Trump wants deal but his patience is running thin

As Donald Trump’s 10-to-15-day deadline for a “meaningful” deal with Iran enters its decisive phase, Iranian officials appear to be reframing diplomacy as a commercial opportunity rather than a strategic concession.

The Financial Times reported on February 26—as talks were underway in Geneva—that Tehran had offered access to major energy and mineral resources in an effort to steer Washington away from military escalation.

This is a shrewd pitch to the current White House. Trump has long favored foreign-policy outcomes he can present as concrete transactions, and Iran appears to be speaking directly to that instinct.

By holding out the prospect of access to one of the world’s largest underdeveloped energy systems, Tehran is trying to make de-escalation look like a win for American business rather than a concession to an adversary. It is hoping that profit would help create a future constituency for restraint in the United States.

In that sense, the proposal is about more than upstream contracts. It is an effort to reshape Washington’s political calculus.

Iran can make such a pitch because the underlying resource base is genuinely exceptional.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, Iran holds the world’s third-largest proven crude oil reserves and the second-largest proven natural gas reserves. The agency’s most recent country brief notes that full sanctions relief could raise output significantly within months.

Most of Iran’s crude and condensate exports already go to China, underscoring both the scale of the prize and the distortions created by sanctions. Tehran is trying to turn geological weight into diplomatic leverage at a moment of vulnerability.

That is also why the offer should be treated with caution. A regime confident that time is on its side does not place strategic sectors in front of an American president who is openly threatening it.

Trump has warned that “bad things” will happen if no meaningful deal is reached within roughly two weeks. The third round of talks ended without agreement, and major gaps remain over the terms of any settlement. The offer is being made because the central dispute remains unresolved, not because it is close to resolution.

On February 25, the US Treasury sanctioned more than 30 individuals, entities, and vessels tied to Iran’s shadow fleet and networks supporting ballistic-missile and advanced weapons procurement.

That is not the legal environment in which American firms begin planning long-term upstream projects. Even if some restrictions were waived, companies would still face compliance risks, financing obstacles, insurance complications, and the danger that any opening could be reversed by the next administration.

For corporate boards, Iran is not simply a market with upside. It is a sanctions minefield. American firms may also remember how quickly Iranian openings can collapse.

During the JCPOA window, Boeing signed a $16.6 billion agreement to sell 80 aircraft to IranAir, widely seen as a symbol of potential commercial normalization. The reimposition of sanctions after Washington left the nuclear deal turned that optimism into a lesson in sovereign and political risk.

Nor is the Venezuela analogy reassuring. Exxon chief Darren Woods was reported to have called the country “uninvestable” without major legal reforms even after Washington encouraged US companies to return.

If Venezuela appears risky even with direct US political backing, Iran looks far more uncertain.

Iranian officials have said they did not offer to suspend enrichment and that the United States did not explicitly demand zero enrichment in earlier exchanges. Yet Washington’s broader position remains that any agreement must prevent Iran from moving toward a nuclear weapon.

Reuters reported on February 26 that the United States is still seeking strict caps on enrichment and stockpiles, while the Associated Press said Iran remains resistant to shipping enriched uranium abroad.

This is not a minor technical disagreement. No serious US company is likely to regard Iran as bankable while that gulf exists. Investors move when the political architecture is credible, not when it is still being contested in Geneva hotel rooms.

That is why Iran’s “commercial bonanza” matters as leverage but not yet as policy. It is a sophisticated attempt to buy time, flatter Trump’s instincts, and raise the perceived cost of escalation by dangling future profits before Washington.

It may help preserve diplomacy for another round and give the White House an off-ramp it can market as commercially rational rather than strategically soft. But it is not a breakthrough. Oil and mining rights alone cannot override sanctions law, congressional hostility, nuclear mistrust, or the coercive logic that still governs US policy toward Iran.

Tehran is offering treasure. The problem is that the minefield around it remains fully intact.

For forty-seven years, the Islamic Republic has anchored Iran to an ideology that promised dignity and independence but delivered isolation, economic decay and recurring crisis. What began as a revolutionary project hardened into a theocratic system sustained by confrontation abroad and repression at home.

Today, that closed strategic loop appears to be under strain.

January marked what many observers describe as a point of rupture. Security forces killed, wounded and arrested thousands during a nationwide crackdown whose brutality shocked even a society long accustomed to state violence.

The state crossed a political and social threshold, relying more visibly than ever on coercion to maintain control. Whatever legitimacy the regime ever claimed has gone.

