Iran’s leadership is betting it can outlast an under-pressure Donald Trump in its peace negotiations with Washington, but its defiance risks renewed military confrontation, analysts say. With a shaky ceasefire holding, almost two-and-a-half months after the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic began, the US president has angrily dismissed Iran’s responses to an American proposal for a settlement, warning the truce is on its last legs. But analysts say that even after the assassination of long-time supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war, Iran’s leadership remains fiercely ideological and dedicated to the preservation of the Islamic republic set up in the 1979 revolution that ousted the shah. The Iran flag flutters from a tall flagpole over high-rise buildings in northern Tehran on May 12, 2026. — AFP “They do think they can outlast Trump. The war is existential for them,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the Chatham House think tank in Lon...