President Donald Trump ratcheted up pressure on Iran in a February 10 speech, warning that Washington will turn to military options if diplomatic negotiations fail. He threatened to dispatch a carrier strike group to the Middle East and framed the push as part of a bid for a tougher “JCPOA 2.0” that would fold Iran’s ballistic‑missile programme and regional proxies into a new arrangement.
The United States’ expanded demands have run headlong into Tehran’s red lines. Iran’s foreign ministry and senior officials, including a spokesman identified in Tehran as Araghchi, have rejected any compromise on uranium enrichment and insisted that missile work is non‑negotiable. That gap on core security interests leaves little room for a purely diplomatic fix, at least in the near term.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, amplified American resolve during a recent Washington visit, supplying fresh intelligence on Iranian activities and signalling close US‑Israeli coordination. Analysts argue that close alignment between Washington and Jerusalem lowers the political and operational barriers to limited strikes, increasing the chance that American military pressure would be matched by Israeli backing.
Tehran, however, has not yielded. Foreign ministry spokesman Baghaei repeatedly warned that any military aggression would be met with “destructive” retaliation, a posture Tehran says is shaped by recent combat experience and hardened perceptions of national vulnerability. At the same time, Iranian officials say they remain willing to keep negotiating space open as long as Tehran’s core interests are respected.
Moscow has responded with public caution. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged diplomacy and criticised the idea that force can eliminate strategic competition, welcoming mediation efforts by regional states such as Oman. Russia’s appeal for restraint reflects both a desire to avoid a wider regional conflagration and geopolitical calculations about preserving influence in the Middle East.
The immediate choices facing Washington are stark: coerce Iran into new concessions by threatening or using force, or accept a protracted standoff that preserves Iran’s enrichment work and missile gains. Either path carries sizable risks: a strike campaign could trigger Iranian reprisals against regional US assets and proxies, while a failed coercive diplomacy would weaken US leverage long term.
The stakes extend beyond Washington and Tehran. An escalation would destabilise energy markets, accelerate refugee flows, and draw in regional actors whose alignments would be shaped by both survival calculations and great‑power rivalry. The presence of competing external patrons—most notably Russia—means that a local flare‑up could have wider strategic reverberations, complicating prospects for containment or a negotiated settlement.
For now the contest remains unresolved. Trump’s public “last best offer” gambit has forced Iran to frame defiance as both deterrence and domestic political necessity. Whether that gambit extracts concessions or miscalculates into contagion will depend on the choices of Tehran, the degree of Israeli operational backing, and how other external powers, including Russia, manoeuvre to limit or exploit the crisis.