Yoni Ben Menachem, senior Middle East analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, has issued a pointed warning: Tehran is not negotiating in good faith. It is stalling. According to Ben Menachem, Iranian leadership has read the American posture correctly — the Trump administration’s urgency for a quick agreement signals weakness, and Iran is exploiting that signal with deliberate patience.
Expert Warns: “The Iranians Sense Trump’s Weakness”
Yoni Ben Menachem @BwMnhm, senior Middle East analyst and senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, argues that Tehran is exploiting the American pressure to reach a quick agreement: “The… pic.twitter.com/KfEJQrolVF
— Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (@jerusalemcenter) May 10, 2026
The observation tracks closely with the current state of the negotiations. A 14-point memorandum of understanding is being negotiated between Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Iranian officials through Pakistani mediators. The framework would declare an end to the war, trigger a 30-day negotiating period on the nuclear file and Strait of Hormuz access, and gradually lift US sanctions in exchange for Iranian concessions on enrichment. On paper, the sides are closer than at any point since the February 28 strikes. In practice, the central question — nuclear enrichment — remains unresolved, with Iran proposing a five-year moratorium and the United States demanding twenty.
Trump himself acknowledged the impasse. After the most recent round of talks, he said that “most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, nuclear, was not,” describing Iran as “unyielding.” That single word encapsulates what Ben Menachem is diagnosing: a regime that has absorbed a devastating military campaign, lost its Supreme Leader to assassination, and still refuses to move on the issue Washington has declared non-negotiable.
What Iran senses is the clock. Trump has repeatedly threatened renewed strikes if talks collapse, most recently warning that “the bombing starts, and it will be at a much higher level and intensity than before.” But each deadline has passed without consequence. The March 21 deadline slipped. Then March 23. Then April 7. The ceasefire arranged by Pakistan on April 8 has been extended multiple times. Tehran has watched this sequence and drawn its conclusion: the administration’s public aggression masks a private reluctance to re-engage militarily while negotiations are ongoing. The threat is real but the trigger has a high threshold. Iran is testing that threshold.
The pattern is not new. Iranian negotiating doctrine has historically relied on incrementalism, manufactured ambiguity, and the exploitation of counterpart urgency. What changes in the current context is the post-war landscape. Iran’s military infrastructure has been severely degraded. Khamenei is dead. The economy is under compounding strain from sanctions, blockade damage, and the disruption of Gulf trade routes that Tehran itself weaponized. A rational actor in that position would be expected to cut its losses. Instead, the Islamic Republic’s atomic energy organization has stated flatly that Iran will not accept limits on enrichment, even as its diplomats signal flexibility on the margins.
Ben Menachem’s warning, read against this backdrop, is not alarmist. It is a structural observation. When a negotiating party is under maximum pressure and still refuses to move on the central issue, one of two explanations applies: the party believes the pressure will ease, or it has concluded that accepting the terms would destabilize the regime more than continued confrontation. Both explanations currently apply to Tehran. The clerical establishment cannot survive domestically by surrendering what it has called a sovereign right for decades. And it has calculated that Washington’s eagerness for a deal — driven by energy markets, allied pressures, and Trump’s own desire for a legacy agreement — will eventually soften the American position on enrichment duration.
Whether that calculation proves correct will determine whether the 14-point MOU leads to a durable framework or dissolves into another round of extended ceasefire and drift. The Strait of Hormuz remains partially restricted. The nuclear file remains open. And Tehran, for all the damage it has absorbed, retains the one leverage point that matters most in these talks: the willingness to walk away.