The Art of the Ceasefire
The obstacles to a lasting political deal between the U.S. and Iran were apparent from the very start of the ceasefire that was announced in early April. Tehran refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz until Israel reached its own ceasefire with Lebanon. And if the critical waterway were opened, Iran said, it would remain under Iranian control. After negotiations between the two countries broke down, the U.S. imposed a naval blockade of Iranian ports in an effort to pressure the theocracy to open the strait. In response, the regime vowed never to “surrender under threats”; Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, declared both sides were “inches away” from an agreement but also said that Tehran had encountered “maximalism” and “shifting goalposts” in its dealings with the U.S. Since then, the strait has endured a deadlock during which rival blockades have deepened a worldwide economic crisis, disrupted global supply chains, and spiked oil prices to as high as a hundred and twenty-six dollars a barrel. Each side has blamed the other for ceasefire violations. And yet the ceasefire has mostly held.
At the beginning of last week, tensions escalated further. The Trump Administration launched Project Freedom, a U.S. military operation to guide commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, through which flows a fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas. Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones at the United Arab Emirates, an ally of the United States and Israel, including at its energy infrastructure. The regime also targeted U.S. warships; the U.S. military said it destroyed six Iranian fast boats in response to attacks and intercepted Iranian cruise missiles and drones. Throughout the ceasefire’s first twenty-eight days, Iran fired at commercial vessels nine times, seized two container ships, and launched strikes or directly fired at U.S. forces and assets more than ten times, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a recent press conference. But, yet again, the ceasefire held. Caine described the Iranian aggression as “low harassing fire right now” that was “all below the threshold of restarting major combat operations at this point.” And the U.S. Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, standing next to Caine, declared that “the ceasefire is not over” despite Iran attacking U.S. personnel and the U.A.E.
Many observers expressed surprise that a full-scale war had not reignited. But Gopi Krishna Bhamidipati, a senior fellow at the Washington-based New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and an expert on international conflict resolution, framed this non-ceasefire ceasefire as part of a larger pattern. The Trump Administration “prioritizes tactical pauses over a structural change,” he told me after listening to Hegseth and Caine’s press conference. “We are using economic leverage and military signalling to stop wars. But what we are not doing is conflict transformation. We are suppressing the symptoms while the disease continues. We are sort of putting a Band-Aid on these conflicts.”
Historically, negotiating a ceasefire to end an international conflict of this magnitude would have involved months, even years, of talks led by skilled negotiators with large teams of experts, the help of credible mediators such as the United Nations, and armies of diplomats shuttling between the different sides to build trust. Peace proposals are usually negotiated behind closed doors; threats are seldom made publicly. With the Trump Administration, none of this appears to be happening. Ceasefires are not treated as avenues to solve political contradictions and pave the way to a lasting settlement, Bhamidipati said. Instead, they have been reduced to tools of conflict meant to speedily manage escalation, contain risk, limit spillover, and restore short-term stability—a version of kicking the can down the road. Ceasefires don’t end wars; they only interrupt them. And, the longer they continue without a real political resolution, the higher the risks of even greater violence in the future. This is especially true in the Iran war. “The situation is very unstable, and every escalation can lead to a massive deterioration,” Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli military-intelligence officer and Middle East expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told me. “Instead of the ceasefire becoming some sort of platform for a new negotiation and agreement, because of the mistrust of the sides and the fact that they cannot reach an agreement, the ceasefire is actually some sort of situation before renewed escalation.”
Does this mean we are in an era of endless war, broken up by temporary ceasefires? I posed this question to Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the London-based think tank Chatham House. “That’s what we’ve witnessed in the Middle East now for about a decade because the international order has fragmented. Multilateralism has failed, if you will, in delivering peace settlements, and alignments between states have no longer been binary but have been working at cross purposes,” she told me. “It makes conflicts much more intractable and harder to unravel.” Exacerbating this is President Donald Trump’s businesslike approach to diplomacy, namely his unbounded confidence in his dealmaking skills and his desire for speedy victories. “It’s the issue of transaction, a short and easy win, which doesn’t address the underlying roots of conflicts that are almost certain to boil up again and endure,” Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former negotiator on Arab-Israel issues for both Republican and Democratic Administrations, told me. “That is the Trump approach to everything.”