Iran now faces a convergence of pressures: economic exhaustion, widespread public frustration, continued international isolation and a credible threat of force from the United States. The familiar formula—delay and deflect diplomatically, escalate through regional partners and expand military capabilities—no longer guarantees stability.

At the center of this crisis lies ideological overreach that has become financially burdensome and strategically counterproductive.

Tens of billions of dollars (or over $100 billion if we consider the entire economic burden) have been invested in uranium enrichment to preserve what officials describe as a “nuclear option.” Rather than delivering security, this path has triggered successive rounds of sanctions and intensified isolation.

Billions more have gone into hardened missile infrastructure and underground facilities designed to project deterrence beyond Iran’s borders.

Supporters call these systems defensive; critics see them as instruments of coercion that have deepened confrontation without producing durable stability.

The same logic shaped Tehran’s network of allied militias across the Middle East. Built to extend influence and encircle adversaries, this proxy architecture was intended to provide strategic depth at relatively low cost. Instead, it has drawn Iran into repeated confrontations with militaries vastly more powerful than its own and entrenched a cycle of escalation.

At home, the Revolutionary Guard and Basij remain the state’s primary instruments of control. Their central mission has increasingly been the suppression of domestic unrest.

Each protest wave met with force further widens the gap between state and society.Continued reliance on coercion risks destabilizing Iranian society and the wider region.

Meanwhile, the United States has shifted into what appears to be a posture of sustained coercive pressure. Strike aircraft supported by aerial tankers; strategic bombers waiting at home to embark on global strike missions; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft; layered air and missile defenses, and a reinforced naval presence including two carrier strike groups near critical waterways signal both capability and resolve.

Washington now possesses credible means to target Iran’s air defenses, command structures, missile forces, naval assets and military and nuclear industries for major effects without repeating the large-scale ground wars of the past.

The message, however, is not that war is inevitable. Rather, it is that Iran’s long-standing brinkmanship strategy may be reaching its limits. It is time for Tehran to decide. This does not necessarily mean surrender, but strategic realism.

In 1988, after eight devastating years of war with Iraq, the Islamic Republic’s founder and first supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a ceasefire he described as “drinking from poisonous chalice.” The decision was politically humiliating for many within the revolutionary establishment, yet it prevented further destruction and preserved the state.

Iran may now confront a comparable moment of transformation. Accepting strategic capitulation would not necessarily mean dismantling the state or abandoning national defense. It would mean relinquishing powers and institutions, such as IRGC and Basij, that have contributed to oppression and prolonged isolation, halting uranium enrichment, placing missile programs under verifiable constraints, severing relations with proxy militias as instruments of foreign policy and ending existential rhetoric toward regional adversaries.

In return, Iran could pursue what many of its citizens have long sought: economic recovery, sanctions relief and diplomatic normalization.

Yet, after the events of January 2026, those gains alone may not satisfy public expectations. A growing segment of Iranian society is demanding fundamental political change and a credible path toward secular democracy and free elections in Iran.

The alternative is military attrition layered atop economic fragility and domestic unrest. Infrastructure would degrade further. Isolation would deepen. Public anger would intensify. Repression might temporarily contain dissent but would likely compound long-term instability.

History is ruthless with rulers who mistake ideological stubbornness for strength.

Those ruling Iran still have a narrowing window to prioritize real national interests over ideological expansion. Durable power rests not only in centrifuge halls and missile tunnels, but in legitimacy, prosperity and social cohesion.

For decades, the Islamic Republic framed confrontation as strength and resistance as destiny. Now the shadow of war hangs over Iran. Whether it chooses a peaceful concession of power or renewed escalation with unforeseen consequences may determine not only its own future, but the trajectory of the country and the nation it currently governs.

The path less treacherous for Iran appears clear: stepping back from confrontation and allowing Iranians to choose their future, even if that means the end of an era for those ruling the country.

According to data from commodity intelligence firm Kpler, shared with Iran International, China discharged an average of 1.138 million barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian crude at its ports this month—about 115,000 bpd less than in January.

Separate figures from Vortexa show China’s average purchases of Iranian oil this month at just over 1.03 million bpd, marking a decline of 220,000 bpd compared to January.

The disruption began after a maritime blockade targeting Venezuelan tankers and the subsequent detention of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by US commandos on January 3. As a result, deliveries to China were interrupted, and several Chinese refiners halted purchases altogether.

Vortexa data indicate that Russian crude rapidly filled the gap.

This month, China received an average of 2.07 million bpd of Russian oil—370,000 bpd more than in January. Notably, this increase roughly matches Venezuela’s average crude exports to China in 2025, suggesting a near one-for-one replacement.

