Speaking from the Oval Office Monday, President Donald Trump announced that he would scrap a plan to carry out new massive strikes against Iran and give diplomacy more time, though he noted that the new talks are Iran's "last chance."
Iranian officials confirmed they were holding indirect discussions with Oman regarding safe shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz but publicly denied that any direct talks with Washington were happening or planned.
Still, President Trump insisted that negotiations were active, claiming that Iranian leaders often deny talking publicly even while deep into discussions.
Retired Navy Commander Kirk Lippold says those Arab countries are fearful of escalation.
"At the end of the day, the United States has borne the brunt of Iran's mischief throughout the Middle East, and at some point in time, these countries know that if we strike Iran hard enough, they're going to attack the infrastructure throughout the Middle East—oil facilities, water facilities, civilian infrastructure," he tells AFN. "That's really what they're trying to prevent."
So he advises the Arabs to step up to the plate.
"Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, UAE (United Arab Emirates) had better be prepared to step up, take some hits, and work with us to bring the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) regime down," Lippold states. "It is no longer a theocracy. The ayatollahs are irrelevant. This is all about the IRGC maintaining power, killing tens of thousands of their own Iranian citizens, and President Trump needs to finish the job, period."
The real paradox
Bob Maginnis, a national defense analyst and president of Maginnis Strategies LLC, says President Trump is running out of patience because he's clearly under pressure to bring an end to the war that has kept 50,000 service members tied up in the Middle East for five months.
"The president is under the gun," Maginnis states. 'He has pressure from political people, pressure, I'm sure, from the Pentagon on expenditure of munitions. Our forces are heavily stretched."
Noting that the U.S. has other strategic interests, he says five months is a long time, and Iran's strategy has not changed.
"You can't trust the Iranians," Maginnis asserts. "You pull out all stops and destroy the country; I'm not sure you're going to have anybody left to talk to, and we inherit a much broader issue to deal with post that destruction."
That, he says, is "the real paradox" President Trump faces.
The president has repeatedly framed successive rounds of diplomacy as Iran's "last chance," even after earlier "last" chances passed without a final agreement.
Before planned talks in Pakistan April 19, Trump said those negotiations were Iran's "last chance" to reach a deal and warned that if they failed, "the whole country is getting blown up."
Then around March 2, during the early stages of the war, Trump described ongoing negotiations as Iran's "last chance" while discussing the expected length of the conflict.
Over the weekend, he announced this new diplomatic effort after postponing a major military strike, repeatedly calling the talks Iran's "last chance" to avoid further U.S. military action.
As negotiations over reopening the Strait of Hormuz continued, the president again referred to the talks as Iran's "last chance" before escalation, repeating the message in comments to reporters.
Critics have pointed to this pattern as evidence that the deadline keeps moving, but supporters argue that Trump is intentionally maximizing pressure before authorizing further military action.
