标签： Asia

High-stakes negotiations between U.S. and Iranian delegations in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad collapsed over the weekend, with Iran’s top diplomat accusing the Trump administration of tanking a near-final preliminary ceasefire agreement through unrealistic, overreaching demands that brought an end to marathon talks aimed at ending a six-week open conflict.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, outlined the breakdown in a public post to social media Sunday, noting that the weekend discussions marked the first high-level direct engagement between the two nations in 47 years. Araghchi emphasized that Iran entered the bargaining process in good faith to end the ongoing war, but as negotiators closed in on a finalized Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the U.S. side shifted its demands, insisted on maximalist positions, and maintained its economic blockade on Iran. “Zero lessons earned,” Araghchi wrote. “Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity.”

This failed talks mark the second time in just two months that U.S. negotiators have been accused of sabotaging a potential deal that was widely seen as within reach. In late February, just hours before U.S. and Israeli forces launched airstrikes on Iranian targets, Oman’s top diplomat—who had mediated earlier rounds of negotiations—confirmed that substantial progress toward a negotiated settlement had already been reached.

The U.S. negotiating team in Islamabad was led by Vice President JD Vance, alongside special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump. During the talks, the U.S. delegation laid out a series of non-negotiable red lines, including demands that Iran permanently end all uranium enrichment activities and dismantle its core civilian nuclear energy infrastructure. Nuclear non-proliferation experts widely note that Iran retains the legal right to conduct civilian uranium enrichment under the terms of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Speaking to reporters after the talks collapsed, Vance pushed back against Iran’s accusations, claiming the U.S. side had approached negotiations with significant flexibility. “We just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms,” Vance said.

President Trump echoed that framing in his own social media statement, arguing that most negotiating points had been agreed upon, but the core issue of Iran’s nuclear program remained unresolved. “The meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not,” Trump wrote.

Iran’s lead negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, echoed Araghchi’s criticism, adding that decades of conflict with the U.S. have left Iran with no reason to trust American negotiating commitments.

Within hours of the single-day talks faltering, Trump announced that the U.S. would implement a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that carries roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil trade. Critics have universally labeled the blockade an illegal act of war that risks dragging both nations into a far wider, more destructive conflict.

Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council, warned that the U.S. approach continued to prioritize dictating terms over good-faith negotiation. “It is concerning that Vance already suggests that the U.S. has put forward a final and best offer, suggesting that the U.S. is still trying to dictate terms rather than negotiate a better future,” Costello said. “We urge President Trump to walk back his blockade threat and for the U.S. and Iran to reengage and consider implementing practical steps where there is agreement to lower tensions and build on this fragile pause to the war.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the Trump administration is also considering resuming limited military strikes against Iran targets to complement the Hormuz blockade, which is scheduled to go into effect at 10 a.m. ET. The outlet noted that a full-scale return to a sustained bombing campaign remains on the table, though anonymous administration officials said that option is currently less likely.

U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, issued a scathing rebuke of Trump’s actions Sunday, calling the ongoing conflict with Iran illegal, immoral, a war crime, and a catastrophic threat to American public interests. Jayapal called for urgent action to remove Trump from office, saying that impeachment, invocation of the 25th Amendment, or a push for voluntary resignation are all on the table. “This is so grave of a situation,” Jayapal told MSNBC’s *MS NOW*.

For nearly two decades, Viktor Orban turned Hungary from a relatively quiet central European state into a global hub for transnational conservative politics, building a sprawling interconnected network of think tanks, academic institutions, and ideological initiatives designed to unite right-wing movements across Europe and North America while expanding Budapest’s soft power influence across the Western world. Following 16 years in office, Orban stepped down last weekend after opposition candidate Peter Magyar, a conservative newcomer, secured a decisive election victory with more than 53% of the popular vote – a result that has cast the entire future of Orban’s ideological project into major doubt.

At the core of Orban’s network are two flagship institutions: the Danube Institute, a Budapest-based think tank focused on engaging Anglophone conservative thinkers, and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), widely described as Orban’s purpose-built ideological training center. Founded by John O’Sullivan, a former speechwriter for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Danube Institute has become a key meeting point for right-wing intellectuals from the United Kingdom, funded entirely by the Hungarian government through the state-managed Batthyany Lajos Foundation. The institute primarily hosts British and American visiting fellows, who regularly contribute to leading conservative publications across the Anglosphere including *The Spectator* and UnHerd.