Supply stability

The decline in Iranian crude discharges comes despite a Reuters report that Iran is offering even deeper discounts than Russia to Chinese refiners.

This month, Iran is reportedly offering discounts of $10–11 per barrel on its light crude, roughly 16% of benchmark value and similar to those offered by Russia.

Beijing appears to be prioritizing supply stability over marginal price differences, given Iran’s uncertain trajectory amid ongoing nuclear talks and the shadow of potential military escalation.

China’s small independent refiners, known as “teapots,” are effectively the only buyers of sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan oil. A significant portion of Russia’s crude exports to China also flows to these refiners.

Teapot refiners account for about 20% of China’s total crude imports. Unlike major state-owned refiners, they lack extensive strategic storage capacity and cannot rely on large internal inventories or risk sudden feedstock disruptions such as the Venezuelan supply shock.

Under these circumstances, relying on a relatively more stable supplier such as Russia appears commercially safer than depending on Iran, which currently faces escalating threats of potential US military action.

Almost a fifth of global crude consumption is transported through the Straits of Hormuz that Tehran has repeatedly warned it could close in the event of a major war.

Last year, the United States sanctioned 84% of the tankers involved in lifting Iranian crude. Those measures contributed to a decline in Iranian deliveries to Chinese refiners in the final months of the year, with the downward trend continuing into the current year.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing a 25% tariff on Iran’s trading partners in 2026. Given that China exported over $400 billion worth of goods to the United States in 2025, it is unlikely that Beijing will ignore the potential impact of such tariff threats.

Mexico has deployed thousands of troops after coordinated attacks erupted across at least 20 states following the capture and death of Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho.

Cartel fighters torched buses, blocked highways and clashed with security forces, leaving dozens dead and forcing authorities to mobilize nearly 10,000 personnel nationwide.

While Mexican authorities frame the unrest as cartel retaliation, security analysts say such episodes increasingly unfold within transnational financial and trafficking systems that extend beyond Mexico’s borders.

Those systems, experts say, have in some cases intersected with Iranian state-aligned networks operating across Latin America.

“There are longstanding money-laundering and trafficking ecosystems that connect Latin American cartels, Iranian state-aligned networks and global criminal finance,” investigative journalist Sam Cooper told Iran International, pointing to investigations linking criminal actors across North and South America.

Cooper who has reported extensively on transnational crime networks, stressed that the overlap does not necessarily indicate direct operational control by Tehran but reflects a convergence of interests that could benefit the theocracy during periods of heightened pressure.

“I don’t have direct evidence their intelligence would be involved in helping the cartel push back against the Mexican state,” he said. “But I do believe the Iranian regime would want to benefit very much from increasing the turmoil in Mexico.”

That convergence of illicit finance and geopolitical competition, analysts say, creates openings for states such as Iran to benefit from regional instability.

'Using gangs for dirty work'

Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focusing on Iranian domestic affairs and regional influence, says the Islamic Republic frequently advances its objectives indirectly, relying on criminal intermediaries to apply pressure while maintaining distance from direct involvement.

“They (Iran's regime) do try to put a distance between themselves and their criminal activity, specifically assassination plots,” Sayeh said.

“They increasingly are leveraging some of these gangs… to do the dirty work.”

In 2011, US officials brought charges against several Iranian nationals, among them an operative linked to the IRGC’s Quds Force, accusing them of conspiring to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

According to prosecutors, an Iranian go-between attempted to recruit individuals he thought were tied to a Mexican drug cartel, offering payment to carry out the assassination. Those individuals were in fact informants working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Networks built over decades

Analysts say many of these connections trace back decades, particularly through Iran’s partnership with the former regime ruling Venezuela, where Iranian Revolutionary Guard-aligned networks and Hezbollah operatives established financial and logistical footholds across Latin America.

Hezbollah has long been accused of running criminal networks in Latin America that intersect with drug trafficking routes.

Dr. Walid Phares, a foreign policy expert and co-secretary general of the Transatlantic Parliamentary Group, said those networks gradually expanded into cooperation with organized crime groups operating across the region.

“Hezbollah had developed relationships with similar organizations across Latin America, Brazil, Colombia and beyond,” Phares told Iran International. “But the most important move backed by the IRGC regime was in Mexico.”

According to Phares, access to trafficking routes and financial channels allowed militant networks to expand their reach while maintaining distance through criminal intermediaries.

“The most important goal of Hezbollah was to get to the American and Mexican border,” he said.

