The Geopolitical Deja Vu of Mediation Offers
FIRST INSTANCE: The First Gulf War and Iranian Overtures (1990-1991) In the lead-up to and during the First Gulf War, Iran, under President Rafsanjani, made various overtures, including offering to meditate between Iraq and the US, and later proposed a regional security dialogue. These early attempts to position Iran as a regional stabilizer and potential interlocutor with the West were largely
rebuffed by the US, which maintained its policy of isolating Tehran. The context was the US-led coalition's focus on expelling Iraq from Kuwait, with little appetite for engaging Iran in broader regional architecture at that time ( The Iran-Iraq War and the Persian Gulf , Georgetown University, 1990). REPETITIONS: Turkey's JCPOA-era Diplomacy (2010), Oman's Secret Talks (2012-2013), and JCPOA
Breakdown (2018) Fast forward to 2010, Turkey and Brazil attempted to broker a nuclear fuel swap deal with Iran, essentially an alternative to the P5+1 process, which ultimately failed to gain traction with the US and other world powers and was seen as undermining international sanctions efforts ( New York Times , 2010). Then, from 2012 to 2013, Oman secretly facilitated direct talks between US
and Iranian officials, laying the groundwork for the eventually successful Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed in 2015. However, following the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018 under the Trump administration, despite European calls for de-escalation, direct high-level talks ceased, demonstrating the fragility of such agreements without sustained political will ( International