In a shocking development, Iran’s position on negotiating with the U.S. remains unchanged:

President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday ruled out holding any bilateral talks with the United States and threatened to further cut Iran’s commitments to a nuclear deal within days. In an address to parliament, Rouhani said any dialogue with the US would have to fall within the framework of the group of major powers that agreed the landmark nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. Rouhani also said Iran was ready to further reduce its commitments to the accord “in the coming days” if current negotiations with European nations yield no results by Thursday.

The Iranian position has been very clear for more than a year: they won’t talk with the U.S. until our government rejoins the JCPOA and lifts the sanctions it has imposed starting last August. Since Trump is very unlikely to do either of those things, there won’t be any negotiations. There wouldn’t be any point in holding talks until those things happen anyway. Iran’s government can see from Trump’s pseudo-engagement with North Korea that there is no reason to meet with an administration that just wants photo ops without making serious proposals. The Trump administration’s Iran and North Korea policies are failing in large part because they demand the impossible and provide the other side with no incentives to cooperate. Even if the Iranian government were inclined to overlook Trump’s past deal-breaking and betrayal, Trump is offering them nothing except the opportunity to surrender. Under those circumstances, it would be extremely odd for them to agree to negotiate when they consider his demands to be absurd and excessive.

The report continues:

“Maybe there has been a misunderstanding. We’ve said it several times and we repeat it — there has been no decision to hold bilateral talks with the US,” said Rouhani. “In principle, we don’t want bilateral talks with the United States,” he told parliament at a session convened to approve his picks for two ministerial posts. “If the United States lifts all sanctions… it would be possible to talk (to them) during 5+1 meetings as in the past,” he said, referring to the powers involved in negotiating the 2015 deal. “We have received several proposals (to have talks with the United States) and our answer has always been negative.”

It is strange that Iranian officials have to keep repeating a position that is practically impossible to misinterpret. Trump refused to accept it when they said yes to the nuclear deal, and now he seems incapable of understanding when they say no to talks. Iran’s conditions have been straightforward: the party to the agreement that first violated and broke the agreement has to return before anything else can be discussed. If Trump had truly wanted to negotiate something with Iran, he shouldn’t have reneged on the JCPOA. Once he did that, any chance of negotiations went out the window. Iran hawks knew this all along, which is one reason why they have wanted to breach the agreement and ultimately destroy it.

If the positions were reversed, it would be easy for us to understand why our government wouldn’t want to talk to the people that just betrayed our trust. Somehow when it is our government that breaks its word and reneges on its commitments, many Americans still can’t grasp why the other government would be unwilling to meet. “Maximum pressure” has not been, and was never intended to be, a means to facilitating new negotiations, but was obviously meant to serve as an impediment to diplomacy. The administration has not imposed sanctions to gain leverage for future talks, but instead has used them for purely destructive ends of inflicting pain and disrupting Iran’s economy. Naturally, Iran’s government has responded to this with increased intransigence and defiance in recognition that the administration is seeking regime change in all but name. Until that changes, there is nothing to talk about.