Since Trump returned to office, he has declared himself the “President of Peace” who has ended eight wars around the world. (Recently, he pushed the tally to ten.) The list includes fighting between India and Pakistan, a border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia, the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. The Trump Administration played a role in brokering ceasefire agreements in these conflicts. None has led to an enduring political or military resolution, and in all cases the threat of violent escalation remains high. In his State of the Union address, Trump claimed that U.S. efforts prevented “a nuclear war” between India and Pakistan. Today, the two South Asian neighbors remain on high alert amid tit-for-tat threats and reports that both sides are preparing for more war. Clashes between Thailand and Cambodia restarted in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-brokered agreement to withdraw their troops from the disputed five-hundred-mile border. Those troops are still there, and significant mistrust remains a threat to peace. Decades of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan has stopped, but unresolved disputes remain, and neither side has signed a formal, comprehensive peace treaty. In the D.R.C., Rwandan-backed rebels and the government “are continuing to strengthen and expand their military capabilities with foreign personnel and weaponry despite ongoing peace efforts,” Critical Threats Project, a U.S.-based research organization, wrote last week. “I do wonder to what extent some of these failures are structural, and to what extent they are simply a function of Trump because Trump really has a hard time resolving conflicts,” Trita Parsi, an Iran expert and executive vice-president of the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told me. “He’s so impatient and just wants to get a quick photo op, and as a result he papers over the real disagreements. He just creates a pause so that he can claim that he’s resolved eight or nine conflicts, whatever the count is these days. But he’s not really done anything. Everyone else is kind of, like, going along with it because you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of Trump.”
The greatest foreign-policy success of Trump’s second term is the twenty-point plan that secured the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal in October. Trump personally applied pressure on a reluctant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the deal and declared, “The war is over.” The ceasefire secured the release of the remaining hostages, but the multistage plan deferred the most arduous issues, which remain unsolved. Since October, Israeli strikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians, according to the U.N., and Hamas has yet to disarm; its fighters have reasserted control over parts of Gaza, setting the stage for a future conflict with Israel. “Gaza is divided, dysfunctional, and sporadically violent,” Miller, of the Carnegie Endowment, said. “The Israelis have increased their percentage of control. They’ve killed upwards of seven or eight hundred Palestinians since the deal. That is not a ceasefire.”
The ceasefire in Lebanon also has amounted to little. Trump took credit for an April 16th agreement between Israel and Lebanon, which Iran demanded as a condition for broader talks with the United States. “It has been my Honor to solve 9 Wars across the World, and this will be my 10th, so let’s, GET IT DONE!” Trump posted on Truth Social. The ceasefire, though currently active, has failed to stop the conflict. Israeli attacks have killed nearly four hundred people since April 16th and Israel’s forces have continued to destroy villages and consolidate territorial gains in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, the Lebanese paramilitary force, has attacked Israeli troops and targeted northern Israel with rockets and drones. Israel’s practice of routinely violating an active ceasefire has weighed on Iran’s understanding of its own ceasefire with the U.S. and Israel. “The Israelis want to have a state of endless war in which they will do what they have done in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank to Iran, which is a mowing-the-lawn strategy,” Parsi said. “The end state is to be in a constant state of war in which you constantly have the ability of attacking these neighbors to make sure that they never amass enough power to challenge you.” The Iranians, he added, “absolutely are not going to accept being part of Israel’s mowing-the-lawn strategy. They’re not looking for a pause or a half deal that just shifts the nature of the conflict from one theatre to another.”
The Twelve-Day War between Iran and Israel, last June, in which the U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, ended with a ceasefire, and a demand from the U.S. that Iran agree to stop pursuing nuclear enrichment. But the core disputes were left unresolved, and, in the interim, Iran gained time to rebuild its weapons arsenals and defenses, preparing for a potential wider conflict. In February, the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations about a possible nuclear deal. For a ceasefire to be successful, the U.S. needs to convince Iran that this won’t happen again. Instead, the past four weeks have reinforced Iran’s fears and suspicions. Trump has wielded the ceasefire as a carrot and stick, issuing peace overtures one day and threats the next day, all in an attempt to get an upper hand in the negotiations. Last Tuesday, for example, he posted on Truth Social that Project Freedom “will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed.” On Wednesday, even as Iran was considering a new peace proposal, Trump warned that if Tehran doesn’t agree to the deal the U.S. bombing would resume “at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.”
But, increasingly, the coercive diplomatic tactics have not worked, and a pressure paradox has emerged. The more Trump threatens Iran, the more the regime remains defiant and the greater the chances for another round of hostilities. “We know full well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America; while we have not even begun yet,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and the regime’s chief negotiator, wrote on X last week. Vakil, of Chatham House, explained that the risk is that Trump “doesn’t understand that a bit of leeway and concessions will probably buy him a deal,” and that he will “continue to double down on his sort of New York property wheeling, dealing way of negotiation, rather than understanding the psychology of his adversary and what they’re looking for.”
