Trump-Netanyahu fallout exposes divisions over Iran deal
The
United States and Iran are set to sign an initial agreement in Geneva on Friday to end the US-Israel war on Iran, begin a 60-day negotiation process, and resume traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
Pakistan, which has taken the lead in mediating peace talks, will host the signing in Switzerland.
However, neither side has yet published details of the agreement, so it is unclear to what extent Iran and the US have reached agreements on any major issues – or even whether to discuss them in the upcoming talks.
While US President Donald Trump has indicated that Iran’s nuclear programme will be part of any final agreement, he has made no mention at all of other previous US demands – such as dismantling Iran’s ballistic missiles programme or ending its support for proxy armed groups in the region.
“The only thing that really matters to me is Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, and it says it loud and clear,” Trump told reporters at the Group of Seven (G7) summit in France on Tuesday.
“All hell will rain down” on Iran if it intends to acquire a nuclear weapon, Trump added.
Relations between Washington and Tehran have been fractured and tumultuous since Trump’s first term as US president, when he withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
When Trump pulled the US out of the JCPOA, his approval stood at about 45 percent in mid-June 2018 in Gallup polling – matching or close to his best numbers until then. However, a Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted in June this year put his approval at just 35 percent, near a record low for that poll.
Here is how relations between Iran and the US have soured under Trump.
May 2018: The US withdraws from the JCPOA
On May 8, Trump delivered on an election
campaign promise when he announced that the US would withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which had been signed in 2015 with several countries, including the European Union, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom.
The deal, brokered by then-US President Barack Obama, restricted uranium enrichment at Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility to 3.67 percent – enough for energy production but very far from levels considered weapons grade. Iran also agreed not to store any nuclear material there but instead to “convert the Fordow facility into a nuclear, physics and technology centre”. In return, the US and other Western nations lifted sanctions on Iran.
That agreement took several years to negotiate with the input from nuclear experts. Even though independent inspections confirmed that Iran stuck to its side of the agreement in the following years, Trump described it as a “terrible deal”, but did not give specific details about what he disliked about it.
“I made clear that if the deal could not be fixed, the United States would no longer be a party to the agreement,” Trump said.
“The Iran deal is defective at its core.”
Following the US withdrawal, Iran called Trump’s action “unacceptable” and said it would bypass Washington and negotiate with the deal’s other signatories.
On May 21, Washington made new demands that Iran make sweeping changes – from dropping its nuclear programme altogether to pulling out of the Syrian war – or face severe economic sanctions.
In all, the Trump administration laid out
12 demands, outlined by then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. These were rejected by Tehran.
August 2018: The US imposes new sanctions on Iran
On August 7, the US imposed its first round of new
sanctions on Iran, which had earlier been lifted as part of the international nuclear deal. The sanctions barred trade with a range of business and production sectors in Iran, from aviation and carpets to pistachios and gold.
November 2018: The US imposes more sanctions
On November 5, the US announced a
new round of sanctions, this time specifically targeting Iran’s key oil and banking sectors.
April 2019: Trump designates the IRGC a ‘foreign terrorist organization’
On April 8, Trump
designated Iran’s elite, parallel military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO), marking the first time Washington had formally labelled another country’s military a “terrorist” group.
The designation led to wide-ranging economic and travel sanctions on the IRGC under US law. In retaliation, Tehran deemed Washington a “state sponsor of terrorism” and called Washington’s forces stationed in the region “terrorist groups”. The US has
19 military sites in the Middle East, at which 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers are stationed. 
May 2019: Iran backs out of JCPOA
On May 5, John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, announced that the US was sending an
aircraft carrier strike group and US Air Force bombers to the Middle East “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings”.
Three days later, Iran announced that it, too, would withdraw from the JCPOA. Iran said it was preparing to
increase enriched uranium and heavy water production at levels above the restrictions specified in the nuclear deal.
This was followed by a series of regional attacks on land and at sea blamed on Tehran.