Gavin Hayes, a British visiting fellow at the institute, told Middle East Eye that the center has become more connected to the British right-wing intellectual scene than many domestic London-based institutions. “It’s an intellectual turnstile,” Hayes explained, “I’ve met more prominent right-wing thinkers from London here in Budapest than I ever did in London.” The institute has helped spread interest in the so-called “Orban model” of socially populist, nationalist politics across the British right, he added, providing a space for hard-right British figures to exchange ideas with ideological allies who share their skepticism of mainstream progressive policy. Back in 2019, Tim Montgomerie, former social justice advisor to ex-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, even used a Danube Institute speech to call for a new “special relationship” between London and Budapest.

The MCC, for its part, has grown into one of the most well-funded nodes of Orban’s ideological network, receiving major state assets during his premiership – including 10% stakes in two large Hungarian companies, among them regional energy giant MOL. The institution has actively cultivated ties with prominent British right-wing figures, including Matt Goodwin, a Reform UK candidate who lost a February Greater Manchester by-election to the Green Party and was scheduled to deliver a talk at MCC just one day after Orban’s election defeat. MCC hosts an annual summit at King’s College London, and has directed more than half a million pounds – over 90% of its total funding – to the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation (RSLF), an organization named after the late prominent British conservative philosopher.

The RSLF counts former UK Conservative minister Michael Gove, current editor of *The Spectator*, among its board members, and one of its directors is James Orr, a Cambridge theologian who also serves as a senior advisor to Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Orr praised Orban’s government during an appearance at a 2023 Hungarian political festival, framing it as a needed counterpoint to what he called the anti-national heritage ideology dominating mainstream British politics. That same event drew a host of other high-profile right-wing figures, including US billionaire Peter Thiel, former Boris Johnson advisor Dominic Cummings, and Goodwin, who hailed Orban’s administration as a rebuke of what he described as “national self-loathing” in British public life.

Orban’s pan-European conservative project has long found particularly fertile ground in the UK, especially within the rapidly rising right-wing party Reform UK, which currently leads national opinion polls ahead of the next UK general election. Farage, Reform’s leader, has repeatedly praised Orban over the years, rejecting criticisms of the Hungarian leader’s authoritarian tendencies and framing him as the future of European politics. “He actually believes in things. He does not sheepishly, slavishly go along with the European project… he firmly believes in the concept of the nation-state,” Farage said of Orban in 2019, and headlined a 2024 National Conservatism conference in Brussels alongside Orban, an event sponsored by MCC’s Brussels office.

Orban’s brand of hardline nationalist politics has also drawn support from leading right-wing figures across the Atlantic, and just last month he shared the stage with Argentinian President Javier Milei at a Conservative Political Action Conference held in Budapest, while former US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered pre-recorded video addresses to the crowd. Despite the network’s rapid growth over the past decade, its future is now unclear, as Magyar’s Tisza Party ran on an explicit platform that promised to end the use of public funds to build transnational political networks.

The party has pledged to draw a clear line between nonpartisan education and ideological propaganda, and has promised to take back state assets currently held by MCC. “No one knows what will happen,” Hayes said of the Danube Institute. “Effectively this is an arm of Hungarian public diplomacy, so the new government could come in and decide there’ll always be the place for an Anglophone institute.” But if the new government follows through on its campaign promises, Orban’s sprawling Budapest-based conservative network will be forced to find new sources of funding and new patrons to sustain its transnational ideological work.

A major British newspaper has been forced to retract and remove a false story that incorrectly claimed Turkish President Recep Erdogan threatened a military invasion of Israel, after the outlet acknowledged the report relied on decontextualized, years-old comments that had been misrepresented to create a false narrative.

The Daily Telegraph first published the incendiary report on Sunday, claiming that Erdogan had attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, describing the Israeli leader as “blinded by blood and hate”. The newspaper further alleged that Erdogan warned Turkey could launch military action against Israel, saying “just as we entered Libya and Karabakh, there is nothing to prevent us doing it” and that there was “no reason” not to attack.

However, the claims fell apart almost immediately when it was revealed that the quotes used in the story were pulled from a 2024 speech Erdogan delivered at a local ruling AK Party gathering in the Turkish coastal city of Rize, and were taken completely out of their original context. In the full, original remarks, Erdogan emphasized that Turkish military strength was necessary to constrain Israeli actions against Palestine, not that Turkey was planning an imminent invasion. His full comment read: “We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them.”

By Monday, the Turkish government issued an official statement rejecting the false report as “entirely unfounded”. Ankara stressed that the misleading claims did not reflect reality and were part of a deliberate narrative designed to destabilize the already volatile Middle East region.

“In line with its long-standing state tradition and vision, the Republic of Türkiye has consistently assumed a leading role – both in our region and beyond – in advocating for an end to bloodshed, the protection of civilians, and the establishment of lasting peace,” the statement read. It added that manipulative content meant to distort Turkey’s well-documented humanitarian and peace-focused stance in the region should not be trusted, noting that Turkey would continue to stand as a voice for justice and peace across the Middle East.

