A fresh round of U.S.-Iran peace negotiations in Switzerland has collapsed abruptly after former President Donald Trump issued a series of unprecedented, incendiary threats against Iran, prompting the Iranian negotiating team to walk out of the talks and demand a formal apology before they will return to the table.
The crisis unfolded after Iran announced it would re-close the Strait of Hormuz — a strategic global oil chokepoint critical to international energy markets — over an intensified Israeli military assault on southern Lebanon that violates an existing ceasefire memorandum of understanding (MOU) covering all regional fronts. In a public tirade Sunday, Trump issued a cascade of threats: he warned Iran would cease to exist as a sovereign state if it followed through on closing the strait, explicitly threatened to assassinate Iranian negotiators, and for the first time publicly pledged a full U.S. military invasion to occupy the entire country.
According to Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, who reported on Trump’s comments, the U.S. leader told Iranian negotiators that if they closed the strait — a move Iran first announced Saturday — “you won’t even make it back to their f***ing country,” a threat widely interpreted as a reference to targeted assassinations of Iranian officials that have already occurred during the early phases of the ongoing conflict.
Multiple international outlets confirm that the threats directly violated the first clause of the negotiated MOU governing the talks. In response, Iranian negotiators filed a formal complaint with Pakistani and Qatari mediators, who have been facilitating the closed-door discussions at a Swiss mountain resort, before leaving the venue immediately.
In a blunt response to the threats, Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf dismissed Trump’s rhetoric as empty, stating that his delegation does not take American threats seriously. This pattern of escalatory rhetoric followed by no action is nothing new: over recent months, Trump has repeatedly issued extreme threats to wipe out Iran’s entire civilization and destroy the country to pressure Tehran into making concessions, yet has never followed through on the warnings even as Iran has maintained its negotiating position.
“Don’t they think that if their threats had worked, they wouldn’t have ended up in today’s desperate situation?” Ghalibaf asked. He added that the U.S. would be “better be more careful with their statements,” noting that “our armed forces are ready to respond in a different way. No matter what they say, we are the ones who act.”
While the Iranian delegation has left the negotiation venue, indirect talks continue through participating mediators. According to Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen, the Iranian team has set two non-negotiable conditions for returning to the table: a formal apology from Trump for his threats, and a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory. The Israeli government, for its part, is reportedly considering limited withdrawals from parts of southern Lebanon’s buffer zone, per senior Israeli sources cited by Channel 12, and the officials added that Washington has not pressured Israel for a full pullout.
Sunday’s outburst marks a sharp, sudden reversal from just one week prior, when Trump signaled a major shift by acknowledging Iran’s sovereign right to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear energy, a key longstanding Iranian demand that the U.S. has previously rejected. Analysts say the sudden escalation was triggered by comments from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who reaffirmed that Iran would never surrender its right to enrichment and predicted the U.S. would ultimately be forced to accept this position. In response, Trump reportedly warned Pezeshkian to “watch his mouth” and “shape up,” threatening a full U.S. takeover of remaining Iranian territory if he did not comply.
This latest threat of full occupation stands in stark contradiction to Trump’s own recent comments, in which he acknowledged that extending the war would trigger a major U.S. economic catastrophe, and even acknowledged that limited ground operations — such as a proposed mission to seize Iranian uranium facilities — would be too costly in lives and resources to be justified. The ongoing war with Iran is already deeply unpopular with the U.S. public, even without the deployment of American ground troops: recent polling shows a majority of Republican voters oppose deploying ground troops to escalate the conflict, and senior U.S. military leaders have already shelved plans to seize strategic Iranian sites including Kharg Island out of fear of massive American casualties.
In another controversial remark, Trump told Yingst that the U.S. could position itself as the “guardian angel” of the Strait of Hormuz, collecting tolls from commercial shipping and seizing oil from exporting nations that use the waterway. He offered no details on how the U.S. would secure control of the strait to enact this plan.
Iran’s decision to threaten closing the strait came in direct response to Israel’s deepened occupation and intensified bombing of southern Lebanon, actions that violate the MOU’s ceasefire provisions. Ending Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon is a non-negotiable red line for Tehran in the peace talks: the Israeli campaign has killed more than 4,000 people and displaced over 1.2 million Lebanese civilians from their homes in the region.
Off the record, Trump has privately acknowledged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberately using the Lebanon campaign to sabotage the ceasefire and drag the U.S. into a full-scale regional war. In his conversation with Yingst, Trump acknowledged he was “disappointed Israel can’t put Hezbollah away,” adding that Israel “can’t do anything without knocking buildings down.” He also noted he is close to granting Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, former leader of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, permission to lead operations against Hezbollah.
Even as Trump has publicly and privately criticized Israel’s actions and accused Netanyahu of undermining peace efforts, he has taken no concrete action to force Israel to comply with the terms of the ceasefire MOU. Analysts warn that this contradictory approach from the White House puts the entire peace process at severe risk.
“The mixed messages coming out of the White House are going to make it much harder to end the war, and could in fact spark further conflict,” noted Jeet Heer, a staff writer at *The Nation*.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, described Israel’s ongoing military escalations as “an existential threat” to the U.S.-Iran peace process. He told ABC News that Iran’s threat to close the strait ahead of the Geneva talks was intended to signal how seriously Tehran views its demand for an Israeli withdrawal, clarifying the stakes for all parties.
“Israel would prefer for this war to continue until you have a complete defeat of the Iranians, which, of course, is not in the cards,” Parsi explained. “The Israelis sold this war to Trump as a quick, easy fix to the region’s problems that would take no more than four days, and they were dead wrong. Now, Trump is recognizing that U.S. interests necessitate that he pull out of this war and strikes this deal, but the Israelis are trying to sabotage it because they are afraid they’re going to be left out, that the balance in the region is going to shift against their interests. They’re willing to essentially jeopardize their relationship with the United States over this.”