Trump’s Iran threats are now colliding with real-world red lines, a live military build-up, and a negotiation track detonating into war. Right, so Donald Trump has sent big, very loud signals at Iran while keeping the talks going, and those two things do not sit together unless the threat is the whole point. The second round of indirect talks in Geneva has ended, Iran’s side has described it as more serious than the first round, and they are talking about “guiding principles” and drafting. At the same time, Trump has been pushing more military weight into the region, and Israel’s own leadership has been told to prepare for a war scenario. Ali Khamenei has gone on record with the bluntest version of what Iran is saying back: you bring carriers, we have weapons that can sink them. He has framed it as a warning, not a plea, and he has framed American “strongest army” boasting as exactly the sort of arrogance that produces a surprise you cannot walk off, that even the strongest armies can get hurt. Once the other side answers your threat with a specific consequence, it stops being performance and starts being a bill you might have to pay. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, has described the Geneva talks as more constructive than the earlier round and said there’s a general understanding on guiding principles, but he has also been careful to say it’s early days and the hard part is still to come when it comes to putting anything into text. The real fight isn’t the atmosphere in the room, it’s what Iran would actually accept on uranium enrichment, what the United States would actually trade on sanctions relief, and whether Washington is trying to drag missiles and regional alliances into a nuclear negotiation until “deal” really means surrender. Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy leading the US delegation, is doing it in a format that shows how little trust exists, because the talks are still indirect and mediated by Oman. Nobody is sat there smiling across a table. Notes are being carried back and forth like both sides are building a paper trail as much as they are building an agreement.