A ceasefire and negotiations between the US and Iran are taking place because both sides are experiencing pain, realise they will not get everything they want through armed conflict, and do not want further escalation.
The US discovered it could not win a quick war, and Iran cannot afford to have its infrastructure, economy and military capacities degraded further. However, neither side will concede core objectives so their respective blockades continue — Iran denying transit from the Persian Gulf for international energy shipments, and the US blockading Iran’s coastline. Naval skirmishes are ongoing, with both sides seizing shipping.
The formidable US Navy has been notable by its scarcity in the Gulf since the war began as its ships are potentially vulnerable to Iran’s asymmetric warfare technology, and most of its forces are further away in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
The lessons from Ukraine on modern warfare do not appear to have been used by the American military establishment. It is hard not to conclude this war has strengthened Iran in some respects, even as its military capabilities and economy have been decimated.
Full scale war may resume if the US perceives inflicting further damage will force concessions that President Donald Trump can spin as a win, though what level of force or escalation that would be is unclear. Iran is proving unexpectedly resilient against the world’s most powerful military, and the longer it persist the more advantages it gains.
This stalemate points to further negotiations to reach some sort of settlement. What separates them is another kind of gulf — curbing or ending Iran’s nuclear programme and regional subversion and reasserting safe passage through Hormuz before global economic consequences deteriorate even further. Iran wants guarantees it won’t be attacked again, substantial sanctions relief and its nuclear option continuing, but within safeguards.
Iran is proving unexpectedly resilient against the world’s most powerful military, and the longer it persist the more advantages it gains.
A negotiated end hinges on agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear programme. This is the hard part. Iran regards a civilian nuclear programme as a sovereign right, but mostly wants strategic ambiguity about reaching nuclear capability in a short time if external threats become real enough to threaten regime survival — precisely the position it is in now. US and Israeli military action has vindicated the view of regime hardliners that a nuclear deterrent is more necessary than before. The theocratic regime is paranoid and ruthless, but is a rational and measured actor.
The US insists on nuclear curbs. The outlines of those discussions point to a framework that seems much like the old Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 under then-president Barack Obama. That involved Iran agreeing to nuclear enrichment at levels below weapons grade and with stringent international inspections in return for sanctions relief. Despite its flaws, it did succeed in binding the two sides to a diplomatic framework that Iran generally complied with.
Trump tore up the JCPOA in 2018, a move that has been described as an act of diplomatic vandalism. The US now appears to want more or less the same thing. But under Trump it is too impatient, inconsistent and untrustworthy to make negotiations successful for now. Quick agreement is expected, reached over a few days of talks in Pakistan, involving Iran bowing to most American demands. But Iran is far from giving up its military and other options and has little reason to trust American intentions. Any agreement must also involve Israel. Iran can be forgiven for doubting any guarantees related to Israeli forbearance can be counted on.
The JCPOA was very much a product of the old, much-maligned international rules-based order designed to deal with precisely such problems. It was jointly negotiated by Iran with the US, China, Russia, the UK, France, Germany and the EU. It is difficult to imagine any such grouping coming together for a common purpose now. By walking away from the international order and the norms it created the US has left a vacuum being filled by chaos as international actors face fewer restraints on the exercise of force to pursue territorial and foreign policy objectives.
Trump tore up the JCPOA in 2018, a move that has been described as an act of diplomatic vandalism. The US now appears to want more or less the same thing. But under Trump it is too impatient, inconsistent and untrustworthy to make negotiations successful for now.
The JCPOA was enormously complex and took two and a half years to negotiate, involving teams of qualified negotiators and technical experts. The Iranian side, then and now, sweats the technical details and protects core interests as the regime sees them. In contrast, the US Jared Kuchner-Steve Witkoff duo are without professional qualifications in this area. It has been alleged the US team lacked the technical expertise to grasp that Iran was making serious proposals in negotiations that were interrupted by the current war.
On other points agreement is far off. Iran will not give up on its armed proxies throughout the Middle East, where it meddles in other countries on behalf of religious minorities and sponsors rogue states and militarised groups. These are assets it believes if exchanged have to be for something. Meanwhile, closure of the Strait of Hormuz grants it unprecedented leverage over the international community.
This is a powerful new tool on par with a nuclear capability, and is one that did not exist before this war, when Iran’s ability to close the strait was speculated on but not proven. America’s enormous military power is also unable to fully subdue Iran, which has proved it has at least some capability to shoot down American aircraft. It has also been able to illustrate it can hit Western military bases in the region and harm its Gulf state neighbours using relatively simple drone technology and its home-grown missile programme, neither of which has been destroyed by the American and Israeli air campaigns.
Can these issues be bridged? A grand bargain between these long-standing adversaries has been close before. To find agreement now the US must realise Iran has to be given incentives, not only the “maximum pressure” that helped bring about this war.
Iran, on the other hand, needs to learn to live with its neighbours without sponsoring armed proxies, end the prospect of a nuclear conflagration and give its own people the positive vision of a prosperous future that does not involve international isolation, social restrictions from another century and an epochal reckoning with Israel or the US.
Despite American military might the age-old asymmetric dynamic means Iran wins so long as it survives. The US needs to accept the regime will survive. If it does not, an inconclusive agreement is now the most likely outcome — one that kicks the can down the road and sets up the basis for another future conflict.
• Mason, an associate of Johannesburg-based risk and resiliency consultancy Eunomix, lives in Rosendal, the Free State, but is periodically on assignment in war zones.
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