The United States has positioned twelve F-15 attack planes at Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, flown over 250 cargo missions into the region, and begun repositioning Air Force assets from the United Kingdom closer to the Middle East — all while American and Iranian negotiators sat across from each other, indirectly, in Geneva on Tuesday.

The message is not subtle. And it's not supposed to be.

President Trump has spent weeks making clear that diplomacy with Iran will proceed under the shadow of American firepower, not despite it. The military buildup — spanning Jordan, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia — represents the kind of pressure campaign that gives negotiations actual teeth.

According to CNN, dozens of military cargo planes have transported equipment into the region in recent weeks; fighter jets received diplomatic clearance to enter Jordanian airspace on Friday evening; and several US units scheduled to rotate home have had their deployments extended.

This is what leverage looks like.

Geneva: A framework, not a finish line

Tuesday's talks in Geneva were indirect, mediated by Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner representing the American side. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed afterward that the session produced something, but not everything.

"We have reached understandings on the guiding principles, but the drafting and writing phase of the agreement will be more difficult."

Araghchi also offered a slightly more optimistic read on the state of play:

"Right now we have a much clearer picture of what work needs to happen and what work needs to continue of course both sides still have work to do to get closer together but at least now we have a framework and a clearer path to go on."

No timeline has been set for exchanging drafts or for future negotiations. The two sides are, by Araghchi's own admission, still far apart. But a framework exists where one didn't before, and both parties plan to exchange written proposals.

That's progress measured against a baseline of near-zero.

The iron behind the velvet

What makes this round of engagement different from the Obama-era approach — where Washington negotiated from a posture of restraint and ended up with the catastrophic JCPOA — is the simultaneous application of military pressure. The Trump administration isn't asking Iran to come to the table out of goodwill. It's making the alternative to diplomacy unmistakably clear.

Consider what's been deployed:

• Twelve F-15 attack planes have been stationed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan since January 25
• Over 250 US cargo flights into the region
• Dozens of military cargo planes are delivering equipment to Jordan, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia
• Air Force refueling tankers and fighter jets repositioned from the United Kingdom toward the Middle East
• Additional air defense systems are flowing into the region
• Extended deployments for US units that were set to rotate out

That's not posturing. That's preparation. And Tehran knows the difference.

Trump said Friday that he believes regime change "would be the best thing that could happen" in Iran. Last month, he warned Iranian leaders he was prepared to order an attack if the government did not stop. The rhetoric has been escalatory by design — because the entire diplomatic strategy depends on Iran believing the threat is real.

Tehran's counter-signal

Iran, for its part, isn't sitting quietly. On Tuesday — the same day as the Geneva talks — Tehran announced naval drills that would include closing parts of the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Republic News Agency said the exercises would simulate "real maritime threats," while Fars News Agency clarified the closure would be "for a few hours" in order to "observe safety and navigation protocols" in the strait.

A few hours. Safety protocols. One of the world's most critical oil chokepoints, shut down as a flex disguised as a drill.

This is how Iran negotiates — it matches American pressure with asymmetric provocation. It can't compete with US military capability in any conventional sense, so it reminds the world that it can make global energy markets very uncomfortable. The Strait of Hormuz is the card Tehran always plays when it wants to remind everyone it has cards at all.

The difference now is that the American hand is considerably stronger than it's been in years, and the administration isn't pretending otherwise.

Diplomacy that doesn't apologize for strength

For decades, a certain strain of foreign policy thinking — dominant in the Obama years, resurgent under Biden — held that military pressure undermined diplomatic progress. That showing of force was "provocative." That the path to a deal ran through concession, through unfreezing assets, through looking the other way while Iran enriched uranium and funded proxies across the region.

The result was a nuclear agreement that handed Tehran billions, imposed timelines that expired, and left the regime's missile program and regional aggression untouched. Iran got richer. The Middle East got more dangerous. And American credibility eroded.

The current approach inverts that logic entirely. Every cargo flight, every F-15 on the tarmac in Jordan, every extended deployment tells Tehran: a deal is available, but so is the alternative. That's not warmongering. It's the oldest principle in statecraft — peace through strength.

Whether Iran ultimately agrees to terms that serve American interests remains to be seen. Araghchi's language about "guiding principles" and "a clearer path" is diplomatic boilerplate — it means something happened, but nothing was decided. The hard part is that actual drafts, actual concessions, and actual verification mechanisms haven't started.

But the negotiating environment has changed. Iran isn't dealing with an administration that treats its own military power as something to apologize for. It's dealing with one that deployed twelve fighter jets to a Jordanian air base and let the satellite images speak for themselves.

Sometimes the clearest message isn't said at a table in Geneva. It's parked on a runway in Jordan.