The Iranian-American negotiations are complex and characterized by mistrust.

It is clear that the second round of negotiations, whose location was decided in Rome, with Omani mediation next Saturday, will be a difficult round of negotiations, open to many hypotheses, especially since Washington will insist on achieving gains beyond what was included in the 2015 agreement to justify President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from that agreement and to claim that he achieved a better agreement than the one achieved by the duo Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Tehran, which says that President Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement is a precedent that requires caution against the possibility of repeating it with him or another president, will not accept a second withdrawal. It has destroyed nuclear facilities, damaged advanced centrifuges, and disposed of a stockpile of enriched uranium.

From this perspective, officials in Washington and Tehran continue to prepare their documents for the second round of negotiations. Statements issued by senior leaders in both countries coincide with their affirmation of their willingness to deal with the facts that will emerge during the negotiations, avoiding optimistic or pessimistic expectations, and remaining open to all possibilities, including the possibility of the negotiations failing. This, despite the apparent agreement to limit the negotiations to the nuclear issue from a specific angle: guarantees that Iran will not possess a nuclear weapon. Some who followed the negotiations for the first agreement in 2015 say that the guarantees to be negotiated cover all aspects of Iran's nuclear and military programs.

The negotiations will continue indirectly, before moving to direct dialogue, if the broad differences between the two parties are overcome and resolved. Tehran is comfortable with what Trump said, that the negotiation process is limited to its possession of nuclear weapons, and that the matter is easy and will be accomplished. However, he did not abandon the language of threats, as he said that the failure of the negotiations means the military bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Before negotiations move from indirect to direct, there are issues that may require ten rounds of negotiations, or more, to be resolved. These include the level of uranium enrichment, the storage and quantity of enriched uranium, highly enriched centrifuges, heavy water reactors, inspections of Iranian nuclear and military facilities, and perhaps inspections of Iranian missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. These are major contentious issues between the two sides, and America insists on taking tough positions on them, while Tehran rejects some of them completely and rejects others partially, accepting modified formulas around them.

Trump therefore wants to avoid regional tensions so that he can defuse an Iranian-American confrontation that would destroy his projects and plans for war against Beijing. He believes that there should be a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, which would directly lead to the cessation of the Yemeni support front, which is costly to America and depletes its strategic stockpile of American B-52 bombers, which he would use against China if it took over Taiwan. It realizes that a war on Iran means closing global trade routes, raising oil prices, halting energy supply chains, and having widespread repercussions on the global economy and global stock markets, not to mention the American military presence and military bases in the region that would be targeted by the Iranian army.

There are those in Israel who still hope that Trump will later use his devastating war on Yemen as a model for what he could do to Iran, more forcefully and more broadly, if it refuses to comply with his many stringent demands. How? By shifting from the defensive response strategy pursued by former President Joe Biden's administration to an offensive deterrence strategy. Isn't this the implication of what Trump and his aides threatened Iran with on the eve of the start of negotiations in Oman? Furthermore, there is another question: What do Washington and Tehran want in the negotiations? Trump wants to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon. Tehran wants the negotiations to be limited to discussing the nuclear issue alone, but it is clear from the statements of the US president and his aides that Washington seeks to expand the scope of the negotiations to include, in addition to the nuclear issue, Iran's policy in the region, particularly its support for the Houthis in Yemen and its program to build and develop long-range ballistic missiles.

The thorn in the negotiations is Iran's program to build and develop ballistic missiles, which are more dangerous to Israel (and perhaps to the United States as well) than its nuclear program. Tehran's (presumed) success in manufacturing a nuclear bomb would not prompt it to use them in war for three significant reasons:

First, because Supreme Leader Imam Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa prohibiting their manufacture or use, since the severe lethality and indiscriminate destruction they would cause are morally and religiously prohibited. Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, who inhabit the Zionist entity that has existed since 1948, as well as the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, would certainly suffer enormous human and urban damage if nuclear weapons were used.

Second, because the use of nuclear weapons causes serious harm and damage to both warring parties that use them, which greatly limits its legitimacy and effectiveness.

Third, because the United States is far more powerful than Iran in nuclear weapons, which inflicts immeasurable damage on Iran compared to the United States, what need or purpose remains for using this deadly weapon?

In short, the Iranian-American negotiations have not yet settled their chances of success or failure. However, it is clear that the dreams of Netanyahu and some of the collapsed and normalizing Arabs have not been fulfilled by destroying the Iranian nuclear program in the Libyan manner, destruction under American supervision. This is despite the fact that Trump has not dropped the military option in the event of failure, responding to the hardline and pro-Zionist current in his administration, that there will be no leniency or laxity in the negotiations with Tehran.

However, indicators suggest that the second round of negotiations will be fraught with complications and will face failure. The US is filling Israel's weapons stores via air and sea bridges with heat-seeking missiles that protect aircraft from being hit by shoulder-fired missiles, as well as the THAAD system, which protects the skies from ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Israel has also been supplied with guided bombs and bunker-busting bombs weighing one ton and a half, as well as large quantities of artillery and tank ammunition. This means that war with Iran is approaching. The statements of the US envoy and negotiator, Witkoff, in which he said that Iran must completely stop uranium enrichment, and not enrichment at low levels, indicate that the date of the major confrontation is approaching. Tehran responded to Witkoff's statements by saying that it will not stop the nuclear industry or uranium enrichment.