This approach is reflected by the Trump Administration’s team of negotiators. The Iranian side has been led by career politicians and diplomats such as Ghalibaf and Araghchi, the foreign minister. The American side is largely led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, his special envoy and close friend, who are both full-time real-estate developers and investors. And they are spread thin. In addition to the Iran negotiations, they are also chief negotiators for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. And their track record with Iran is dismal. When the February attack happened, the pair were engaged in nuclear discussions. That left the regime so wary that it insisted on dealing with Vice-President J. D. Vance during the negotiations in Islamabad. “At the end of the day, this is something that you cannot do as a part-time job,” Citrinowicz, of the Institute for National Security Studies, said, describing the current diplomatic efforts as “speed-dating negotiations.” He added that the Trump Administration wants “an agreement with Iran, but it is not built to have this kind of negotiation with Iran.”
In previous Middle East conflicts, American diplomats constantly shuttled across the region, working with allies to build up momentum for a political resolution. “The Trump Administration is not willing to put boots on the ground as far as diplomacy is concerned,” Bhamidipati, of the New Lines Institute, said. “We are not seeing a diplomatic preparation to end this conflict permanently. By bypassing the slow institutional work of conflict transformation, we get to that place where we have no war and no peace. That is where we are right now.” That state of limbo worries seasoned Middle East negotiators, as does the absence of America’s top diplomat, the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in the region. This “shows you the dysfunction in the national-security decision-making process,” Miller said. “Under normal circumstances, Republican or Democrat, you would have had a process where the N.S.C. would be coördinating international processes with the Secretary of State, who is virtually M.I.A. in the most serious and gravest foreign-policy crisis. The structure here is broken.”
Instead, Trump and his Administration appear to increasingly be listening to some hawkish, pro-Israel neoconservatives who advocate for regime change and favor confrontation with Iran. They have championed the naval blockade, arguing that Iran will capitulate to the economic pressure from a halt in its oil exports. One prominent neocon, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham, wrote on X that the blockade “is brilliant in concept and execution.” The Trump Administration has also been posting material from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an influential Washington-based think tank that is pro-Israel and advocates for aggressive policies to apply pressure on Iran. The F.D.D. lobbied against the Obama Administration’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that Trump cancelled in 2018. The Trump Administration recently added Nick Stewart, the F.D.D.’s former advocacy director, to the team negotiating with Iran, a move that’s certain to deepen Tehran’s mistrust. “He’s listening to them much more,” Parsi, of the Quincy Institute, told me, adding that they supported the idea of a blockade. Trump, he added, is looking for a silver bullet, or a game changer that will “rewrite the entire history of the war,” and allow him to “come out on top.” The F.D.D. advisers are “promising a silver bullet.”
There’s a vast chasm between the United States and Iran on how to conclude the current iteration of the war. The Trump Administration wants a deal quickly to achieve its main goals: reopening the Strait of Hormuz, getting Iran to give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and agreeing to a twenty-year-long moratorium on nuclear enrichment. Last week, news broke that the U.S. and Iran were working on a one-page memo to cease hostilities for thirty days to try to hammer out a comprehensive deal over Iran’s nuclear future and other issues. But Tehran feels that it has a strong position and wants to impose a new security, political, and economic reality, including the lifting of economic sanctions, and guarantees to prevent the resumption of war between the U.S. and Israel and Iran, as well as an end to fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Tehran is also looking to retain control over the strait to deter future attacks and wants to potentially use it as a toll booth to earn billions annually from transiting ships. “It won’t end in a way in which there is some transformation in the U.S.-Iranian, let alone the Israeli-Iranian relationship,” Miller said, adding that it’s just “another round in the forty-seven-year struggle between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic.” By the end of last week, Trump said that Iran attacked three American warships. In response, the U.S. targeted Iranian military facilities. Then Iran accused the U.S. of having fired on an Iranian oil tanker earlier. Yet the ceasefire is said to be intact. On Thursday, Trump downplayed the Iranian attacks as a “trifle.” On Friday, when the U.S. military fired on two Iranian oil tankers, Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, questioned whether the U.S. attacks were “a crude pressure tactic” and the result of a “spoiler once again duping POTUS into another quagmire.” He added, “Every time a diplomatic solution is on the table, the U.S. opts for a reckless military adventure.” Over the weekend, Iran made a counter proposal to end the war. Trump, in a post, rejected it as “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.” America’s reckless military adventure continues. ♦