A few days before the U.S. and Israel launched their opening salvo of airstrikes against Iran, I wrote that any deal to avoid a war would need to be crafted so that it can be framed as a win by both sides. The two-week ceasefire announced yesterday by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has been mediating the conflict, tries to satisfy that rule by giving both Washington and Tehran room to declare victory. |
According to Sharif’s statement, posted on X, the ceasefire was to take hold immediately, with peace talks scheduled for Friday in Islamabad to hash out the details. In response, President Donald Trump said the U.S. had “already met and exceeded all Military objectives.” Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, meanwhile, declared the U.S. had “suffered an undeniable, historical, and crushing defeat.” |
Yet in reality, not much has changed on the ground in the past 24 hours. Iranian airstrikes are continuing to hit targets in Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia reported that a critical east-west pipeline that carries oil to the Red Sea had been struck. |
Traffic has not resumed through the Strait of Hormuz, as shipping companies say they are trying to understand what conditions would be required to ensure safe passage. A spokesperson for Iran’s Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union told the Financial Times that the country would continue to collect tolls in cryptocurrency during the ceasefire. |
Israel, meanwhile, launched what it said was its heaviest wave of airstrikes yet against Lebanon as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Lebanon was excluded from the deal, flatly contradicting Sharif’s statement. Indeed, the Americans seem to be the only ones who have stopped shooting. |
Of course, it’s not unusual for ceasefires to be shaky, or take time to fully set in. But this is a different matter entirely: The warring parties can’t even agree on what was agreed. There doesn’t even appear to be a formal document laying out the terms of the truce: Only dueling statements and accusations. |
Iran itself is putting out multiple versions of its 10-point peace plan that Trump has accepted as the basis for peace talks. The version released in Farsi calls for “acceptance of enrichment” for its nuclear program, but that phrase was missing from the English translation that Iranian officials distributed to journalists. |
In the region and around the world, anger is rising in response to all of this. The Egyptian American businessman Naguib Sawiris captured the sentiments of many in the Middle East when he described the ceasefire as “an ambiguous, strange, unclear agreement that can only be interpreted as a victory for the Iranian regime, especially regarding the Strait of Hormuz, which was an open international passage before the war.” He called on the Gulf states to come together, without the U.S., and “devise a strategy for dealing with the new situation.” |
Even if the peace talks in Islamabad can be salvaged, severe damage has already been done to the global economy, and to Washington’s global standing. After all, it was the United States and Israel that began a war that has wreaked havoc on the global economy, leaving the world’s most vulnerable populations, who had nothing to do with the conflict, to pay the price. |
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez put it aptly: “The Government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.” |