Sayeh added that Western governments often mischaracterize the threat by treating such activity solely as organized crime rather than part of a broader national security challenge.

“A lot of times when it comes to the Americas it is treated as a criminal network, not a terrorism network,” he said. “Accurately labeling it for what it is important.”

For Iran, "it’s anything anti-America… and cartel is just part of that paradigm for them,” he said. “Any opportunity just to exert pressure on the Americas.”

Crime and geopolitics converge

Security specialists say the convergence has blurred the traditional boundary between criminal activity and geopolitical competition. Networks originally built for sanctions evasion and terror financing can also serve narcotics trafficking and money laundering operations, creating mutually beneficial partnerships between state and non-state actors.

For Cooper, the violence unfolding in Mexico reflects a wider shift in the Western Hemisphere, where criminal networks increasingly intersect with global rivalries.

“The level of threats that are emerging in the Western Hemisphere right now,” he said, “is all related.”

As Mexico contains the fallout from El Mencho’s death, experts say the episode highlights how criminal violence in the Western Hemisphere increasingly intersects with global power competition.

The protest movement in Iran is no longer selectively targeting certain symbols of the Islamic Republic, as it did a decade ago. It is now challenging everything the Islamic Republic represents, including the national flag itself.

One of the earliest visible signs of this state–society rupture emerged in 2009, when students set fire to a picture of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 revolution. At the time, the act carried such a strong taboo that opposition leaders suggested it may have been carried out by elements linked to the security apparatus, to justify a harsher crackdown.

Around the same period, protesters began chanting, “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon — my life for Iran,” signaling a shift from the Islamic Republic’s transnational ideology to a national identity.

The Islamic Republic used such displays of anger in state television propaganda to discredit protesters. Yet each time, segments of the public repeated those same acts, turning them into a new front of defiance against the state.

The display of anger soon expanded to other figures — including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior military figures such as Qassem Soleimani, who had embodied Iran’s extraterritorial revolutionary doctrine. Their posters were torn down and burned.

Public anger even targeted the Iranian national football team during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which many Iranians viewed not as a sporting body but as a representative of the Islamic Republic.

For many Iranians, the team’s international presence risked strengthening the state’s domestic legitimacy and global image at a time when large segments of society felt alienated from it.

The depth of the rupture became particularly visible in June 2025, when many Iranians celebrated the killing of senior Iranian military commanders by Israel. Military figures who had been presented as national heroes four decades earlier during the war with Iraq were no longer seen as representing the nation.

Burning the flag

Students at several universities across Iran held protest gatherings for the third consecutive day on Monday, chanting slogans against Khamenei and in support of opposition figure exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi.

During their gatherings, they trampled on the flag of the Islamic Republic and threw it toward members of the security forces. At Amir Kabir University, the University of Tehran, and Alzahra University, students set fire to the flag of the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Republic tried in 1979 to combine national and Islamic elements in the national flag. It took the colors from the pre-revolutionary flag and added the phrase “Allahu Akbar” in the middle. This is the part that many Iranians no longer sympathize with.

Iranian law does not explicitly criminalize insulting the national flag, but it can be prosecuted since the flag bears the word “Allah,” and insulting Islamic sanctities can carry severe penalties.

Islamic Republic vs. Iran

The Islamic Republic, from the very beginning, showed little regard for many Iranian traditions and symbols. Khomeini and his allies attempted to replace Nowruz new year celebration with Islamic religious holidays, although they failed.

While the White House displays a Nowruz table with traditional symbols, Khamenei delivers his New Year speeches without a Nowruz table, with only a photo of Khomeini in the background.

For many years after the revolution, the national flag did not occupy a central place in the Islamic Republic’s public symbolism.

That changed during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when the display of flags expanded dramatically. Streets were lined with newly produced, brightly colored flags, and government buildings were draped in national symbols.

This was not merely aesthetic. It coincided with the intensification of the nuclear dispute and a deliberate effort to frame Iran’s nuclear program as a matter of national sovereignty rather than regime ideology.

After the 12-day war with Israel in June, the Islamic Republic made an attempt to revive some of the national symbols and motifs. At one point, after emerging from his war bunker, Khamenei asked a religious singer to perform a song about Iran. But many Iranians saw that as too little, too late.

The resentment between segments of society and the state — and anything associated with it — has intensified to such a degree that long-standing religious funeral traditions have begun to fade. The customary recitation of the Quran at funeral ceremonies has been largely replaced by music, and mourners have even danced at the funerals of victims killed during the January protests.

In certain instances, people have worn white instead of black, returning not to pre-revolutionary but pre-Islamic traditions.