Is the "New Iranian Regime" Invoked by Trump Really "Cartesian"?

We are witnessing a new kind of war, one that has pitted the American and Israeli armies against the Islamic Republic of Iran since February 28. To reduce it to its barest outline, we might say that what confronts us is a conflict that blends, in the popular idiom, “the stick and the carrot” in so entangled a fashion that it becomes difficult to read between the lines and discern the share and degree of truth, of manoeuvre, of outright falsehood, or of deliberate concealment on the part of each belligerent.

Monday, March 30, 2026, illustrated this complexity in all its dimensions. President Donald Trump returned to the subject in an interview with the New York Post, noting the presence in Tehran of a “new regime that is proving Cartesian and rational” in its conduct, one that is “more flexible than the leaders who were eliminated” at the outset of the war.

Trump maintained that talks with this “new regime” are proceeding in the right direction, while simultaneously acknowledging that he is “not certain” any agreement can be reached, going so far as to suggest that “in all likelihood, there will be no deal.” Declining to identify the senior Iranian official with whom Washington is in negotiations, he confined himself to noting that he might reveal his identity within “a week.”

The elementary question this raises is twofold: does a genuine “new power” actually exist in Tehran, and if so, is it truly “more Cartesian and rational” than its predecessor, as President Trump has repeatedly claimed?

If this new Iranian interlocutor, assuming he exists, is as Cartesian as the American president contends, what evidence do Washington’s leaders have that his posture really reflects a new mode of thinking in Tehran?

Past experience has shown that the mullahs’ regime, from whose ranks this mysterious “new interlocutor” necessarily emerges, has become a consummate practitioner of taqiyya, the concealment of the real thinking of the person or party in question, while waiting for the storm to subside and the geostrategic circumstances to shift in a more favourable direction, in this precise case toward the Islamic Republic.

Given this well-established fact, can one genuinely place trust in a personality or a faction drawn from the ranks of a regime that spent 47 years constructing its power on a theocratic, totalitarian, and obscurantist ideology, profoundly anti-Western in its orientation, on terrorism, bloody repression, and above all taqiyya?

President Trump underscored on Monday, in one of his statements, his determination to exact retribution for every act of aggression perpetrated by the mullahs’ regime over 47 years against the American military, notably in Beirut in 1983, and against American nationals in Lebanon as well.

Can one simply wipe the slate clean on nearly half a century of belligerence, by taking the same actors and naively starting over?

The Iranian position

All these questions, or rather these unknowns, press with even greater urgency given that they are confirmed by the public stances displayed by official Iranian sources (which do not necessarily reflect reality, taqiyya being what it is).

Those sources again denied on Monday that any talks are underway with the Trump administration, stating only, as they have done in preceding days, that what exists is an “exchange of messages” through intermediaries, presumably Pakistani.

In any event, the same sources reaffirm that the 15-point plan proposed by the United States is unacceptable to the Islamic Republic. Trump denied this on Monday, in his New York Post interview, asserting that the “new power” has accepted “most of the 15 points.”

The military data

Faced with the shadows enveloping the positions of each side, and while waiting for the situation to clarify, observers have nothing left, in this Holy Week, but to adopt the stance once taken by Saint Thomas, grounding themselves in real and tangible facts.

The American administration thus displays the will to engage in direct talks toward a comprehensive agreement ending the current conflict, while simultaneously routing significant reinforcements into the region, among them the aircraft carrier George Bush, as well as detachments of thousands of Marines, paratroopers, and elite units.

There is persistent talk in this context of targeted commando operations on land and of a landing on Kharg Island that would allow the United States to control Iranian oil production and exports, a strategic factor of the highest order that could well rank among Washington’s objectives.

Moreover, even as constructive talks with the “new Iranian interlocutors” are said to be ongoing, American and Israeli air strikes against the full range of Iranian military, industrial, and strategic installations have continued at an intensive pace around Tehran and Isfahan, extending on Monday, for the second time, to the Caspian Sea zone in Iran’s far north, in proximity to the Russian border.

On the Lebanese front, Monday morning was marked by several strikes against the southern suburbs of Beirut, where a senior Hezbollah military commander was killed, while in South Lebanon the Israeli army pressed its systematic encroachment on further stretches of Lebanese territory, reaching, according to Lebanese sources, the Litani River, with advances penetrating 14 kilometres from the border between the two countries.

These military developments unfolded as a summit was convening in Saudi Arabia, bringing together Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and King Abdullah of Jordan.