Trump Seeks Deal With Iran to End War

April 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed interest in negotiating a deal with Iran, nearly four weeks after the United States and Israel attacked the country, but it is unclear if Tehran is willing to negotiate or if Israel would agree to a ceasefire.

In March 24 comments to reporters, Trump said that the United States has “won” the war and that Iran wants “to make a deal so badly.”  He said that Iran agreed to “never have a nuclear weapon,” a commitment Iran had already made in the February talks preceding the Israeli and U.S. strikes. Trump also said Iran would agree to forgo uranium enrichment, a key sticking point in the negotiations that preceded the U.S. decision to strike Iran in coordination with Israel, despite presenting no evidence of an imminent threat. (See ACT, March 2026.)

Although several states, including Pakistan, have offered to mediate talks between the United States and Iran, Tehran has denied any engagement with the Trump administration. Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, posted March 23 on the social media platform X that “No negotiations have been held” with the United States. He wrote that Trump’s announcement was designed to “manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”

Oil and gas prices have increased significantly since the war started Feb. 28, due in part to an Israeli strike on an Iranian gas field and an Iranian retaliatory strike on a Qatari gas field. Iran is also limiting transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for oil tankers that carry about 25 percent of the world’s oil.

Iranian Foreign Minister spokesman Esmail Baghaei told the state news agency IRNA that Iran has received messages from other countries “regarding the U.S.’s request for negotiations to end the war,” but also said there were no contacts with the United States.

It is unclear if Israel would be willing to stop striking Iran as part of any deal. In a March 23 video statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Trump “believes there is an opportunity to leverage” Israeli and U.S. military accomplishments for a deal. But he noted that Israel will continue to strike Iran and “safeguard our vital interests under all circumstances.”

Days before he said that the United States and Iran were making progress toward ending the war, Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it did not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.

On March 23, he announced on his social media site, Truth Social, that the United States would “POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES” on Iran’s energy infrastructure for five days due to “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.”

Media outlets later reported that the United States sent a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran via intermediaries. These reports suggest that the 15 points largely echo previous U.S. demands, including dismantlement of the uranium enrichment program, zero enrichment in the future, suspension of ballistic missile activities, and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s state-run Press TV quoted an official March 25 as saying Iran rejected the U.S. terms and said the Iranian government will not allow Trump to end the war on its own timeline.

The Wall Street Journal reported March 24 that Iran has its own demands for any negotiation, including allowing Iran to collect fees from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, guarantees that strikes against Iran will stop, lifting all sanctions, and allowing Iran to retain its missile program. Iran said it would also seek reparations from the United States and closure of U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf. These demands exceed what Iran had asked for in talks with the United States before the war, suggesting that Iran’s positions have hardened and that the new leadership believes it has leverage.

Despite Trump’s claim that the United States has won the war, several goals that he laid out as justification for the conflict remain unmet. Although Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the strikes, the regime remains intact, with his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader.

Iran also retains nuclear material, including a stockpile of uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels. Trump suggested sending in U.S. troops to retrieve the material at one point, but any such mission would be dangerous and challenging, given that some of the material may be difficult to locate.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to the House Intelligence Committee March 17 that the intelligence community has high confidence that it knows where Iran’s nuclear materials are located. However, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi told CBS News March 22 that Iran could be using decoy cannisters, presumably to make it more challenging to anyone who might try to find and remove Iran’s enriched uranium. He also said that Iran would retain capabilities and knowledge that cannot be destroyed by military strikes.

In the first four weeks of the strikes, there has been little military focus on Iran’s remaining nuclear infrastructure. Neither the United States nor Israel has struck Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply buried site near Natanz that Iran claims is for centrifuge assembly, or attempted to target areas of Esfahan, where Grossi confirmed that Iran is likely storing more than 200 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium-235. The decision not to strike Esfahan could be because the material is stored too deeply underground to destroy.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told members of Congress in June 2025 that the United States focused on collapsing the tunnel entrances at Esfahan rather than destroying the underground areas when it struck nuclear facilities June 21 because the site is too deeply buried. Satellite imagery and statements from the IAEA suggest that the United States and Israel have not attempted to do further damage to those tunnel entrances. Israel, however, does seem to have struck the entrances into the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, possibly to impede access. The IAEA confirmed damage to Natanz March 2.

Israel also struck a site known as Taleghan 2, where Iran was burying a chamber that could have been intended for testing the high explosives necessary for a nuclear weapon.

The 2026 U.S. worldwide threat assessment, released on March 18, however, does not indicate that Iran has taken any steps to weaponize or to resume nuclear activities such as enrichment that were halted to due to damage from the brief U.S.-Israeli war against Iran last June. The assessment noted only that Iran “was intending to try to recover from the devastation of its nuclear infrastructure sustained during the 12-Day War.”