Foreign policy analysts say Tehran's leadership believes it must inflict significant damage on its adversaries before any ceasefire negotiations can begin.
Iran isn't interested in diplomacy. Not yet. Despite suffering relentless airstrikes, Tehran's leadership has concluded that it must first cause real, tangible damage before it will consider sitting down at any negotiating table — with the United States or anyone else.
That assessment comes from Trita Parsi, vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who says Iran's surviving officials are determined to "draw blood" before entertaining any peace talks with the Trump administration or Israel.
The deadlock is unfolding as Trump and senior U.S. military commanders brace for further American casualties, Gulf nations push urgently for the conflict to be resolved, and oil markets surge in response to the instability.
"They Don't Have to Win — They Just Have to Make It Hurt"
Iran has absorbed punishing blows. Over a thousand people have been killed — including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — and much of the country's military infrastructure has been gutted. Yet its remaining leadership appears unmoved.
"They don't have to win the war," Parsi told USA TODAY. "They have to ensure Trump's presidency is on the brink of destruction before they lose. That's when they believe Trump will pull out — due to the costs."
The trajectory caught Trump off guard. On March 1, just one day into the conflict, he told The Atlantic that Iran was ready to negotiate and that he had agreed to engage. Tehran wasted no time contradicting him.
Ali Larijani, Iran's top national security official, flatly rejected the notion. In a series of public statements, he declared that Iran would not negotiate with Washington under any circumstances, accusing Trump of plunging the region into chaos through what he called "delusional fantasies." Larijani pledged that Iran would continue fighting "regardless of the costs" until its adversaries regretted what he described as a serious miscalculation.
Analysts say Iran's calculus is straightforward, if brutal: Washington will only negotiate seriously — and deliver a deal that guarantees the Islamic Republic's survival — once Trump is bleeding politically from rising U.S. body counts and a faltering economy. A ceasefire without that pressure, in Tehran's view, would be a trap.
So far, that strategy has produced little. The U.S. has destroyed large portions of Iran's military capacity and sunk most of its naval fleet, while American combat deaths remain at just six.
Learning from Past Restraint
Iran's refusal to seek an early off-ramp is rooted in painful experience, experts say. In previous confrontations with Israel, Tehran exercised considerable restraint — and paid dearly for it.
Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and former professor at the U.S. Air Force's Air Command and Staff College, described Iran's earlier behavior as a "deterrence failure." By holding back, Iran watched its regional influence collapse as Israel dismantled Hamas and Hezbollah, two of its most critical proxy forces.
The pattern is striking. In April 2024, following an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus that killed senior Revolutionary Guard commanders, Iran launched a massive barrage — 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles. A U.S.-led coalition helped Israel intercept nearly all of them. Damage was minimal.
Six months later, Iran struck again, firing 200 ballistic missiles in retaliation for Israel's killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Again, the results were limited.
Crucially, in both instances, Iran chose not to target the oil infrastructure and gleaming skylines of Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE — Washington's wealthy regional partners. Even in June 2025, after a surprise Israeli operation killed over a thousand Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists, Tehran refrained from escalating broadly.
Iran fired more than 1,000 drones and 550 ballistic missiles at Israel over a 12-day stretch, killing 32 civilians. A symbolic strike on a U.S. base in Qatar caused minor damage — and was widely seen as a token response.
"If you're sitting in Tehran looking at this war, you conclude that the restraint you showed was a deterrent failure," Grieco said.
"Make the Enemies Pay"
Now, Iran wants both Washington and Tel Aviv to genuinely need a ceasefire — not merely prefer one — before it will return to the table.
"Iran doesn't want to be exposed to Israeli airstrikes at will after a new ceasefire," said Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. "This means exacting a very high price from both Israel and Trump in this war."
The economic pressure is already mounting. Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes — has sent energy markets into turmoil. Qatar has halted liquefied natural gas production amid Iranian strikes. Saudi Aramco's major Ras Tanura refinery has been targeted by Iranian drones on two occasions.
Iran has also extended the conflict into Europe's sphere, striking a British air base in Cyprus and a French installation in the UAE. NATO reported intercepting a missile that had entered Turkish airspace.
On March 2, Hezbollah opened a new front, launching rockets into northern Israel — triggering Israeli retaliatory strikes that killed dozens and sent tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians fleeing. Two days later, oil prices hit their highest point since 2024.
Bazzi noted the timing was deliberate. "It's no accident Hezbollah got involved just as the oil and stock markets were opening" on the first day of trading after the war began.
What Comes Next?
Trump has signaled that Americans should prepare for several more weeks of fighting. But his stated endgames have been inconsistent — ranging from demanding Iran permanently abandon nuclear ambitions, to calling on unarmed Iranian citizens to overthrow their government (with the help of the very security forces that had been shooting protesters just weeks earlier), to hinting at a Venezuela-style accommodation that stops short of full regime change.
The challenge, Trump acknowledged on March 3, is that much of Iran's previous leadership has been eliminated. "Most of the people we had in mind are dead," he said. "Now we have another group, they may be dead also. So you have a third wave coming."
Tehran, for its part, appears indifferent to Washington's deliberations.
"Trump wanted a short, decisive war," said Ali Hashem, a veteran journalist and analyst covering the Persian Gulf. "The Iranians are taking it to a new dimension of organized, global chaos. They knew they would have to face their destiny, while Trump was engaged in wishful thinking."
The conflict has now become a war of attrition. Iran has launched more than 2,000 drones and 500 ballistic missiles at U.S., Israeli, and regional targets, according to Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pre-war estimates put Iran's ballistic missile stockpile at roughly 2,500 — meaning Tehran may be approaching the limits of its arsenal.
On the other side, U.S. allies are burning through interceptor stocks at an alarming rate. Bloomberg News reported on March 2, citing internal documents, that Qatar had just four days of Patriot missile reserves remaining, while the UAE was urgently seeking help reinforcing its air defenses. Italy subsequently announced it was deploying air defense assets to support Gulf partners.
Trump declared on social media that U.S. firepower is sufficient to sustain the fight "forever" — but made no mention of the interceptor shortage.
"It's really a race between Iran's ballistic missiles and drones, and the Israeli, American, and Gulf interceptors," Grieco said. "It's clear the Israelis and the Americans are actively hunting those missile launch facilities."
Once those interceptors are exhausted, the calculus changes sharply. As Grieco put it, the moment that happens, "you have to make hard choices about what to defend — at the intersection of material and lives."