Ten years ago, the United States and Iran, two bitter adversaries that viewed each other in the worst possible light, shocked the world by announcing a major nuclear agreement after nearly three years of intense negotiations. Dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal was essentially an old-fashioned trade: In exchange for the U.S. and the United Nations Security Council lifting sanctions on the Iranian economy, Tehran would put caps on its nuclear work and allow international inspectors to access its nuclear weapons program. While the deal wasn’t perfect — Washington and Tehran would remain on awful terms across the gambit of foreign policy issues — it at least kicked the nuclear can down the road and provided some semblance of predictability.

Of course, we know the rest of the story. President Donald Trump killed the 2015 nuclear agreement during his first term, calling it entirely one-sided; withdrew the United States from participation; and tightened the screws on Tehran’s economy in an attempt to drive the Iranians into negotiating a better deal. It failed. Tehran responded by building more centrifuges, churning out more uranium of higher quality and getting more aggressive with its proxies in the Middle East. Even so, because the Europeans were still technically on board, there was hope, however faint, that diplomacy could be resurrected.

Yet even this glimmer of hope has been extinguished. On Friday, the U.N. Security Council failed to pass a resolution put forward by Russia and China to extend sanctions relief for another six months to buy more time for talks. Washington, with the support of the United Kingdom, France and Germany, opposed the effort and in so doing allowed the Barack Obama-era Iran sanctions relief scheme to expire. All of the Iranian entities that were permitted to access the Western financial system are once again shut out. Iranian exports and imports will be curtailed again. And the clock has been set back to 2014, before the JCPOA was signed.

This spells bad news for the Iranian economy, which is struggling with a massive currency devaluation, inflation rates in the 40% range and a middle class burdened by high costs and a general sense of malaise. The officials inside Iran who once called for direct talks with Washington, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian chief among them, are now either silent or transforming into the hard-liners they used to rail against. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who calls the shots on all the major issues, ruled out direct engagement with the Trump administration days before the U.N. Security Council voted on Friday. “The U.S. has announced the results of the talks in advance,” Khamenei said. “The result is the closure of nuclear activities and enrichment. This is not a negotiation. It is a diktat, an imposition.”

Back in Washington, Trump must be smiling. The Europeans, who have usually taken the more conciliatory stance on the Iranian nuclear file and traditionally served as genuine good cop to Washington’s bad cop, have relegated themselves to backing up whatever the United States wants to do. Instead of having independent thoughts of their own, the Europeans are submissively enforcing Trump’s whims. Although the United Kingdom, France and Germany tried to keep diplomacy alive in the lead-up to last week’s session at the U.N., Tehran viewed their terms as outlandish: In exchange for a few more months of sanctions relief, Iran would need to provide a report on the status of its enriched uranium stockpile, grant the International Atomic Energy Agency full access to its nuclear facilities and launch more talks with the United States.

The latter demand in particular was a problem given the 12-day war that occurred in June between Iran and Israel. Demanding the Iranians take the high road by reaching out to Trump is a bit like demanding the Cubs go out of their way to congratulate the Milwaukee Brewers on a great regular season. It’s not hard to see why the Iranians might be peeved at such a request; it was only three months ago when the Trump administration dropped over a dozen 30,000-pound bombs on its enrichment plants, which upended the five rounds of direct discussions U.S. and Iranian officials were already having. We have been at a standstill ever since.

Trump and the Europeans haven’t thrown in the towel on diplomacy, and neither have the Iranians. There’s always a chance a negotiating process returns to the fore. That’s the good news.

Unfortunately, the bad news is outweighing the good right now. The Trump administration bet that severely damaging Iran’s nuclear sites would delay Iran’s nuclear work by a few years and compel the Iranian political establishment to reassess its position on the nuclear file. While the June airstrikes arguably achieved the first objective, they failed miserably on the second. Khamenei is no more eager to give away Iran’s nuclear program today than he was earlier in the spring, when U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff first began negotiations with Tehran. In fact, the Iranians are reportedly speeding up the construction of a previously planned enrichment facility, this time deeper underground to withstand more U.S. or Israeli airstrikes. Iran also remains clear that under no circumstances will it agree to sacrifice its enrichment capability in totality. This is obviously the opposite of what the Trump administration is demanding.

Unless one side budges, we could be looking at another armed confrontation in the near future.

Did Trump’s decision to take military action against Iran in the summer really achieve all that much in the end? The answer is no. The stare down between Washington and Tehran continues.

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Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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