On June 11, after two days of U.S. airstrikes on Iran and Iranian retaliation, Trump suddenly called off further attacks and claimed there had been a breakthrough in negotiations with Iran. The U.S. has "just made a great settlement of the war with Iran," Trump declared, and that a preliminary agreement would be signed in the next few days.

This was the 39th time in the past four months that Trump has announced that a deal is at hand. Whether or not this particular Trump pronouncement pans out, or some other agreement is reached, a more fundamental question is: what are these negotiations really about? What relations do they actually reflect? (For more on the negotiations themselves and what is actually being fought out around them, see Why Trump Is So Off-Again On-Again About Negotiations: The Danger And The Possibility That Reveals… And What To Do About It.)

Who Is Actually The Great Threat To Peace?

First of all, people in this country have been thoroughly indoctrinated—by Democrats and Republi-fascists, by MSNOW and Fox News—to see the U.S. as overall a force for good in the world, even as some liberals will admit “it may sometimes make mistakes.” Meanwhile the Islamic Republic of Iran is supposed to be the most dangerous “terrorist” state in the world. 

As part of (and reinforcing) this upside-down outlook, people are trained to see negotiations that the U.S. is involved in as “sincere efforts to hash out differences with other countries, resolve conflicts, and end or avoid wars.” The commentators and politicians may be more or less critical of Trump, but they all proceed as if Iran is the “biggest problem” in the region and that therefore the U.S. somehow had some right to attack Iran in the first place and now there are some “legitimate U.S. interests” to negotiate. And, of course, we should all hope that “we” get the “best deal.”

No! The massive U.S.-Israeli devastation of Iran by air and sea was utterly illegitimate and the “biggest problem.”  The war was unprovoked and unjust, a naked power play by the U.S. and Israel to deepen their already illegitimate domination of the Middle East. It is true that Iran is itself an oppressive regime. But as Bob Avakian, the revolutionary leader and architect of the new communism recently wrote: 

This U.S. war on Iran can’t be justified with the excuse that the Islamic regime in Iran is itself a terribly oppressive force. Yes, that is true—it is a barbaric regime that we revcoms have been vigorously exposing and opposing while firmly supporting the Iranian people’s struggle against this regime, over the four decades and more that this regime has been in power. But this is also true: The U.S. has, since its beginning and down to today, committed war crimes, and crimes against humanity, far beyond what the Iranian regime could even realistically think of committing. (“The New York Times Insists on Support for War Crimes—When They Are ‘Our’ War Crimes,” by Bob Avakian, May 11, 2026)

Whose Nuclear Program Really Threatens Humanity?

When Trump announced his "breakthrough" in negotiations, he boasted, “It's a great deal. You know why it's a great deal? Because [Iran] will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Most people in this country have been conditioned to think “oh, that’s a relief.” But think! You are being conditioned to believe that the greatest danger to humanity right now is a nuclear threat that doesn’t yet exist, while you are supposed to go on calmly accepting the huge ones that do exist—all of which actually do pose existential threats to humanity!

What are the actual facts? 

• Iran does not have nuclear weapons, but the U.S. and Israel most certainly do! Israel has at least 90 and possibly hundreds more, and the U.S.—the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons—has over 5,000 warheads in its stockpile—enough to obliterate humanity many times over—and is spending billions of dollars to “modernize” this arsenal of apocalypse. And the U.S. has effectively “used” nuclear weapons many times to threaten countries—most recently by Trump who periodically threatens to end Iranian civilization… most recently this past weekend when he threatened to use “the ultimate alternative” if Iran did not go along with U.S. demands.
• Iran has a nuclear enrichment program for power generation and medical use (which they have a right to under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation program). It does not have any nuclear weapons, never has had any, and in 2015 signed a nuclear agreement with the Obama administration and other world powers pledging they never would seek nuclear weapons. Iran abided by this agreement—the United States under Donald Trump actually did not—and then Trump tore the whole thing up in 2018. 
• Iran has continued to show a willingness to negotiate limits on its nuclear enrichment program with the Trump regime—only to have the negotiations interrupted in the summer of 2025 and again in February of this year by surprise attacks by the U.S. and Israel, with the second attack featuring the assassination of dozens of Iranian leaders.
• It is very possible that in the situation where Iran finds itself threatened by nuclear weapons from Israel and the U.S. they do not want to be totally constrained from the possibility of developing a nuclear weapon in the future. From the perspective of the future of humanity this is not good. But for the U.S. to say "how dare they" while trying to carry out regime change and threatening to destroy their entire civilization is thoroughly illegitimate.

Let’s be clear—we are not for ANY country having nuclear weapons. Indeed, we Revcoms have pledged that the new socialist government we are fighting to bring into being will not develop or use nuclear weapons and will take concrete steps and wage determined struggle to abolish nuclear weapons everywhere, with the ultimate goal of finally abolishing wars among human beings…”. 

But again, today, right now, instead of just automatically adopting the mindset of the real nuclear criminals, ask yourself this: who’s the real nuclear danger people should be angered and outraged by?