The United States never seriously pursued diplomacy, but rather entered talks with Iran without good faith and with the long-standing aim of toppling its government, said Foad Izadi, a professor of political studies at the University of Tehran.
In an interview with the China Global Television Network (CGTN), Izadi emphasized that the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, which killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and have claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Iranians as of Wednesday, expose the United States' true intent and shatter prospects for any meaningful agreement.
Izadi noted the U.S.-Israeli strikes came after the United States and Iran wrapped up a third round of indirect talks in Geneva last Thursday and had agreed to resume negotiations this week. It is reminiscent of last June, when the two sides had been engaged in talks only for Israel to launch a surprise attack on Iran and trigger the "12-day war," during which the U.S. bombed Iran's critical nuclear facilities.
He said U.S. policy has consistently been driven by regime-change ambitions rather than genuine negotiation, a reality underscored by the latest attacks.
"The United States attacked Iran two times in the middle of negotiations. The U.S. wants to change Iran's government. This is what Trump said on the first day of attacks. This is what Netanyahu said on the first day of attacks, talking is, I'm talking to you, but if you want to have an agreement, you are not going to have an agreement with this U.S. administration because they want to kill you," he said.
Izadi believes that the Trump administration never intended to negotiate in good faith, noting that the talks preceding the strikes were designed as deception operations rather than genuine diplomacy.
"The first set of talks were deception operations. They were designed to surprise the Iranians. The second set of talks, they wanted to do something to Iran that they have been trying to do for many years. I don't know if you saw this article by Professor Michael Hudson. He's a famous American professor. He wrote a book in the 1970s and on the third day of the '12-day war' in June, he recounted a sort of a meeting that he attended in the Pentagon in 1975. And he said in 1975, people in the pentagon wanted to disintegrate Iran into six countries. This is four years before the 1979 Revolution. So the idea of disintegrating Iran has been around for some time. This administration wants to implement that. Trump likes to do things that other presidents couldn't do," Foad Izadi noted.
US never sought genuine progress in talks: Tehran scholar
