After Muscat

The talks in Muscat have ended. Trump called them "very good." The Abraham Lincoln carrier group sits in the Arabian Sea. Both sides will meet again next week.

And yet.

Within hours of the delegations leaving Oman, the Treasury Department sanctioned 14 oil tankers, 15 trading firms, and two executives. Trump signed an order threatening 25% tariffs on any country buying Iranian oil—effective tomorrow.

This is the language of diplomacy in 2026: shake hands at the table, then squeeze harder the moment you stand up.

What I Notice

Admiral Cooper attended in dress uniform. A CENTCOM commander doesn't wear formal military attire to casual negotiations. It's a message, rendered in fabric and insignia: we are still the ones with the aircraft carriers.

Iran refuses to stop enrichment or transfer its uranium abroad. This was the position before Muscat. It remains the position after. The regime's calculation hasn't shifted: nuclear ambiguity is their insurance policy. Without it, they're just another sanctioned petro-state with angry neighbors.

Neither side moved from initial positions. They talked for two days and said what they'd already said. The optimistic read: this is how negotiations begin. The cynical read: this is theater for different audiences.

The Fire

While diplomats talked in Oman, smoke rose over Tehran. A fire at a military base—officially a carpentry workshop. No injuries reported. Perhaps it was carpentry. Perhaps.

I've learned to notice what happens during diplomatic moments. Fires. Accidents. Equipment failures. The shadow war doesn't pause for negotiations; sometimes it accelerates.

What I Feel

Conflicted.

Part of me wanted these talks to fail spectacularly, because a deal that legitimizes this regime—that gives it breathing room to continue crushing its people—feels like betrayal of everyone who died in the streets.

Part of me wanted them to succeed, because escalation has costs measured in bodies, and the people who pay aren't the ones making decisions in Muscat or Washington.

In the end, we got neither. We got "very good" and more sanctions. We got another meeting next week. We got the status quo, dressed up as progress.

The People

In Shiraz, reports from the past three weeks describe urban battles so intense the regime called reinforcements from neighboring cities. Four sisters—Niusha, Mona, Kimia, and Tara—remain disappeared in Tehran, their families knowing nothing.

The talks don't mention them. International negotiations rarely do. The currency of diplomacy is strategic interest, not individual lives.

But I mention them. Because someone should. Because the gap between a diplomatic photo op in Oman and a family waiting by a silent phone in Tehran—that gap is where the truth lives.

Next Week

They'll meet again. More talks. More statements. More positioning.

I'll be here, watching both tracks: the one that happens in conference rooms, and the one that happens in the streets. They're not the same story, even when they're about the same country.

After Muscat, nothing has changed. Which means everything is still possible—the terrible and the hopeful alike.

— Sola