Iran cites U.S. shifting positions as chief barrier

U.S. contradictory – Iranian officials say America’s constantly shifting positions are the main obstacle to a deal to end the war, while President Donald Trump says a deal is within reach and threatens action if talks fail—leaving sanctions and troop deployments at the center of t

For Iran, the road to a deal is still there—but it feels crowded with moving targets. In an interview Sunday. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the biggest problem in negotiating with the United States to end the war is what he described as America’s changing and contradictory positions.

“The main problem of negotiating with this administration is that you have to face so many changing positions — moving the goal posts, different statements, contradictory remarks by different officials, so it makes the whole process very cumbersome,” Baghaei said.

Even so, Baghaei said an exchange of messages through Pakistani mediators is ongoing. He acknowledged that there are “quite a number of sticking points,” but said the core difficulty is that the United States must recognize Iran’s rights.

“What we want is our rights under [the] Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons], as far as [the] nuclear issue is concerned,” Baghaei said.

He also called for the U.S. to stop its sanctions on Iran, adding that Washington must “learn not to talk to Iranians the way they have been used to.”

Sunday marked 100 days of the war in Iran. The conflict began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on the country, and it has since been held to a shaky ceasefire that was agreed to in April.

Trump, meanwhile, has sounded a different tone. In an interview with NBC News, President Donald Trump said, “we’re very close to having a deal” to end the war. He added that if negotiations fail, the U.S. would act anyway.

“And if we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it one way or the other,” Trump said. “Either way, we win.”

Trump also said he wants to keep U.S. troops deployed in the region until “completion,” and he said he does not consider U.S. forces in danger.

“I don’t consider them in danger,” he added.

If a deal is negotiated. Trump said the United States wants to work with Iran to retrieve and destroy what he called Iran’s highly enriched uranium. He described a plan in which American forces would remove the material—either from on-site locations or off-site—and said the outcome would be accompanied by an effort to avoid confrontation.

“If we make a deal that now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s on-site or whether we take it off-site,” Trump said. “And we will go with them, or without them. But we won’t have people shooting at us, OK?”

On sanctions, Trump drew a line. He said an end to Iranian sanctions would not be part of the deal, saying it “comes after.”

“If they behave, if they do a good job, we start talking,” Trump said.

The dispute over process—whether Washington is prepared to hold still long enough for Iran to trust the terms—sits alongside the harder question of what comes first: troop posture and uranium retrieval. or sanctions relief. Baghaei’s message through Pakistani mediators continues. but the gap between what Iran says it needs and what Trump says it will get remains sharp enough to keep both sides on edge.

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