After four rounds and two months, the Trump administration’s direct negotiations with Iran have failed to yield substantive results. Just ask Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said in a speech on Tuesday, “We don’t think it will lead to any outcome. We don’t know what will happen.” As Iran stalls for time while it races to develop a nuclear weapon, the Trump administration would be prudent to prepare a “Plan B” in case its diplomacy is drilling a dry well.

“It seems like the red line for Iran is enriching uranium. They say that’s a national privilege, a right for them to do it,” CBN Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Mitchell reported on “Washington Watch.” “The aims of … the Trump administration seem to be the position that they cannot enrich uranium. And how they come together in that remains to be seen.”

To this demand, Khamenei retorted that “the American side involved in these indirect negotiations should refrain from speaking nonsense,” and that it was “a big mistake” for Iran to ever deny its right to enrich uranium. Iran’s Foreign Minister and lead negotiator Abbas Araghchi confirmed this intransigent stance, insisting, “enrichment in Iran, however, will continue with or without a deal.”

Iran claims that its uranium enrichment is only for civilian uses, but this is an obvious pretense. “If you want civilian electricity and that’s why you need nuclear materials, you don’t need to be enriching. You can get it on the open market,” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) on “Washington Watch.” “The problem we have today is they are at 60%-enriched uranium. … Going from 60 to 90%” enrichment — that is, weapons-grade — takes “a matter of days.”

In other words, Iran insists on the right to maintain nearly weapons-grade uranium stockpiles — for peaceful purposes only, mind you — while those pesky Americans have the nerve to demand that Iran must relinquish the capability to manufacture a bomb. Thus, Iran has responded: tsk, tsk, tsk.

Tick, tick, tick would be more appropriate. U.S. intelligence has assessed for some time that Iran is only months away from the necessary technological breakthrough they need to create a nuclear weapon. The regime already has the requisite missile technology and a nearly-ready stockpile of nuclear material. Now, Iranian scientists merely have to figure out how to “weaponize” the material — how to load their uranium onto a rocket in a way that will send up a giant mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.

“Iran has been very clear. The United States is the Great Satan; Israel is the smaller Satan, the little Satan. So, they have declared their purpose to destroy Israel first and then the United States,” said Self. Last Saturday, Khamenei once again repeated his anti-Semitic rhetoric, calling the state of Israel a “tumorous cancer.”

Despite the seemingly insurmountable differences between the two nations, American and Iranian representatives are set to meet in Rome for a fifth round of talks on Friday. “I don’t like permanent enemies,” President Donald Trump said during his tour of Arab Gulf states last week. “I want to make a deal with Iran.”

The danger is that American diplomats may accept a bad deal rather than no deal at all. By engaging an unrepentant Iran in further negotiations, the Trump administration risks pursuing the same course adopted by his predecessors, Biden and Obama, and expecting different results.

Indeed, by Trump’s own timetable, the window for negotiation is already passed — or nearly passed, depending on one’s interpretation. Trump set a 60-day deadline on negotiations in mid-March, which CNN on Tuesday observed was more than 60 days ago. If the 60-day countdown began with the first round of negotiations, then Tuesday marked 38 days, leaving a mere three weeks for the interlocutors to move from 0% agreement to 100%. “We’re still no closer to a deal,” reflected Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “My sense is, time is running out.”

That certainly seems to be the sense of Israel. Citing anonymous U.S. intelligence sources — more leaking! — a CNN report suggested that “Israel is making preparations to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.” The reporting relied on U.S. intelligence gathering, said CNN which included “intercepted Israeli communications and observations of Israeli military movements.”

If nothing else, the CNN report revealed that the U.S. is spying on Israel to see when Israel is likely to move against Iran.

Indeed, the anonymous officials also cautioned that “it’s not clear that Israeli leaders have made a final decision,” CNN admitted. “This may be just trying to put more pressure on Iran,” Mitchell suggested. “Israel’s been preparing for a military strike for years, but I’m not sure they would do anything while negotiations are going on and, if there was a deal, whether or not they would actually strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

The good news is that this U.S. intelligence leak seems less egregious than the October 2024 leak under President Biden, when a U.S. intelligence official published details about Israeli military positions to an Iranian Telegram page. “I know the close relationship that the Israeli leadership has with the Trump administration at every level,” posited Perkins. “I can’t imagine that the Trump administration, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community would release anything that might signal or tip Iran off to what Israel might be doing.”

The one factor that is certain is Iran’s weakness. After pivoting away from the October 2024 leak, Israel launched a devastating airstrike against Iran, pulverizing the air defenses for its nuclear weapons facilities and leaving the country essentially prostrate to future aerial attacks. This stroke, combined with the severe degradation of the Iranian proxies encircling Israel, leaves Iran in a weaker position than ever before.

“Their number one issue is regime survival. Their number two issue is survival of their nuclear program,” Self suggested. But the Iranian regime may soon be forced to “choose survival or choose their nuclear program.”

“The president has options well short … of war,” he continued. “If the president uses every tool in the toolbox, I can guarantee you Iran will hurt. And they’re already hurting because they’re pouring too much money into their military, the Quds Force, the IRGC, and not enough into their civilians. So they’re already hurting in their civilian sector. So, if he ratchets it up even further, which he could, Iran will be in desperate, dire straits.”

But will such non-military pressure be in time to prevent Iran launching nuclear weapons at Israel? Will Israel launch a last-minute airstrike, with or without American support? “It seems like the patience of President Trump and the White House is running out,” said Mitchell. “If you see both positions by Iran and the U.S. [are] unbridgeable, we’ll see what happens.”

“We’re talking about history changing events here, if Israel attacks Iran,” Mitchell emphasized.

“The president has said we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” concluded Self. “I really recommend that Iran do this the easy way.”

“And we also need to pray for those people in Iran,” Mitchell urged. “A lot of people talk about the nuclear facilities, but there are tens of millions of people that have been suffering under this regime since 1979. We know that many people [are] actually coming to faith in Jesus through dreams and visions. … Many of these people are hungering for freedom.”

“We do know that there are a lot of believers. There’s revival taking place there. The regime does not represent the people,” Perkins affirmed. “Our program actually reaches into Iran, and I want the Iranian people to know that we’re praying for them.”