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U.S.-Iranian negotiations have gone nowhere, with a two week cease-fire scheduled to expire on Wednesday and no agreement thus far to replace it. Both countries have blockades in place—Iran preventing most shipping out of the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz, blocking about 20 percent of global oil and gas supplies, and the United States preventing ships from entering or exiting Iranian ports—and have been issuing threats, appearing far apart.

The impasse shouldn’t be surprising. U.S. and Iranian leaders are approaching the war and negotiations very differently—which means their negotiating teams are operating in entirely different universes.

U.S.-Iranian negotiations have gone nowhere, with a two week cease-fire scheduled to expire on Wednesday and no agreement thus far to replace it. Both countries have blockades in place—Iran preventing most shipping out of the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz, blocking about 20 percent of global oil and gas supplies, and the United States preventing ships from entering or exiting Iranian ports—and have been issuing threats, appearing far apart.

The impasse shouldn’t be surprising. U.S. and Iranian leaders are approaching the war and negotiations very differently—which means their negotiating teams are operating in entirely different universes.

The Iranian team is pursuing Tehran’s vision of national interests and seeks real concessions to secure the regime and advance its geopolitical position. The U.S. team is pursuing Trumpian image management. They’re not looking for meaningful results but headlines and photo-ops they can use as the basis for a positive story to aid a beleaguered president, at least until their latest lies become obviously untenable and they seek new ones.

U.S. officials’ statements usually put Donald Trump at the center, spinning, exaggerating, and lying to create a narrative of a strong leader in control of events. Trying to defend Trump’s decision to ease sanctions on Iranian oil exports in an attempt to reduce energy prices that rose because of the president’s own war, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent absurdly asserted that Trump was “jujitsuing the Iranians” by “using their own oil against them.”

The U.S. negotiating team does not include Secretary of State Marco Rubio or career diplomats. It is led instead by Trump’s associate Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. That’s different from negotiations with Iran under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, which were led by diplomats and included nuclear scientists and experts.

U.S. statements typically didn’t mention the president by name, instead casting talks as among........

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