Why Is a ‘Very Close’ Iran-US Deal Taking So Long?

A man walks past Iran's national flag at the Vanak Square in Tehran on June 10, 2026. (AFP)

16:29-12 June 2026 AD ـ 27 Thul-Hijjah 1447 AH

A man walks past Iran's national flag at the Vanak Square in Tehran on June 10, 2026. (AFP)

President Donald Trump has repeatedly declared Iran and the US are on the verge of agreeing a deal to end the Middle East war, but a litany of sticking points have delayed finalizing an accord and will complicate its implementation, analysts say.

Trump has been widely mocked in US and Iran for frequently insisting an end to the conflict was imminent even as negotiations dragged on for weeks, with US network CNN saying he had used phrases like "very close to a deal" or in the "final throes" of talks on 39 occasions.

In what has become a familiar pattern, Trump on Thursday withdrew a threat of renewed strikes on Iran and said a deal could be signed in the coming days, only for Iran's foreign ministry to respond by saying it "has not reached a final conclusion on the agreement".

Arash Azizi, lecturer at Yale University, told AFP that one reason the deal has taken so long is that the Iranian side believed "they could hold out to get better terms" after not capitulating during the conflict.

Trump, meanwhile, "could hardly stomach" releasing Iran's frozen assets -- a key demand of Tehran -- and also risked facing accusations the accord would be more favorable to Iran than the 2015 nuclear deal he pulled out of during his first term, he added.

Trump "had to accept that his initial gambit of causing an Iranian capitulation by sheer military force didn't work and he had to settle for something much less", said Azizi.

Both Iran and the United States would appear to have vested interests in ending a conflict that saw five weeks of all-out war, paused by an uneasy ceasefire on April 8.

The US-Israeli war has become increasingly unpopular in the US, even among the president's core supporters, with Trump mindful of the looming US midterm elections.

A deal could also see Tehran win the security guarantees and recognition it has long craved from the US and ensure the personal safety of its own leadership, after former supreme leader Ali Khamenei and several top officials were killed in the first phase of the war.

But any negotiation -- in this case mediated by Pakistan as well as Qatar -- between two foes who have been sworn enemies since shortly after the 1979 revolution was never going to be easy.

- 'Frozen war' with 'flare-ups' -

Iran's new leadership structure after the killing of Ali Khamenei has likely proved problematic, with the extent of the power wielded by his successor and son Mojtaba Khamenei still unclear. He is said by Iranian officials to have been wounded and has yet to appear in public.

Trump's own pronouncements have also changed with startling rapidity, most notably on Thursday when he threatened to hit Iran "very hard" before predicting that a "great settlement" was near.

Trump, in a Truth Social post Friday, appeared to again be losing patience, describing the Iranian side as "very dishonorable people to deal with".

"Trump has neither a clear strategic objective nor a credible exit strategy for extricating the United States from the war with Iran," said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute (AGSI).

He said a key obstacle was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has opposed any Iran-US deal and on Friday again vowed "Iran will not have nuclear weapons".

The Iranian authorities, meanwhile, have "sensed Trump's reluctance to enter the midterm election season burdened by an unpopular war", and seek above all an enduring peace without US aggression, said Alfoneh.

"The conflict has already taken on the characteristics of a frozen war, punctuated by periodic flare-ups," he added.

- 'Tremendous leverage' -

Iran has always insisted that any deal include Lebanon, where Israel has been attacking the Tehran-backed group Hezbollah, which has been further weakened but not eradicated.

A White House official said on Friday that Iran had agreed to dismantle its nuclear program, which the West fears is aimed at making a nuclear weapon -- a commitment that has yet to be confirmed by Tehran.

Critical will be the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz shipping bottleneck, which Iran blockaded at the start of the war in a move that caused global energy prices to surge.

Iran "will not forget the tremendous leverage it gained by closing it," Thomas Juneau, professor at the University of Ottawa, wrote in a study for London-based think tank Chatham House.

"It will not hesitate to consider closing the Strait again if it perceives it to be necessary."

