Why the USA Took Over 100 Days to Negotiate a Deal with Iran

History’s lessons should have served as warnings

Screenshot of a meeting of the president’s cabinet during the 2026 Iran war (27 May 2026). By The White House from Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

Operation Epic Fury, the USA’s military campaign against Iran and its proxies, celebrated its 100-day anniversary recently. During that time period, oil and gas prices have skyrocketed, thousands have died, and vast stretches of infrastructure have faced destruction. Iran also blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off trade travelling through the chokepoint.

Negotiations have been ongoing for several months, and a new agreement has paused hostilities between Iran and the USA, giving them 60 days to negotiate something concrete. From all accounts, the negotiators who paved the way for this breakthrough were Iran’s neighbors, Pakistan and Qatar, and not the USA. The new gunboat diplomacy hit a wall these past few months.

Historical parallels exist. In fact, the Roman Empire’s interactions with Iran echo many of the challenges the USA faced in 2026. These historical road signs become apparent when you know where to look.

The effects of destruction

The conflict between the USA, Israel, and Iran has devastated certain parts of West Asia. Thousands of people have died and around a million people left their homes, primarily in Lebanon.

One June estimate put the cost of damage in Iran at $270 billion. On the ground, businesses and workers have suffered. Millions have lost their jobs, too. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t Iran’s sole trade conduit, though. On the Caspian coast, new harbors have allowed Iran to trade with Russia, and a new railway link between Iran and China has been carrying more goods as well.

This war’s economic cost to the USA has been immense as well. Experts have estimated that each American household has lost around $750 due to the war, which has affected the economy as a whole. Linda Bilmes, a Harvard economist whose cost estimations of the Iraq war proved to be closer to the truth than the government’s decades ago, estimated that the total cost of the Iran war might end up passing the $1 trillion mark. She made that estimate back in early April. This is not good news for a country whose national debt exceeded $39 trillion this year.

An LPG shortage in India during the Iran War 2026 (14 March 2026). By Nizil Shah from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Because of the Strait of Hormuz blockade, India has also lost access to Qatari gas producers, which provided it with 50% of its liquefied natural gas. Developing countries without sizeable fossil fuel reserves have felt significant economic headwinds. Millions of people have also dropped below the poverty line in West Asia because of the destruction and turmoil created by the war.

A message carved in stone

On 24 May, only a couple of weeks before the June memorandum, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, posted on Twitter/X an image of Iran with a stone relief superimposed. To some, this might look like any other post, but it carries a deep significance. Baghaei wrote:

In the Roman mind, Rome was the undisputed center of the world. Yet the Iranians shattered that illusion; when Marcus Julius Philippus (Philip the Arab) marched east against Persia, the campaign did not result in Roman victory — it ended in a peace established on Sasanian terms: to terms!

Featuring prominently in Baghaei’s post is the Naqsh-e Rostam relief in Fars Province, Iran. It is a Sasanian piece of art that depicts Shapur I in the presence of two Roman emperors. This isn’t a pleasant picnic party, though.

A closeup of the Naqs-e Rostam relief. By Wojciech Kocot from Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Shapur I holds Emperor Valerian I by the wrist, and Emperor Philip kneels in front of Shapur’s horse. In many ways, this is Shapur I’s resume, written in stone.

The background of this art piece tells another story. In 242 CE, Timesitheus, an able praetorian prefect, travelled with Emperor Gordian III and organized an expedition to win back territory the Romans had lost to the Sasanian Empire in the East.

The following year, the Romans scored a victory at the Battle of Resaena, but Timesitheus died thereafter under suspicious circumstances. Gordian III, now without his experienced expert, clashed again with Shapur I at the Battle of Misiche, and lost the battle in devastating fashion. It’s unclear whether Gordian died in battle or afterwards, but Shapur I did not miss a chance to advertise the emperor’s death.

Caught in a compromising position, the former Praetorian Guard commander and then-newly crowned emperor, Philip I, forged a peace treaty that forced Rome to pay a hefty sum of 500,000 denarii and cede territory to the Sasanians in 244 CE. Shapur I portrays Philip I as begging for peace. Tellingly, after Philip I lost power five years later, his successor subjected him to damnatio memoriae, effacing his name and image from certain monuments.

A rerun broadcast

Shapur I troubled Rome’s eastern provinces once again in the 250s CE. The Roman Empire, still in disarray, saw several pretenders rise and fall. Valerian, an old general, eventually took the purple, and he believed that social changes had led Rome to ruin. In particular, he distrusted people of a specific religion: Christians. They rejected the pagan gods and the imperial cult. In 258 CE, he ordered that Christian clergy be put to death, and that Christian Roman officials face dismissal if they did not renounce their faith.

The directives targeting Christians affected the unity within the Roman state. A plague weakened Valerian’s legions stationed in Syria, too. Though Valerian, confident after having driven off some of Shapur I’s troops earlier, took to the field and ordered his gigantic 70,000-man army to clash with Shapur I near Edessa in 260 CE. With the Roman army drawn out onto wide plains, the Sasanians’ heavy cavalry, the aswārān, inflicted heavy casualties. Shapur I then captured Valerian and many other high-ranking officials.

There is some confusion about the Roman emperor’s eventual fate, with most Western sources stating that he was used as a stool and killed, whilst later Islamic sources describe how he and thousands of other Roman captives helped build a bridge and infrastructure in the Sasanian Empire. Either way, he was the first Roman emperor captured alive by an enemy.

