Yes, the US Has Pursued Diplomacy and Military Action Against Iran at the Same Time — Here's the Record

The claim is true. Historical records show repeated instances where the United States engaged in diplomatic outreach toward Iran while simultaneously conducting or maintaining military and covert operations against Iranian targets or allies. This is not a fringe allegation — it is documented across multiple administrations and confirmed by mainstream reporting and policy research.

The most striking overlap involves the Iran nuclear deal. According to the Brookings Institution, while the Obama administration was negotiating the JCPOA between 2013 and 2015, the US and Israel were jointly running Stuxnet — a cyberweapon that physically destroyed Iranian centrifuges. The Arms Control Association further documents that after the US withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, the Trump administration claimed openness to a better deal while authorizing strikes on Iranian-backed forces and waging what analysts called economic warfare through sanctions.

The pattern continued. The Guardian reported that the January 2020 drone strike killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani happened while back-channel diplomatic contacts between the US and Iran were reportedly active through intermediaries including Oman. In 2024, the BBC documented that the Biden administration struck Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen and militia groups in Iraq and Syria, even while publicly messaging that it wanted to avoid a wider war.

The New York Times has also confirmed that during multiple rounds of nuclear negotiations, the US military maintained and updated detailed contingency plans for strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — sometimes sharing those plans with allies. Diplomacy and military planning were never mutually exclusive.

It is worth being precise about what this does and does not mean. The evidence shows a consistent dual-track strategy — using diplomacy and military pressure together — rather than proof that every diplomatic gesture was a deliberate deception. Some incidents reflect genuine policy tension inside administrations. Others look more calculated. The Council on Foreign Relations timeline shows this pattern stretches back to the 1980s Tanker War, when diplomatic channels were nominally open during active naval confrontations.

This claim spreads because it fits a pattern people can actually verify. Once someone reads about Stuxnet or Soleimani, the broader suspicion feels confirmed. Watch for versions of this claim that overreach — jumping from 'diplomacy and military action overlapped' to 'all US diplomacy is fake.' The record supports the first. The second is a conclusion the evidence alone cannot carry.