Xi-Trump-Putin Summit Evokes 1945 Yalta Carve-up

Signage for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) China 2026 summit is seen in Shenzhen, southern China's Guangdong province on November 3, 2026. Hector RETAMAL / AFP/File

Asharq Al Awsat

06:10-12 November 2026 AD ـ 02 Jumada Al-Alkhirah 1448 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

06:10-12 November 2026 AD ـ 02 Jumada Al-Alkhirah 1448 AH

Xi-Trump-Putin Summit Evokes 1945 Yalta Carve-up

Signage for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) China 2026 summit is seen in Shenzhen, southern China's Guangdong province on November 3, 2026. Hector RETAMAL / AFP/File

A possible China-US-Russia summit has prompted alarm of a modern-day Yalta Conference, with three powerful men carving up the world -- with little regard for Ukraine, Europe and Taiwan or anyone else.

But apart from an historic photo opportunity, the meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the November 18-19 APEC summit in Shenzhen will likely achieve little, analysts say.

- Spheres of influence -

When then US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Britain's Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met in Yalta in February 1945, they laid out the post-WWII settlement and new territorial boundaries in Europe.

That meeting in Yalta, then in the Soviet Union and now in a part of Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014, laid out the foundations for the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the Cold War, AFP said.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has raised alarm that Shenzhen could be a Yalta-like "redistribution of spheres of influence" for the 21st century.

At talks in Abu Dhabi this week -- the first since February -- Russian negotiators rattled Ukraine and its European supporters by pushing a review of the continent's security architecture as part of any peace deal, with the US also floating a new framework.

Russia's delegation chief in Abu Dhabi, Vladimir Medinsky, fanned such fears by questioning the inclusion of Europe in further talks.

The trilateral rankles because it signals "the idea that a few great powers can decide the security and future of other countries over their heads", according to Tsiporah Fried at the Hudson Institute.

The format alone "would already send a message about who counts, and whose interests can be negotiated by others", she told AFP.

- Divergent interests -

Beyond the symbolism, however, divergent interests make the creation of a new world order in Shenzhen unlikely.

Even the agenda reportedly remains contentious: Russia has suggested the meeting focus on Ukraine, Trump has pushed for talks on nuclear weapons and the Iran war, and China has remained tight-lipped on both.

"The three parties have vastly different demands, making the management of expectations difficult. There is a high probability that talks could end without a breakthrough," according to Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing.

There are also few issues where input from all three leaders could bring progress.

The main points of contention between Beijing and Washington are trade and the AI technology race, for instance.

Beijing -- which presents itself as a champion of multilateralism -- has repeatedly said that Europe should be part of peace negotiations over Ukraine.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that in a recent meeting, Xi showed "irritation" when the idea of the trilateral talks covering Ukraine came up.

"He explicitly pointed out that this is a European conflict, in which the Europeans must also be at the table," Steinmeier told ARD.

On nuclear disarmament, China has long insisted that the US and Russia reduce their own giant nuclear arsenals before it agrees to talks on its own stockpile.

The summit therefore is more likely to produce minor outcomes such as crisis hotlines or some cooperation on counter-terrorism, public health, or climate change, Wang told AFP.

"There is no single enemy to unite all three great powers the way that the fight against Nazi Germany united Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin," said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at Australian National University.

"It follows that piecemeal horse-trading is in; a grand bargain is out."

However, Taiwan -- which China claims -- will still be watching the meeting closely, Sung said.

"If the Trump administration is open to abandoning one partner (Ukraine) out of convenience, then it can abandon another," he said.

- A post-Shenzhen world -

The Trump administration has sought to reassert US dominance over the "Western hemisphere" -- including by capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January -- but splitting the world among great powers like it's 1945 may not guarantee security.

China has opposed the logic of Yalta -- the clandestine division of spheres of influence and major powers determining the fate of other nations -- "from the very beginning", according to Renmin University's Wang.

China could allay fears of a second Yalta by using the summit to "emphasize the defense of sovereignty and support for multilateral organizations", Wang said.

If Beijing uses the meeting to insist on European inclusion in talks regarding the continent's security, it "could, in fact, open a new window for communication between China and Europe", he said.

"The original Yalta opened the path to the Korean War and Indochina Wars in addition to various conflicts and insurgencies across Asia, Africa, and Latin America," said Chong Ja Ian at the National University of Singapore.

Any Yalta 2.0 agreement "will almost certainly run into the same kinds of issues", Chong said.

