Iran and Rope-a-Dope in Oman

The negotiations are a disaster from the start

Stephen Bryen Weapons & Strategy Feb 07, 2026

Steve Witkoff (Photo By Unknown author – https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse45/videos/white-house-opioids-summit/1598737246880669/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152740717)

??Special Ambassador Steve Witkoff no doubt talked to President Trump about the US-Iran meeting in Oman. We don’t have a special wiretap on his call to the President, but it is a sure bet Witkoff told the President things were going well and another meeting is planned.

If President Trump’s idea is to drag out talks with Iran and end up with an empty bag, then his man is Witkoff. Because Witkoff is in the “negotiation” business. If he can’t hold high level meetings, he has to go home. Witkoff is not a quitter.

And President Trump, notwithstanding his crude rhetoric about smashing Iran, wants peace, not war. His objective is to be a Peace President. So any final piece of paper, as worthless as it may be, so long as it can be called a Peace Deal, is good enough.

[After this article was written, Trump said: “The talks were very good.”]

The great American prize fighter, Muhammad Ali, would have called Iran’s strategy rope-a-dope.” Rope-a-dope was a strategy in the boxing ring where Ali would lean against the ropes and let his opponent try and hit him while Ali covered his head and chest with his arms. Once the opponent tired, Ali would clonk him with a right uppercut to the jaw that would send him to the mat in agony.

Rope-a-dope is the Iranian strategy. Agree to nothing other than their “peaceful” intentions, and do that over weeks of “bargaining,” and then tell the Americans to go home. That’s why the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, called the talks in Oman “a good start.”

Indeed they were. First off, the Iranians made it clear they would not discuss anything other than the nuclear issue. There could be no talks about missiles, or about internal matters (that is the protestors and the regime crack down that has killed tens of thousands). Moreover, the Iranians told the American delegation they would not discuss their right to enrich uranium, or talk about transferring already enriched uranium out of the country. (President Putin had already told Araghchi that Moscow would accept Iranian uranium if that was part of any deal, though it would still belong to Iran.)

So what was there to discuss about Iran’s nuclear program? Probably some revival of an even weaker version of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The JCPOA agreement was negotiated by the Obama administration and P5+1 powers to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran agreed to curb its uranium enrichment and allowed monitoring, in exchange for sanctions relief. P5+1 was the five permanent UN Security Council members (P5)—the United States, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom—plus Germany (+1)

As the record shows unambiguously, Iran continued to enrich uranium, made important enrichment and bomb development sites off limits to inspectors, and led the IAEA inspectors around by the nose. All military sites and missile-related facilities were off limits to inspectors.

If Iran gets around to tabling anything, it will be a JCPOA-like deal that does not include uranium enrichment or uranium stockpiles, rendering any deal meaningless. Along these lines, Iran might say they will never field a nuclear weapon or be the first to use a nuclear weapon, channeling Israel’s argument that they don’t have nuclear weapons and would never be the first to use what they allegedly don’t have.

But that will happen weeks into the future, after the US flotilla will have to go home, having been on station for too long. Rope-a-dope.

The real tragedy is not just a failure to curtail the nuclear program. It is the US decision to allow talks to take place only by accepting Iran’s going-in terms. Removing major issues, especially the fate of the Iranian people, is a huge mistake. It is even worse than the Trump administration’s earlier declaration that the US is not seeking regime change in Iran, handing the Mullahs a huge victory at zero cost.

There are better ways to engage with the Iranian regime than the disaster in Oman.