When Washington bombs during talks, the world order pays the price

At a time when diplomacy remained on the table, Washington chose to set it on fire.

While the United States and Iran were still engaged in nuclear negotiations, Washington, together with Israel, launched joint military strikes against Iranian military and political figures and infrastructure, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior officials.

The next day, the US administration declared that Iran’s new political leadership had agreed to the talks. “They should have done it sooner,” we read. “They should have provided what was very practical and easy to do first. They waited too long.”

The logic is as crude as it is disturbing: accept US conditions or face annihilation.

If Iran was already engaged in negotiations with Washington, what justified the rush to bombs over patience? This episode bears the unmistakable mark of Washington’s long-standing “maximum pressure” strategy – a tactic that replaces consensus-building with coercion, using force not as a last resort, but as the primary tool of leverage.

According to this approach, the negotiations do not represent a real attempt to bridge differences; they are ultimatums for war wrapped in diplomatic language.

The decision to strike while talks were underway sends a disturbing precedent: diplomacy is not a forum for equal sovereigns, but a tool subject to the whims of the ruling power.

Such a mentality strikes at the heart of the international order. The post-World War II system was built on the premise that disputes should be resolved through dialogue, not force. When a great power normalizes the use of force during ongoing negotiations, this undermines trust, not only between the parties involved, but within the global system as a whole. If compliance is ensured by airstrikes rather than consensus, negotiation becomes not a path to peace, but a trap for the weak.

The implications of this precedent are profound. If force is seen as a valid extension of leverage, then diplomacy itself becomes hostage to power. The post-war system that Washington claims to defend will not survive if its principles are applied only when convenient.

For the international community, the deepest wound is not just the blood shed or the fires lit, but the corrosion of norms. Once compliance is enforced rather than negotiated, diplomacy ceases to exist, leaving only domination in its place.

If Washington persists in confusing peace with acquiescence and diplomacy with coercion, it will face disaster: further inflaming the Middle East while simultaneously dismantling the global architecture it once defended. Xinhua