On Tuesday, Russia announced its willingness to help mediate between the U.S. and Iran—an apparent response to America reportedly expressing interest in getting its help. The news comes amid indications Tehran is very close to being able to produce nuclear weapons. Ayatollah Ali Khameini would want to see a restoration of the 2015 agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which left Iran able to keep enriching uranium while promising not to use it to make bombs. But Jason M. Brodsky doesn’t think diplomacy will yield results:

Iran and the United States are talking past each other about “deals.” Iran is still speaking in the language of the JCPOA. But U.S. officials appear to have something different in mind. In a recent interview, Trump publicly disavowed the JCPOA formula, complaining about its short-term duration. This was followed by his national security advisor expressing a willingness to talk to Iran so long as Tehran wants to give up its entire nuclear program.

There is no public evidence to date that the maximum Tehran is prepared to give—a JCPOA-style arrangement—will meet the minimum the Trump administration is prepared to accept. If current positions hold, this sets the stage for a showdown, not a deal, in the near term, necessitating the development of a robust pressure architecture to further sharpen Tehran’s choices.

Meanwhile, Shay Khatiri argues that internal Iranian developments suggest an unwillingness to come to any agreement. He points especially to the firing on Sunday of the minister of economy, whose favorable attitude toward free markets contrasts with the regime’s general preference for a command economy.

The sacking highlights a change of direction in the regime’s foreign policy. . . . Gone are efforts to improve prosperity; back in fashion is the “resistance economy,” which emphasizes patriotic austerity and domestic production of foodstuffs and military goods.

Iranian hardliners do not revert to the “resistance economy” for its own sake; it usually presages an effort to defy the world. In this case, expect Iran to accelerate its nuclear-weaponization process. Khamenei believes he is paying the price, so he might as well get the goods. . . . Rather than deal, it now appears Khamenei only allows diplomacy in the hope it will delay a military attack long enough for Iran to complete its nuclear project.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.