Shortly after the Turkish government’s condemnation, The Daily Telegraph removed the article from its platforms, including a widely shared post of the false claim on X (formerly Twitter). A senior editor for the outlet admitted on X that “We’ve taken the story down. The quotes looks like they were old or made up all together.”

Despite the rapid retraction, the damage was already done: the false report had already been picked up and republished by multiple Israeli news outlets by Monday morning, including major publications *Jerusalem Post* and Maariv.

The spread of this misinformation comes at a moment of already sharply escalating tensions between Israel and Turkey. Over the past week, the two countries’ leaders have exchanged increasingly harsh verbal attacks, deepening a growing geopolitical rift between Ankara and Jerusalem. In a recent post on X, Netanyahu accused Erdogan of “massacring his own Kurdish citizens” and “accommodating Iran’s terror regime and its proxies”. Turkey responded with equally fierce condemnation, with senior officials in Ankara labeling Netanyahu the “Hitler of the era” in reference to Israel’s ongoing military assaults in Gaza and across the broader Middle East.

Forty-four days into the Trump administration’s military campaign branded “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran, the catastrophic aftermath of the opening strike demands a hard reassessment of Washington’s strategy — a question that the US war planners have so far failed to ask themselves: What did the United States actually expect to happen after taking such drastic action?

The operation’s first strike killed Iran’s long-time Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, triggering an overwhelming retaliatory response: hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands of drones launched by Iran across the Middle East. The human cost is staggering: thousands killed across Iran and Lebanon, dozens of fatalities in Israel and Gulf Arab states, and millions displaced from their homes. The Strait of Hormuz, the critical global energy chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies transit, has become an active war zone.

The highest-level direct talks between Washington and Tehran held in Islamabad, the first such engagement since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ended after 21 hours of marathon negotiations with no breakthrough agreement. Now, at this critical juncture, it is time to soberly examine the three main strategic options on the table for the United States.

The first option is doubling down on existing pressure through a full naval blockade of all Iranian ports, which US Central Command has announced will go into effect at 10 a.m. ET Monday. This approach follows the long-standing flawed logic that if force has failed to deliver results, the only solution is to apply more force. This is not a new argument: the author heard the same reasoning in 2003, when the architects of the Iraq invasion promised that ousting Saddam Hussein would spark a wave of democratic transformation across the Middle East. It was repeated again during the final years of the Afghanistan war, when successive administrations insisted that one more troop surge would force the Taliban’s capitulation after two decades of conflict.

History shows that maximum pressure consistently produces one outcome: it maximizes human suffering while failing to deliver meaningful strategic gains. Since the outbreak of hostilities, global oil prices have already surged more than 31%, and leading energy analysts warn that elevated prices could remain in place through the end of 2026 even if fighting stops tomorrow. Damage to energy infrastructure and long-term disruption to global shipping routes cannot be repaired overnight.

A full naval blockade does not only target Iran’s government. It raises energy costs for major importing economies from Japan to South Korea to Germany and India, and it directly harms American consumers at gas pumps. It also hands a major geopolitical advantage to China, which has already positioned itself as a neutral broker in the conflict.

For Iran itself, the conflict has handed the ruling regime a powerful unifying tool: a foreign adversary rallying the population against external attack, even as the Iranian people hold deep, genuine grievances against their government. War planners appear to have ignored a basic question: When a foreign power bombs your cities, kills your top leader, and blockades your ports, do you turn against your own government, or do you rally against the foreign aggressor?

The second option on the table is further military escalation to achieve the stated original goal of regime change. The US and Israel launched the initial strikes with two stated objectives: to overthrow Iran’s existing government and eliminate the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Six weeks on, though the Iranian regime has suffered heavy damage, it has not collapsed.

Iran’s AMAD nuclear weapons project was previously suspended under a fatwa (religious edict) against nuclear weapons issued by Khamenei himself. With Khamenei killed in the US strike, that restraint no longer exists, and the hardliners that now hold power do not share his theological opposition to nuclear weapons. The long-held fantasy that US air power alone can install a compliant regime that accepts all American terms has now been put to the test, and it has failed completely.

Iran has not surrendered. Instead, it has launched retaliatory attacks across the region, disrupted global energy trade, and rallied its remaining network of regional proxies. Hezbollah entered the conflict within days of the first strike, and the Houthi movement in Yemen has resumed drone and missile attacks on US and Israeli-flagged shipping in the Red Sea. Any further escalation, including a ground invasion to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force, would go down as one of the most consequential strategic blunders in modern US history — a remarkable distinction given Washington’s track record of failed intervention in the Middle East.