Features

Alice Huang, Who Reportedly Had an Affair with Nvidia CEO, Is a Chinese Banker Turned Tech Exec

This screengrab from video footage by CTI obtained via AFPTV on November 9, 2026 shows Alice Huang (2nd R in pink), a Chinese executive linked to the data center company called Megaspeed, attending a dinner hosted by Nvidia's chief executive and co-founder Jensen Huang (2nd L in black back facing camera) at a restaurant in Taipei on May 22, 2025, during Computex, the island's top tech expo. (AFP photo / CTI via AFPTV)

17:16-11 November 2026 AD ـ 01 Jumada Al-Alkhirah 1448 AH

Alice Huang, Who Reportedly Had an Affair with Nvidia CEO, Is a Chinese Banker Turned Tech Exec

She was building a career in Chinese finance before turning to tech with a leadership role at a data center company in Singapore. He is the high-profile CEO of Nvidia, the California-based company that makes computer chips relied upon by advanced artificial intelligence systems.

An affair between Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Alice Huang, who reportedly was suspected of working as a spy for Beijing, has rocked the tech and political worlds.

The Chinese businesswoman, also known as Huang Le, had a close relationship with Jensen Huang, according to reports over the past month by the New York Times. The newspaper also reported that top policymakers were informed in a memo that intelligence indicated she was a spy for China’s Ministry of State Security, recruited to influence Nvidia to make its most advanced chips more available in China.

In one widely shared photograph of the pair, Jensen Huang and people surrounding him are holding drinks in Taipei, while Alice Huang sits behind him, apparently watching him in conversation. The picture was posted in 2024 by software company NetThunder to its LinkedIn page.

It remains unclear how long the affair lasted, and when exactly the relationship might have ended. The Associated Press was unable to reach Alice Huang for comment.

Who is Alice Huang?

Publicly available information about Alice Huang is scant.

She was a Chinese finance executive before becoming involved in artificial intelligence, data centers and computer chips.

In 2023, she became a director at Singapore-based Megaspeed, which describes itself as an “NVIDIA cloud partner.” Last year, Megaspeed faced scrutiny from the US over its alleged skirting of US export restrictions and routing of a large amount of advanced Nvidia chips for Chinese users.

Megaspeed was incorporated in 2015 in Singapore with the name 7Road International, after being spun off as the overseas arm of a Chinese video game developer, according to corporate registration records.

Filings show that in March 2023, it renamed itself Megaspeed International, with all of the shares transferred to Huang Le Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.

That same month, Alice Huang became Megaspeed’s controlling shareholder, according to research by the C4ADS, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on global security.

But by November 2023, she was no longer listed as a director at Megaspeed, and all her shares were transferred to a Singaporean businessman, Tan Yong Pong, who also is known as James Tan.

While public records suggest Alice Huang left Megaspeed, short seller Culper Research issued a report in May this year that cited a Megaspeed employee saying Huang was “actually still our boss” and was still involved in the company’s daily operations.

Before Megaspeed, Alice Huang previously held senior positions at the Chinese firm Shanghai Hexi Investment Co. from around 2015 to 2017, according to social media posts and records from Simuwang, a Chinese private equity database.

Her roles at Hexi included deputy general manager, executive director and member of the investment committee, according to Hexi's social media posts, among possible other roles.

Hexi's founder Kang Wei, who appeared on some records alongside Alice Huang, was fined in 2018 by China's securities regulator 400,000 yuan ($60,000) over financial misconduct behaviors while Hexi was fined 17.7 million yuan ($2.7 million).

Before that, Alice Huang worked at HSBC’s Hong Kong private banking arm and at CITIC Securities, a Chinese investment bank.

HSBC and CITIC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on her employment history.

Taiwan’s Interior Minister Liu Shyh-fang told lawmakers and reporters this week when asked about Megaspeed and Alice Huang that authorities, including national security officials, are “actively” looking into the matter. She would be blocked from setting foot in Taiwan again, Liu said.

Beijing has rebutted claims that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy. Its Foreign Ministry said this week that the “Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated. It is nothing but smears against China.”

Why Megaspeed is at the center of the controversy

With the emergence of the latest scandal, Singapore-based AI computing company Megaspeed, where Alice Huang was a senior executive, is once again under the spotlight.

Megaspeed, an Nvidia customer, was originally incorporated in 2015 before changing its name to Megaspeed International in 2023. Nvidia lists Megaspeed as a partner on its website, while Megaspeed says on its website it's “a core business partner of NVIDIA’s computing power cloud business in the Asia-Pacific region.”

It was the overseas gaming arm of Shenzhen-based developer 7Road Holdings Ltd.

Late last year, Megaspeed denied accusations following reports that it was routing Nvidia chips to China, saying in a statement on its website that “there has been no evidence of any violations concerning the illicit transfer of chips or any illegal activities.”

