Vali Nasr:

Well, I mean, the purpose of pressure by the Iranians is ultimately to get Trump to come to some sort of talks that will release the pressure on them, so at some point they're hoping that Trump would change tack.

Having said that, the Iranians don't trust Trump — he walked away from the nuclear deal, they watch what he did with Mexico, signing a trade deal and then turning around and putting tariffs on them and then they look at who's standing behind Trump.

They see Bolton, they see Pompeo and they're very afraid that they're going to get into talks and it's going to come to nothing and they will be left with nothing.

And so I think they need Trump to go an added mile to to give assurances, maybe using allies, intermediaries, maybe making some kind of a gesture in form of giving waiver to a few countries to buy Iran's oil, as a way of building trust with the Iranians. I think that's the problem Trump has. He wants to do diplomacy, he doesn't have credibility for doing it.