant group, in any meaningful way.

"Hezbollah is like a child for the Iranian regime," he told DW. "It built it and strengthened it. Under these conditions, it is very unlikely that Iran will accept reducing Hezbollah to the level of an ordinary political party."

For Tehran, Hezbollah is not just a policy instrument. It is part of the regime's long-term regional architecture and ideological self-image.

For Washington and Israel, that makes Iranian commitments harder to trust, Ghafouri said. The US, Israel and many other countries label Hezbollah a terror group.

He also argued that trust is weak on both sides.

From Tehran's perspective, Trump withdrew from the previous international nuclear deal with Iran and then twice attacked the Islamic Republic militarily during negotiations.

Washington, on the other hand, is deeply suspicious of Iranian promises to alter its nuclear and regional policies.

That is why, Ghafouri said, the chances of success remain limited unless Iran's negotiators can isolate or sideline the regime's hardliners.

US makes large offer at high political price

The most ambitious part of the interim framework agreement remains the promise of lifting all primary and secondary US sanctions on Iran.

That would go far beyond the scale of relief offered under the 2015 nuclear deal.

It would also be politically difficult for any American president to deliver quickly, as those sanctions are layered through decades of congressional legislation and executive orders.

Reversing them would take time, political capital and sustained implementation.

But by putting such an offer on the table, Washington appears to be signaling that it is willing, at least in theory, to contemplate something much bigger than a narrow nuclear understanding.

Vice President Vance's statement about Washington being ready for a "fundamental change" in relations with Iran reflected that ambition. It suggested that the American side wanted to present the talks not as a temporary crisis-management exercise, but as a possible turning point after decades of hostility.

The domestic problem inside Iran

Some analysts believe the main obstacle to reaching a long-lasting agreement may not be the foreign terms of the deal, but the internal conditions of the Islamic Republic itself.

"In these negotiations, the people of Iran were ignored," Omid Shams, a London-based political analyst, told DW

In his view, any agreement that sidelines human rights, civil liberties and political prisoners may still fail to stabilize the country internally. If those issues remain untouched, he argued, domestic pressure will continue to build, and the state could once again fall back on more aggressive foreign policy behavior as a way of managing internal crisis.

That argument points to a deeper problem.

Even if Tehran and Washington reduce tensions externally, the Islamic Republic still faces overlapping crises at home, including inflation, collapsing purchasing power, corruption, environmental stress and a widening legitimacy gap between state and society.

A pause, not necessarily an end

Shirin Shams, a human rights activist who was active in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, told DW she sees little reason to expect a durable breakthrough.

"I do not think we should expect a fundamental transformation, or even a lasting result, from the Switzerland talks," she said.

She argues that over the past four decades, the Islamic Republic has often used negotiations not to change its domestic policies, but to buy time, reduce international pressure and survive moments of crisis while maintaining repression at home.

In her reading, even if a short-term agreement is reached, it will remain fragile given the wide array of disagreements between the two sides — not just the nuclear program but also issues such as Tehran's regional influence and support for proxy militant groups across the Middle East.

Compounding the challenges are the split inside the Iranian system — with one side favoring negotiations while the other seeing them as surrender — and opposition from Israel, which views Iran's Islamic regime as an existential threat.

For Shams, however, the most important variable is still internal. The real question is not whether the talks succeed on paper, but whether any agreement can repair the rupture between the state and large parts of Iranian society.

As long as demands for freedom, equality, social justice, dignity and political accountability remain unanswered, she believes no external agreement can solve the deeper crisis inside Iran.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru