by WorldTribune Staff, June 24, 2025 Real World News
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared that the U.S. airstrikes on three key nuclear sites in Iran were a “betrayal of diplomacy” that made future negotiations impossible.
Soon after, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Iran had come to the negotiating table and agreed to a ceasefire.
President Donald Trump is ‘using limited, targeted strikes to reset the terms of engagement and impose consequences for stonewalling.’“Coercive diplomacy,” is how national security analyst James S. Robbins described Trump’s strategy.
“Far from abandoning negotiations,” Robbins noted that Trump and his administration are “reframing them, using limited, targeted strikes to reset the terms of engagement and impose consequences for stonewalling.”
Iran’s stonewalling came on the issue of uranium enrichment. During nuclear talks with the U.S, the ruling mullahs in Iran refused to give up the ability to produce highly enriched uranium while denying they were pursuing nuclear weapons.
Trump called for “unconditional surrender” and gave Iran one last chance for talks in Geneva before finalizing a decision on the use of force.
“Rather than seizing the opportunity to reframe the dialogue, Araghchi told European diplomats that Iran would not negotiate directly with the U.S., would not budge on enrichment or Iran’s missile program, and would only accept parameters based on the 2015 JCPOA agreement which President Trump withdrew from in 2018,” Robbins noted.
“So, having warned Iran that strikes were coming, President Trump reframed the dialogue by taking decisive action against Iran’s enrichment facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The limited precision strikes successfully eliminated, for the time being, Iran’s means to continue to progress in the development of a nuclear weapon. The White House then invited the Iranians to continue discussions, which they promptly refused,” Robbins wrote for the National Security Journal on June 23.
The U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, called Operation Midnight Hammer, “was an example of compellence, or coercive diplomacy,” Robbins wrote. “This framework differs from other uses of force in that it is limited, takes place in the context of a diplomatic impasse or crisis, is focused directly on addressing the issue at hand, is signaled beforehand, and offers a clear path for de-escalation. It is part of a negotiation strategy existing somewhere between war and diplomacy, with elements of both.”
Robbins continued: “Rather than seeing diplomacy and force as opposites, the Trump Administration has adopted a strategy that integrates them. The precision strikes carried out in Operation Midnight Hammer were not an abandonment of negotiations, but a necessary corrective to a stagnant and asymmetrical process.
“By imposing costs for intransigence while leaving the door open to meaningful dialogue, the United States has demonstrated that it will no longer be a passive participant in negotiations that yield little and delay much.”
Analysis: Iran nuclear strikes were integral to Trump’s ‘coercive diplomacy’ added by Editor Two on June 24, 2025
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