Donald Trump called the Iranian regime "scum" at the NATO summit in Turkey and declared "it's over" — then, within the same set of remarks, said negotiations with Tehran could continue because he simply didn't care whether they did BBC. That contradiction, more than the insult, is the story. BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen argued in analysis published this week that the sequence — victory claims, threats of annihilation, grudging tolerance for talks — amounts to an admission that the US president has no better option than the negotiating table he professes to disdain BBC.

The war Trump was discussing began on 28 February, when Israel and the United States killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the conflict's opening day BBC. Four months on, the campaign's central strategic aim — breaking the regime's will — has not been achieved. Bowen's assessment is unambiguous on this point: Washington and Israel tried to destroy the Iranian state and failed BBC. Tehran has not surrendered its most fundamental red line, control over navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, despite sustained US capacity to inflict damage BBC.

That failure sits awkwardly against Trump's own timeline of claims. In June he said a deal to end the war was near and the White House was pushing for a quick resolution BBC. By 19 June, Bowen was already framing any eventual US-Iran deal as raising an uncomfortable question: what, precisely, was the war for BBC? Earlier still, at the start of June, Bowen had written that Trump needs the war to end but that Iran was not backing down BBC — a diagnosis that this week's NATO remarks appear to confirm rather than contradict.

The negotiating track, interrupted and resumed

Talks between Washington and Tehran had been paused while Iran observed days of funeral rites for Khamenei BBC. A memorandum of understanding between the two sides has been under negotiation, with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner serving as the US side's chief interlocutors BBC. Trump's dismissal of the pair's efforts — "I don't care, they can talk. But I think they're wasting their time" — sits uneasily next to his simultaneous threat that the US "will probably hit them harder again tonight," having supposedly issued Iran "a little warning" beforehand BBC. He rounded on the regime as "a bunch of lying guys" in the same breath BBC.

A source among the mediators involved in the process described the recent turn of events as "a setback for sure," with the atmosphere "very tense" BBC. That characterization is notable for its restraint given the rhetorical temperature of Trump's own comments — mediators, unlike principals, tend not to editorialize unless the ground has genuinely shifted.

The rhetorical whiplash is not incidental to the substance; it is arguably the clearest signal of where the substance actually stands. A president who has repeatedly proclaimed the war effectively won, only to authorize further strikes days or hours later, is not describing a settled outcome. He is narrating a stalemate in real time, in language calibrated for a domestic audience rather than a diplomatic one. Bowen's framing — that talks continuing is itself proof Trump lacks an alternative — reads less as spin-deflation than as a fairly conventional reading of coercive diplomacy under strain: escalate to signal resolve, then quietly preserve the channel that resolve was supposed to render unnecessary.

Why the maximalist framing persists

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both pursued a broader ambition of reshaping the regional order, not merely degrading Iranian capability BBC. Judged against that more expansive goal, a negotiated MOU that leaves the regime intact and the Strait contested would be a modest result relative to what was promised at the war's outset. That gap between stated ambition and negotiated outcome is precisely what generates Bowen's question of what the war achieved BBC.

The regional picture reinforces the limits of coercion as a strategy. In Lebanon, clashes have persisted despite the ceasefire nominally in place between Israel and Hezbollah BBC — a pattern Bowen has separately characterized as giving "space but not a solution" BBC Sounds. Ceasefires and paused hostilities across the region have tended to freeze conflicts rather than resolve them, leaving underlying disputes over territory, deterrence, and strategic depth untouched.

None of this guarantees the MOU under discussion will be finalized on any particular timeline; as of Bowen's most recent reporting, talks remain unresolved BBC. What the NATO summit remarks do establish is that the maximalist rhetoric — annihilation threats, declarations that "it's over" — and the negotiating track are running in parallel, not in sequence. Whether that parallel structure resolves into a signed document or another rhetorical escalation depends on ground that has not moved much in months: Iran's refusal to concede Hormuz, and Washington's evident inability to force that concession by force alone.