Singapore’s government said in late October, after fresh reports that Alice Huang was accused of being a Chinese intelligence source, that authorities were investigating Megaspeed and that Singapore “does not condone businesses” circumventing or violating other countries’ export controls. However, it said, there were no investigations conducted in respect to Alice Huang.

Megaspeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Features

How Israel’s New Parliament Can Make Netanyahu’s Life Difficult

A combination picture shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he attends a memorial service held for Ran Gvili, an off-duty police officer who was killed fighting militants that had infiltrated Israel during the deadly October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, and the last hostage recovered from Gaza, in Meitar, Israel, January 28, 2026, and Israeli opposition leader and former military chief, Gadi Eisenkot, as he launches an election campaign for Yashar, his new political party, at an event near Hod Hasharon, Israel, June 30, 2026. (Reuters)

09:07-10 November 2026 AD ـ 30 Jumada Al-Ula 1448 AH

How Israel’s New Parliament Can Make Netanyahu’s Life Difficult

Benjamin Netanyahu remains Israel's prime minister when the new parliament takes office Tuesday but its new, less friendly composition could make his life much more difficult.

Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief seeking to move Israel to the center, was given the mandate Sunday by President Isaac Herzog to form a new government, a complicated task as neither he nor Netanyahu command a majority.

Until then Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, remains caretaker prime minister -- but the new 120-member parliament can still go to battle against him.

The lack of a new government "does not infringe upon the Knesset's prerogatives", said Assaf Shapira, a political expert at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Eisenkot has also warned military chiefs that Netanyahu does not have a mandate to resume war against Iran -- although the statement was more about politics than the law, with Netanyahu still in charge of national security.

Netanyahu's bloc slipped to 53 seats in the new parliament, down from the decisive 68 it commanded previously.

Eisenkot's core opposition bloc has fewer seats than Netanyahu at 48 but the new parliament also has a record 19 lawmakers from Arab-majority parties that are vehemently opposed to Netanyahu and his hard-right government -- although it remains unclear if Eisenkot will seek to work with Israeli-Arabs directly.

Here are ways in which the new parliament could turn on Netanyahu:

- Commission on October 7 attacks -

One of the opposition's main campaign promises has been to set up a commission of inquiry to probe failures in the famously high-security country that allowed Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack, the deadliest ever day for Israel.

While Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing on his part, his government has consistently opposed the creation of a national, independent commission of inquiry that would have broad investigative authority, with Netanyahu instead supporting a review by political appointees.

Even before a new government is formed, the incoming parliament could set up a special committee on the attack which would hand over its findings to an eventual commission of inquiry, Shapira said.

Eisenkot declared after the election that forming a commission would be an immediate priority.

- Repealing Netanyahu-era laws -

The new parliament could also move quickly to repeal some of the most controversial laws under Netanyahu, including his efforts to revamp the judiciary -- seen by the prime minister as an enemy after he was charged with corruption.

The judicial revamp triggered some of Israel's largest ever protests, with liberals worried about the future of democracy, although the Hamas attack and subsequent wars quickly shifted public attention.

The new parliament could aim to repeal the last coalition's laws that limited the powers of the Supreme Court and made it easier to remove the country's attorney general.

Lawmakers could also roll back exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews from serving in the military. The exemption has angered many Israelis at a time that the military is stretched thin, although the laws did not go far enough for ultra-Orthodox parties, who are being wooed by at least one opposition figure.

Shapira said repealing Netanyahu-era laws was as simple as calling a vote and reverting to previous policies. But the process to pass new laws could take weeks as the opposition coordinates its priorities.

- Electing new speaker -

The first political clash will concern electing a new parliament speaker. The incumbent is Amir Ohana, a Netanyahu loyalist from his Likud Party.

According to parliamentary rules, the vote for speaker can take place as early as during the inaugural session and must happen before a new government is sworn in.

An initial clash took place Thursday when three parties in the Eisenkot bloc sent letters to the outgoing speaker requesting that his successor be elected at the opening session -- a timing that Shapira agreed was more common.

Ohana responded that it was customary to elect the speaker on the day a new government is sworn in.

Naftali Bennett, a key opposition figure, vowed to act "urgently" on the bloc's priorities.

"We will take control of the Knesset as quickly as possible."

Why Is a ‘Very Close’ Iran-US Deal Taking So Long?

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