Donald Trump was quick to declare victory over Iran, but this weekend’s negotiations suggest that Tehran has the upper hand. His war of choice has backfired. His military solution has emboldened rather than weakened Iran. Diplomacy is his only reasonable option.

Trump may have hoped that the marathon 16-hour talks in Pakistan would extract him from his self-created quagmire, but the issues that have long divided Washington and Tehran are complex. When it turned out that Iran wanted to negotiate rather than capitulate, JD Vance, who led the US diplomatic team, packed his bags and went home.

The predictable failure to reach a quick accord is the latest evidence of how disastrous Trump’s war has been. None of his shifting goals for this act of aggression have been realized.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sold the war to Trump as an opportunity for regime change. If senior Iranian officials were careless enough to congregate above ground on the supreme leader’s compound, he argued, why not pick them off? Trump bought it but seemed to have no plan B when the regime survived by replacing one group of tyrants with another.

If anything, by killing several relative moderates, Israeli attacks strengthened the hardliners. Trump laughably claims that regime change has already occurred because the personnel are now different, but their policies are unchanged.

Trump and Netanyahu also wanted to destroy Iran’s military capacity so it could no longer threaten Israel and the Gulf Arab states with its missiles and drones, but US intelligence has found that Iran’s ability to replenish these weapons remains considerable. Even Netanyahu seems to concede as much. And Iran is causing enormous damage to the Gulf states.

The main issue for years has been Iran’s nuclear program. Affirming Trump’s “core goal”, Vance said that Iran must provide “an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would........

© The Guardian