The third, and only viable path forward, is a negotiated exit that requires Washington to abandon its maximalist demands and embrace diplomatic realism. The Islamabad talks collapsed after Iran rejected the Trump administration’s set of non-negotiable red lines: a complete end to all uranium enrichment, the dismantling of all major enrichment facilities, the surrender of all existing highly enriched uranium, an end to financial support for regional militant groups, and the unconditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz with no transit fees.

This list of demands amounts to a call for the total surrender of an undefeated adversary. Despite decades of pressure, Iran has survived the 1980s eight-year war with Iraq, decades of harsh international sanctions, the targeted assassination of its top generals and nuclear scientists, and six weeks of intense aerial bombardment. For its part, Iran is demanding full recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, war reparations, and a comprehensive regional ceasefire that includes Lebanon. The two sides’ positions are far apart today, but that does not mean negotiation is impossible — it only means neither side has yet felt enough pressure to make the compromises necessary for a politically survivable deal at home.

A negotiated settlement remains the only option that avoids either a generations-long military quagmire or a broader regional war that draws in global powers Russia and China. But for this path to succeed, Washington must do what it has rarely been willing to do: separate its core national security interests from its unrealistic maximalist wish list. Preventing Iran from acquiring a functional nuclear weapon is a legitimate core security interest for the United States. Demanding that Tehran dismantle every uranium centrifuge, pay war reparations, surrender control over the Strait of Hormuz, and abandon all regional influence is not a negotiating position — it is a demand for unconditional surrender from a country that has not been defeated.

US Vice President Vance has left open the slim possibility that a deal could still be reached, saying “We’ll see if the Iranians accept it” — a statement that can charitably be described as far from a constructive diplomatic overture. Third-party mediators remain available, however: Pakistan, which has emerged as a key go-between in the talks, has committed to continuing its facilitation role, and Oman, which has a long history of serving as a quiet back channel between Washington and Tehran, also stands ready to help. The open question now is whether the Trump administration has the strategic patience to make use of these existing diplomatic pathways.

Looking at the long history of US policy failure in the Middle East, a clear pattern emerges: the problem has never been a lack of military power. The US has repeatedly demonstrated it has unparalleled capacity to destroy existing regimes and infrastructure. What it has consistently failed to plan for is the day after military action ends. What comes after the blockade is implemented? If the Iranian regime collapses, who will fill the power vacuum in a country of 93 million people that shares borders with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and the Caucasus?

While Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Gulf Arab states (many of which had worked to improve ties with Tehran in recent years) have left the country more diplomatically isolated, isolation does not equal regional stability. A collapsed Iranian state would create an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe and a geopolitical power vacuum that would drain American resources and attention for a generation.

Today, Washington faces three clear choices: escalate to full-scale war, pursue a negotiated compromise, or accept a prolonged stalemate that erodes the global economy and American global credibility at the same time. None of these options offers a perfect outcome. But the least bad option, the one that Washington’s hawkish policymakers find most politically humiliating, remains the best path: a negotiated deal that does not require total Iranian capitulation, that allows both sides to claim some form of domestic political victory, and that reopens global shipping lanes before the economic damage to the global economy becomes irreversible.

Realism has never been popular in Washington’s political culture. But compared to the catastrophic alternatives on offer, it has one distinct advantage: it has the potential to be right.

Fifty-five years after the groundbreaking exchange that opened the door to formal China-US relations, a special commemorative event honoring the historic “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” initiative was convened Sunday, April 13, at Shanghai University of Sport. The gathering brought together a rare group of individuals who witnessed the landmark 1971 exchange firsthand alongside young delegates from both China and the United States, with a shared goal of revitalizing and sustaining the people-to-people friendship that defined the original diplomatic breakthrough.

Held more than half a century after a chance encounter between Chinese and American ping-pong players at the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships sparked the unorthodox diplomatic overture, the event marked a key moment to reflect on the legacy of people-to-people exchange in bridging geopolitical divides. Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory message to the commemorative event, underscoring the enduring significance of the 1971 breakthrough for bilateral relations.

The 1971 exchange, which saw American table tennis players invited to visit China for a series of friendly matches, became a defining example of “sports diplomacy” that set the stage for then-US President Richard Nixon’s historic official visit to China the following year, and eventually the formal establishment of diplomatic ties between the two nations. Today, as bilateral relations face new complexities, organizers and attendees of the 55th anniversary event emphasized that the core spirit of Ping-Pong Diplomacy — building mutual understanding through informal, people-centered exchange — remains as relevant as ever.

By bringing together the generations who witnessed the original moment and young leaders who will shape the future of China-US ties, the event aims to carry forward the legacy of friendship laid out 55 years ago, reinforcing the idea that shared cultural and people-to-people connections can serve as a stable foundation for bilateral cooperation even amid political tension.