Iran Sees Diplomacy as War—and Negotiates Accordingly.
Why does the Islamic Republic stay at the negotiating table even when it believes war is imminent? A recent interview with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi offers an unusually candid answer.
For most governments, diplomacy is a tool used to prevent war. Fighting begins only after negotiations have been exhausted. But Iran’s leaders do not see the two as separate phases. In Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s telling, diplomacy and war are not alternatives but successive tools in the same struggle.
In a recent interview, Araghchi lays out a strategic worldview unfamiliar to those who value peace. He sees negotiations as a way to delay conflict, shape international opinion, justify military action, and convert military gains into political ones. War, in turn, strengthens Iran’s position at the negotiating table. Rather than replacing one another, diplomacy and military force reinforce each other in pursuit of the same strategic objective.
Araghchi’s account of Iran’s recent negotiations was unusually explicit. Tehran does not enter talks expecting success to be measured by a signed agreement. The real test is whether Iran can defend its interests without signaling that military pressure can compel it to yield.
Iran, he says, has two ways of pursuing its rights: “Either we fight, or we talk and negotiate.” Negotiation is “the easier and less costly path.”
The similarity with Western thinking ends there.
Araghchi does not describe negotiations as a search for compromise, but as a contest of resolve. Iran can negotiate honorably, he argues, only from a position of strength.
That helps explain why he rejects the common claim that failed negotiations caused the war to begin with. The United States and Israel demanded that Iran abandon uranium enrichment. Iran refused. Once its adversaries realized “they could not achieve what they wanted through negotiations,” he argues, “they started the war.”
“The war began from there. When the other side saw that it could not achieve its demands through negotiation, it turned to war. It was not that negotiation led to war.”
The distinction is subtle but important. In Araghchi’s telling, diplomacy did not fail; it exposed a dispute that neither side was willing to negotiate away. Washington and Jerusalem saw Iran’s enrichment program as an unacceptable security threat. Tehran saw surrendering it under pressure as an admission that coercion works.
Iran ultimately refuses to set the precedent that it can be forced into anything.
When asked whether a temporary suspension of enrichment might have prevented the war, Araghchi dismisses the idea outright. Accepting such terms, he says, would have inflicted greater damage than the war itself. Iran would have “sold the country’s dignity” while demonstrating that military threats could pressure the Islamic Republic to retreat.
“This pattern must not be established,” he says. Iran therefore maintained its position in negotiations, “even if the price was war.”
He later reduces the doctrine to a principle attributed to Iran’s former Supreme Leader:
“We do not fight because war has costs and dangers. But when the cost of not fighting becomes greater than the cost of fighting, then you must fight. You must not hesitate.”
Iran sees itself as a besieged but enduring regional power surrounded by adversaries seeking to limit its sovereignty. From that perspective, no concession is ever isolated. Every step back under pressure becomes an invitation for greater demands later.
The Islamic Republic is willing to sacrifice infrastructure, prosperity, and even the lives of its own people as long as the regime can claim it has preserved its power and deterrence. The regime measures success by more than the damage Iran suffers. As long as it can adjust, preserve its military leverage, and avoid appearing defeated, it can still claim victory. That is also why it keeps negotiating even when it expects the talks to fail.
Araghchi effectively acknowledges as much. Iranian officials believed another war was imminent even as talks resumed, but they negotiated anyway. Either the negotiations would persuade the other side to abandon its demand for zero enrichment—which he regarded as unlikely—or they would demonstrate to domestic and international audiences that Iran had exhausted peaceful alternatives before resuming military action.
Political scientist Muhanad Seloom argues that the Strait of Hormuz exposes the economic dimension of Iran’s doctrine. When Iran’s chief negotiator declared that Hormuz “will never return” to its prewar condition, Seloom argues, the remark was misunderstood.
“It was not bravado,” he writes. “It was a business plan.”
Iran may never dominate the Gulf conventionally, but its geography allows it something different. By controlling the northern shore of one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints, the regime can increase the costs of regional stability even after suffering severe military setbacks.
“The toll booth is built,” Seloom observes. “Only the billing is paused.”
Araghchi’s interview reinforces that interpretation.
Iran had already prepared contingency plans to close Hormuz under specific circumstances.
“Why was the Strait of Hormuz closed on the first day?” he asks. “Because it had already been planned that if the leadership was targeted, the strait would be closed immediately.”
The closure of the Strait continues to complicate Iran’s relationship with its Gulf neighbors.
Iran’s leadership does not necessarily view Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain or Oman as its principal enemies. What it rejects is the idea that these states can remain economically insulated while Iran is isolated, bombed, or prevented from exporting its own energy.
In essence, if Iran cannot export its oil freely, others should not expect to do so without consequence. If American forces launch attacks from Gulf territory (as the regime falsely claims), then those bases—and the economic infrastructure surrounding them—become legitimate targets.
As Seloom argues, Gulf states risk paying “rent to the threat” while simultaneously paying “a retainer to the protector.” Iran can demand concessions for keeping Hormuz open, and the United States can demand stricter security commitments for defending it. Meanwhile, the Gulf states face much of the economic fallout but have little say in the negotiations shaping the region’s future.
The Islamic Republic only needs to retain enough leverage to make regional stability dependent on Iranian consent. It can lose missile sites, aircraft, nuclear facilities, and senior commanders while still retaining bargaining power through geography, disruption, and the credible threat of escalation.
None of this suggests Iran is eager for perpetual war. If anything, Araghchi’s interview suggests the opposite. Tehran is conscious of war’s costs; it simply defines strategic rationality differently from governments that prioritize immediate economic stability. The Islamic Republic believes there are moments when accepting dependency or externally imposed limits is more dangerous than fighting. Buildings can be rebuilt. Lost deterrence is far more difficult to restore.
That worldview should not be romanticized. Iran’s strategy has imposed enormous suffering not only on its adversaries but on Iranians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, and increasingly the Gulf states. Its claim to resist domination has often meant extending its own coercive influence over weaker neighbors.
But dismissing Araghchi’s argument as mere propaganda risks misunderstanding how the Islamic Republic behaves. Western policymakers often ask whether diplomacy with Iran has succeeded or failed. Araghchi’s interview suggests Tehran asks a different question altogether. Negotiations are not meant to end the struggle. They are simply one phase of it.
Seloom concludes:
“None of this means choosing war over diplomacy. It means recognizing that the diplomacy is the war now, fought by other means, and that passivity is not neutrality but surrender by installment. The strait will be governed by rules. The only question is whose. Iran has taught the Gulf, at enormous cost, that Hormuz belongs to whoever is willing to set its terms and enforce them.”
Effective diplomacy begins with understanding how the other side defines success. For Tehran, negotiations are not designed to prevent conflict but to strengthen Iran’s position within it. Any strategy that mistakes those objectives for its own risks misunderstanding the Islamic Republic from the very start.
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