In December 2019, a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base killed a US contractor and injured several US service members alongside Iraqi personnel. US officials blamed the Iran-backed Iraqi armed group Kataib Hezbollah for the attack.
The same month, the US military retaliated by striking locations belonging to Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria.
January 2020: The assassination of Qassem Soleimani
On January 3, 2020, US forces assassinated
Qassem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, in a drone strike while he was in Baghdad. The White House said this was done to deter future Iranian attack plans and accused Soleimani of “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region”.
On January 9, 2020, Trump said Soleimani had been killed “because they were looking to blow up our embassy” in Baghdad.
The US also threatened to strike Iranian sites if Iran attacked the US or its assets in the region.
In March 2020, three soldiers belonging to a US-led coalition were
killed in a rocket attack at the Taji military base housing US and coalition troops near Baghdad. The US imposed a new set of sanctions on Iran.
On June 29, 2020, Tehran issued an
arrest warrant for Trump and several of his aides over Soleimani’s killing.
In retaliation for the assassination, Iran also launched a barrage of missiles at military bases in Iraq housing thousands of American and Iraqi troops. More than 100 US service members suffered traumatic brain injuries, according to the Pentagon.
The IRGC shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane shortly after takeoff from Tehran’s international airport, reportedly mistaking it for a US cruise missile. All 176 people on board were killed.
2021: Biden restarts diplomacy
In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the US presidential election and, in April 2021, Iran and the US began indirect negotiations in Vienna, Austria, on how to restore the nuclear deal. Those talks, and others between Tehran and European nations, failed to yield a breakthrough.
Prior to this, in July 2020, a mysterious explosion had destroyed a centrifuge production plant at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. Iran blamed the attack on Israel. In April 2021, Natanz was hit again in an attack widely believed to have been carried out by Israel. In the same month, Iran began enriching uranium up to 60 percent – its highest purity ever and a fairly short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.
February 2025: Trump ‘restores maximum pressure’ on Iran
Shortly after Trump was inaugurated for his second term, the White House announced that he had signed a national security presidential memorandum restoring “
maximum pressure” on Tehran aimed at “denying Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon, and countering Iran’s malign influence abroad”. The memorandum lacked details about what this would entail, but Trump hinted that measures could be tough.
The US president made clear that he was reluctant to threaten force, angling instead for a diplomatic solution via talks.
May 2025: Trump says the US and Iran are close to a nuclear deal
During Trump’s
Gulf tour in May 2025, his diplomatic stance appeared to be holding. Trump said the US had engaged in “very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace”. He added that Washington and Tehran had “sort of” agreed to the terms of a nuclear deal.
“We’re getting close to maybe doing a deal… There [are] two steps to doing this: There is a very, very nice step, and there is the violent step, but I don’t want to do it the second way,” he said.
Just two days after claiming to be close to a deal with Iran on nuclear weapons, Trump went on the attack on social media: “Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” Trump wrote.
On May 28, Trump seemed to have reversed his stance again, however, when he said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
to hold off on any strike on Iran because it “would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a [diplomatic] solution [on Iran’s nuclear status]”. 
June 2025: 12-day war
On June 13, Israel launched strikes on Iran. Over 12 days, it hit nuclear and military sites, as well as other government installations. On June 22, the US joined in the war, attacking three Iranian nuclear sites.
Iran responded to the US attack by targeting a military base in Qatar hosting American troops, causing limited damage. A day after this, Trump announced a ceasefire in the war.
December 2025: New protests in Iran
Protests broke out in Iran after the Iranian rial plunged to a
record low of 1.42 million rials to the US dollar, compounding inflationary pressures and pushing up the prices of food and other daily necessities.
In January 2026, Trump said he had called off meetings with Iranian officials and promised the Iranian people that unspecified “help is on its way”.
February 2026: The US-Israeli war on Iran begins
On February 28, Israel and the US launched strikes on Tehran, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the conflict’s first moments, and triggering the war.
<small>Source: Al Jazeera</small>
