A New Round of Talks or Military Strikes?
February 25, 2026
Yesterday, February 24, marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Second World War. Tomorrow, the Iranian and US delegations will meet again in Geneva. The question is whether the meeting will be followed by another round of talks or US strikes against Iran, in other words, another Middle East war.
For weeks following the anti-regime protests, which led to the killing of thousands across Iran, global attention has remained focused on the talks between Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi and US Special Envoy Witkoff and US President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Following the last round of meetings in Geneva, Araghchi said, “Good progress was made compared to the previous meeting, and we now have a clearer path ahead,” adding that “a set of guiding principles” had been reached.
When asked about the talks, in an interview with Fox News, US Vice-President JD Vance said: “In some ways, it went well; they agreed to meet afterwards. But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through.”
The negotiations between the two sides are not only about Iran’s nuclear program, the level of enrichment, and whether highly enriched uranium can be sent elsewhere. Today, Tehran’s support for its “axis of resistance” and, by extension, its regional outreach, seen by Israel as a threat, is dramatically limited compared to the past. However, the US and Israel also view Iran’s missile capability as a major threat, whereas for Tehran, this has been a red line. With Iran now in dire economic straits, the regime is also seeking sanctions relief. Moreover, neither side appears even remotely close to allowing the other to claim a “satisfactory deal”, let alone victory.
The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group was deployed near Iranian waters in January. Last Friday, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford and three other warships entered the Mediterranean. Reportedly, American F-22 stealth fighter jets are being deployed at an Israeli Air Force base in southern Israel.[i]
At present, there are many scenarios about the contents of a possible agreement and what might follow tomorrow’s talks in Geneva. The general view is that a compromise is unlikely despite Washington’s desire to force Iran into a deal through a massive concentration of military power in the region, making strikes against Iran a strong possibility.
In the past few days, students at several universities in Iran have staged anti-government protests. So far, however, there are no reports of killings by the security forces. Does this mean that the regime has understood how wrong its bloody suppression of the January protests was? No. It only shows that Tehran has now realized that a similar reaction to the latest demonstrations will make an American attack a certainty.
If Washington were to undertake military action, the general view is that this would start with targeted strikes, which may be followed by more destructive attacks later. The problem is, no one has a clear idea of what a full-scale war may lead to, not only in Iran, but across the Middle East.
In March 2003, when the invasion of Iraq began, under “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, 295,000 US and allied troops entered Iraq across its border with Kuwait. 70,000 members of the Kurdish Peshmerga militia also fought government forces in the north of Iraq. Yet, in 2007, an additional 30,000 US personnel were deployed in Iraq to deal with domestic conflict.
A land invasion of Iran, however, is out of the question. Beyond the lasting negative repercussions for global US interests, neither any neighboring country would allow its territory to be used as a launching pad for a land invasion, nor would the US military have the capacity to undertake such a task. Iran is a much more complicated challenge than Iraq.
Thus, any expansion of the initial targeted strikes would not lead to a smooth change of regime but to a lasting regional conflict as well as domestic clashes and bloodshed in Iran.
Yesterday, during his State of the Union address, Trump said that he still prefers a deal but also repeated his threats. During his presidency, the word “deal” has replaced more conventional terms such as understanding, accord, agreement, and treaty.
On Monday, a Crisis Group statement titled “The U.S. and Iran Can Still Avoid a War” ended with the following:
“In nearly five decades of deep antagonism and occasional collaboration, the Islamic Republic and U.S. have never been so close to the precipice of a major conflict. Though the slide toward conflict appears increasingly hard to stop, the risks and uncertainties of a new war should focus minds on what could still avert it.”[ii]
Let’s hope so.
[i] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-february-24-2026/?utm_source=article_hpsidebar&utm_medium=desktop_site&utm_campaign=liveblog-february-24-2026
[ii] https://www.crisisgroup.org/stm/middle-east-north-africa/iran/us-and-iran-can-still-avoid-war?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email
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