A fighter from the Qassam Brigades displays guns on the day of the handover of Israeli captives to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, on 22 February 2025. Photo: Hatem Khaled/Reuters.
By Imad Yaghi  –  May 31, 2025
Since rising to global dominance, the United States has never treated negotiations as a path to justice, or mutual security. Instead, it has often used dialogue as another tool to impose its will and maintain hegemony. Cloaked in refined rhetoric and lofty slogans, Washington negotiates to shape outcomes that align with its agenda and interests, rather than seeking fair solutions. The moment any process veers off script, its diplomats walk away.
This pattern runs through modern history. In Vietnam, US warplanes bombed relentlessly, while its delegates sat at the Paris negotiation table. The negotiations were never about ending the war, they were about engineering a public relations exit from an inevitable defeat. When the US finally withdrew, Saigon collapsed. Along with it crumbled every claim about defending democracy and “containing communism.” That moment laid bare a deeper truth: the US negotiates not to solve any conflict, but to rebrand its withdrawal.
The same approach was evident with Iran; only this time, it encountered a sharper resistance. The 1979 hostage crisis was more than a diplomatic standoff, it shattered the illusion of US invincibility. Under pressure, Washington revealed its true face: a state that bargains under pressure, makes secret concessions, and delivers contradictory messages, both locally and internationally. This was not a victory, but a moment of reckoning. The mask of US dominance slipped.
Cloaked in refined rhetoric and lofty slogans, Washington negotiates to shape outcomes that align with its agenda and interests, rather than seeking fair solutions.
Palestine has long mirrored this duplicity. The Oslo Accords, steered by Washington, were never genuine peace efforts, they were just a rebranding of occupation. The US never acted as an impartial mediator. It guaranteed Israel’s security, obstructed Palestinian liberation, and reinforced Israeli control under the cover of diplomacy. At Camp David, and elsewhere, justice was denied. Terms were dictated, not debated. And whenever Palestinians resisted, Washington stepped back, only to return later and restart a crisis it never intended to solve.
In Afghanistan, two decades of occupation ended not in victory, but in a rushed deal with the Taliban. It was not a reconciliation, it was failure. The US negotiated under the pressure of resistance, then withdrew, allowing the Taliban to reclaim power. The illusion of state-building dissolved. There has never been a genuine project; only delay, distraction, and deception.
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With rival powers like Russia and China, the hypocrisy becomes even more visible. Despite preaching a “rules-based international order”, Washington routinely violates international law through sanctions, military interventions, and support for separatist movements and political unrest. It negotiates with one hand, and applies pressure with the other, offering public gestures while orchestrating coercion behind the scenes.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the Iranian nuclear program. After years of negotiations, Washington signed the 2015 agreement, only to abandon it, unilaterally, when a new administration took power, despite Iran’s compliance. Then, after launching a campaign of maximum pressure, the US returned to the table, calling for harsher demands, and offering no guarantees. These were not negotiations, they were acts of political and economic extortion.
Iran has understood this reality from the outset: the US never negotiates in good faith. It seeks, through deceit and manipulation, what it fails to achieve by force. It does not foster trust, it cultivates mistrust. It conceals occupation, defends injustice, and uses dialogue to shift realities in its favor.
That is why Iran’s stance has always been consistent: negotiation is not a goal, it is a tool. And just like any tool, it must be weighed against sovereignty and dignity. When the cost is to surrender, dialogue must be rejected. Dignity is not for trade.
Unless this truth is confronted, US-led negotiations will continue to serve as traps, not solutions; as tools of control, not paths to a consolidated peace. Washington will keep waging wars, and calling for “peace”, only when it serves its dominance.
This is an edited translation of an interview originally published in Arabic.