Seated in different forms

The framing of Shapur I’s artistic program proved to be so effective that it reverberated through Iran’s history. Qajar houses, like the Fazel el-Eraqi House, even featured Shapur I on walls during the early 20th century CE. In 2025, Iran also unveiled a massive statue of Shapur I that resembles the Naqsh-e Rostam relief, but here only the captive Valerian kneels in front of the Sasanian king.

Iranian watercolor painting depicting Emperor Valerian and Shapur I. By Abbas Rassam Arjangi from Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

The timing of the statue’s unveiling in Tehran was also telling: it took place only a couple of months after the Twelve-Day War with Israel in 2025. During the unveiling, many Iranians in the crowd recognized the statue’s historical context and how it symbolized victory.

Why are Shapur I’s victories over the Roman emperors such an enduring symbol in Iran? To understand that, we should understand the concepts of Eran and Aneran. Deep in Iran’s past, the concept of Iranians as a community bound by cultural, linguistic, and religious factors took hold. In fact, Iran was likely the first nation-state, or at least proto nation-state.

Aneran is, as the name implies, foreign and outside the realm of Iranians. The Roman Empire was part of Aneran, and any victory over it would be a victory over one of that realm’s most powerful forces. Being able to defeat such a force numerous times strengthened Eran in the eyes of Shapur I’s subjects, and it showed that he possessed tremendous xwarrah.

Xwarrah, a spiritual life force, could also show an individual’s capacity to oppose evil. Iranian leaders could also lose their xwarrah, signifying that they had lost the right to rule. Defending Iran thus took on a special importance.

That is not to say that all foreigners remained unwelcome in Iran, though. Because of the Eran/Aneran duality, Iranians expected foreigners to show their appreciation for Iranian culture before being welcomed into the fold. That distinction influenced the outcome of many negotiations.

A geography and politics

Iran’s conception of the self and the other predates modern conceptions by thousands of years. The reason why a nationalistic self-conception developed so early in Iran is because of its location. Ancient Iranians sat in a pressure cooker environment, and they faced powerful neighbors in almost every direction.

To the north, fearsome Daylamites lived in the mountainous Caspian region, and Scythians and their successors roamed open plains. To the east, nomadic peoples, like the Yuezhi, formed powerful confederations and established states that troubled many Iranian rulers. To the west, various different states lay in wait, such as Arab tribes, Egypt, Mesopotamian ones, the Greeks, and Romans.

The Sasnain Empire (purple) also interacted and clashed with large nomadic confederacies, such as the Göktürks (blue). By Amir-iran992 from Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).

Iran did have to interact with a wide array of people, and they had to quickly anchor their self-conception, otherwise they risked being pulled in a thousand directions. The prism through which Shapur I viewed the world still influences negotiations between the USA and Iran today. The negotiations have been caught in a deadlock because the USA seeks victory, but Iran cannot cede it to them because it would betray their enduring self-conception.

Filtered vistas

The USA did not seem to take into account the Iranian views when it launched Operation Epic Fury. In many West Asian regions, the US Foreign Service only started to call on American nationals to evacuate after the fighting started, when trying to escape had become difficult. Zachary Lockman, a professor of Islamic and West Asian studies at New York University, said in an interview:

[Members of the administration]seem to be surprised by Iran’s reaction, which, if they talked to anyone who knows anything about Iran in the scholarly world, they would have heard a pretty good account of what’s likely to ensue.

Opportunities to engage with scholars have declined, though. The USA’s administration had cut posts in government departments since 2025, and ones focusing on West Asia also fell under scrutiny. Recently, the State Department’s Iran and Iraq offices merged together. In March 2026, the administration cut 80 people from the Near Eastern Affairs department, too. People who had worked in the government said that experts aren’t consulted anymore, and only Trump and a circle of insiders discuss policy.

During its clashes with Shapur I, the Roman Empire did not always rely on experts, either. Gordian III became emperor at only 13 years old, and various factions jostled for supremacy in the Roman Empire during his reign. Gordian’s Persian expedition lost its impetus after the death of Timesitheus, whose years of experience clawing his way up had been invaluable, and who might even have hailed from West Asia.

Valerian, on the other hand, believed so wholeheartedly in his conception of Rome’s glory days, that he was willing to do anything to return to the so-called old days. His overconfidence made him blind to the true danger of Shapur I’s offensives until it was too late.

The picture looked a little different on the other side. Rome’s ever-present adversary, Shapur I, had only ascended the throne after his father Ardashir I, had seen how he had conducted himself during military campaigns. Ardashir I seems also to have made Shapur I his co-regent in 240 CE, in order to vet him as a ruler. This careful selection process contrasts with the chaos in Rome, which saw 26 emperors being recognized by the senate in less than 50 years (235–284 CE), excluding the various unofficial pretenders.

Expertise and experts remain important today. Even with a tentative agreement between the USA and Iran taking shape, the prospect of reconciliation still appears distant. Lebanon is a key sticking point, with Israel seemingly hesitant to pull out of the country, and Iran adamant that an agreement is contingent on Israel’s military retreating from southern Lebanon and the release of their frozen overseas funds.

This is the kind of complicated negotiation process that would benefit from special insight and knowledge. It remains to be seen whether American experts will partake in the next crucial step.

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