Excitement in some Washington quarters over the prospect of renewed negotiations with the Tehran regime could soon prove premature. Speaking to Fox Business Network yesterday, President Trump spoke of diplomacy. “I’ve written them a letter saying I hope you’re going to negotiate,” he said. The statement was widely interpreted as an overture, with all the usual suspects calling for the return of an Iran deal that Mr. Trump left in 2018. 

We’re against it. The United Nations spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, might opine, as he does, that “diplomacy remains the best way to ensure the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.” If Mr. Trump offers “primary sanctions relief,” an influential Tehran advocate at Washington, Trita Parsi, writes, “there is a peaceful path forward.” It’s hard, though, to see any evidence in respect of either one of those assertions. 

To date Mr. Trump has been reapplying “maximum pressure” and the rest of his suggestions were met with less enthusiasm and were widely left unreported. The president clarified that he wrote the letter to Supreme Leader Khamenei “because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.” Sticking with his penchant for deal making, he added, “I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran. They’re great people.”

It’s not our purpose here to advise the president on the art of any deal. Mr. Trump may establish merely a diplomatic upper hand, but talks could take a long time, and a deadline is looming. “There’ll be some interesting days ahead, that’s all I can tell you,” Mr. Trump told White House reporters. “We’re down to the final strokes with Iran,” and there’s a bottom line to all of this:  “Can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

Tehran is putting on a brave face. “Some bullying governments insist on negotiations not to resolve issues, but to impose their own expectations,” Ayatollah Khamenei told clerics today. Iran “will definitely not accept their expectations.” Earlier he said talks are neither “rational” nor “honorable.” Yet, as the brave Brooklyn-based dissident, Masih Alinejad, writes, “Trump just put your so-called ‘rationality and honor’ to the ultimate test.”

The Ayatollah, as Ms. Alinejad notes, had refused to negotiate with President Biden, even though the latter showered his regime with sanction exemptions and all but begged Tehran to return to diplomacy. Now, she adds, the supreme leader is “staring at a table he swore he’d never sit at, not because he wants to, but because Mr. Trump just made it clear: Negotiate or face the “other option.” Will the autocratic mullah buckle and return to talks?

Our Benny Avni reported earlier this week that Israelis are concerned about an offer by the Kremlin to negotiate with Tehran on America’s behalf. Given Mr. Trump’s preparedness to treat with President Putin, he might be tempted. Yet Moscow, an Iranian advocate, is unlikely to seek a final, verifiable end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. As Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in the Wall Street Journal, Israel alone might lack the fire power to achieve that goal either. 

Which brings us back to Mr. Trump. Despite the president’s oft-declared preference to jaw-jaw over war-war, Mr. Trump always makes clear that his goal is to ensure Iran ends up with no nukes. Intelligence agencies and the UN’s atomic watchdog confirm that, yes, we are in the “final strokes” stage of the crisis. America and others have ignored Iran’s nuclear threat for too long. Yet it grows more difficult by the day to see the logic of diplomacy.