In the four months since the US and Israel initiated their ongoing joint military campaign against Iran, the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iranian leadership to end the war have been predictable in their unpredictability.

On Monday, President Trump said US officials would meet with Iran in Qatar the next day. Iran said that no negotiation meetings were scheduled. (They ultimately conducted low-level talks on Wednesday.) Both countries have launched strikes despite signing a memorandum of understanding on June 17 that included a ceasefire and was designed to help bring an end to the war. But—despite the US celebrating a security deal between Israel and Lebanon last week—Israel has continued strikes on southern Lebanon and Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, rejected the Israel-Lebanon deal, which it was not a party to.

According to data from multiple Iranian government ministries, as of June 10, about 3,500 people have been killed in Iran since the war began. Lebanon’s health ministry reported on Wednesday that about 4,300 people have been killed in that country.

All to say, as I wrote shortly after the memorandum of understanding was signed, the Iran war doesn’t appear to be ending anytime soon.

“I think Iran was very open to a potential arrangement that was stronger than the JCPOA.”

Nate Swanson, a resident senior fellow at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council, spent nearly two decades as a State Department official, most recently as the Biden administration’s director for Iran at the National Security Council.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct, Swanson told me, took a wrecking ball to many of the US’ already tenuous relationships in the region, and made a region-spanning war with Iran much more likely even before 2026.

I spoke with Swanson last week about what could be next for US relations with Iran, Israel, and the Gulf states.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Given how the second Trump administration has handled relations with Iran, I was curious what you think a different negotiator could have gotten out of this situation.

I don’t want to say the US-Iran relationship has ever been good in my time working on this، for almost 20 years, but I think Trump walked into a situation in 2025 where Iran was in a historically bad spot.

They just had these two direct exchanges with Israel. They had no air defense. Their proxies at the time seemed like they were much weaker. Domestically, they had very acute economic and environmental crises. They had also come off massive protests in 2023. So I think Iran was very interested in the deal right there.

I think they approached negotiations not sure what Trump wanted to do. I was there—and I wasn’t quite sure what Trump wanted to do—but I think up until the June 2025 war, the US had a great hand in terms of leverage. And I think Iran was very open to a potential arrangement that was stronger [in restrictions] than the JCPOA. After the 12-day war though, it’s been a declining chance for a real deal and certainly US leverage. Iran knew that more war was coming and that was where their focus was.

“The US doesn’t seem interested in complicated deals, and [now] I’m not sure Iran is willing.”

I’m curious if you think the Biden administration would ever have launched strikes against Iran like those last June and this February—or how you think they would have handled the aftermath.

Yeah, there’s no way those strikes would have happened.

To some extent, you had a path that was drawn with October 7, 2023. For Israel, that was a game-changing event. They went after Hamas and Hezbollah, and both of those, from their military perspective, were relatively successful. You had conflicts with Israel and Iran directly for the first time in October 2024, right before the election.

I think the priorities in the Biden perspective was one,........

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