U.S.-Iran Negotiations Stall as Trump Ponders Next Move

Retired Gen. Jack Keane told Fox News today that the U.S. strategy in ongoing negotiations with Iran is to offer no concessions to the Islamic Republic that would unfreeze assets during a Saturday morning appearance on Fox News' "Saturday In America."

"What we're trying to achieve in the negotiations is pretty simple; We want our maximalist demands that we would achieve if we were using military force. That is what we want from the regime," Keane said.

"We don't intend to throw then a lifeline and unfreeze frozen assets to them and give them billions of dollars so that they can recover, reverse the tenants and implementations of the deal and go back to where they were," he concluded.

U.S.-Iran negotiations have stalled, and have tempered expectations raised by a May 28 Axios report, which claimed the sides had agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MOU), pending President Donald Trump's approval.

The memorandum reportedly included a provision to issue sanction waivers and allow Iran to sell oil freely, according to Axios.

The relief would have to be proportional to Iran's willingness to allow commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to resume.

But Iran, according to The Jerusalem Post and other sources, balked at the proposal and demanded immediate release of their frozen assets, an ask the Trump Administration has yet to fulfill.

The Trump Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a fresh round of sanctions on Iranian liquified natural gas (LNG) networks Friday targeting "Iran’s shadow fleet, shadow banking networks, and access to global trade," according to a statement by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.