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We have been loath to write about the ceasefire given the limitations and the ongoing circus around the “framework agreement” but have decided that now is a good time to address the geopolitical realities stemming from the ill-conceived conflict.
The ceasefire with Iran has done exactly what weak agreements tend to do when they are built around wishful thinking – broken down under the first real pressure.
This week, the US and Iran were again trading fire. Iran targeted US military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait after US forces struck Iranian targets in response to attacks on LNG tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump then told reporters at the NATO summit in Ankara that the interim agreement was “over”, although talks may still continue.
Oil prices have begun to climb again following the comments, as markets once again priced in the risk that the world’s most important energy chokepoint is no longer functioning as normal.
During this time there have been a constant stream of statements, threats, retractions, counter-threats, clarifications, late-night posts, or ‘truths’, in the most Orwellian sense, and improvised press conferences. To report on them all would imply there is a strategy to track. There is not.
There are events. There are reactions. There are missiles, drones, tankers, oil prices, NATO allies trying to work out what Washington means before Washington changes its mind, and Iranian hardliners testing how far they can push the Strait of Hormuz before the US decides it has had enough again. But this is all down to the overall lack of direction and plan.
That is what has been missing from the beginning.
The interim US-Iran framework, the 14-point Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, was meant to halt the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, create a 60-day negotiating window, provide a pathway to sanctions relief, and (conveniently) defer the hardest nuclear questions to a final deal. The agreement postponed many of the most difficult issues, including how to wind down Iran’s nuclear program.
This is precisely the sort of issue the JCPOA tried to manage through years of negotiation, detailed verification procedures, and enforcement mechanisms. Trump tore that agreement up in his first term, calling it the “worst deal in history.” The current framework is thinner, weaker, and far more exposed to coercion and , to be clear, significantly worse.
On paper, the arrangement looked like a ladder down from escalation and gave Trump a perceived victory as domestic pressures increased. In practice, it was a rope bridge over a live volcano.
This framework, celebrated as a massive win, did not resolve any of the central problems. It temporarily renamed them while simultaneously empowering a brutal, repressive, theocratic regime that no doubt most of the world would like to be rid of.
One of the more remarkable defenses offered by Trump was that nobody expected Iran to respond as it did. In March Trump said Iranian retaliation against Gulf states had come as a shock.
Yet this is one of the first lessons in Middle East geopolitics. Trump had been warned before the operation that Iran could retaliate against US Gulf allies and seek to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of any attack.
This is the sort of claim that should end a meeting. The Strait of Hormuz is not a secret tunnel, a classified vulnerability, or an obscure footnote known only to naval planners and oil traders. It is one of the first examples students encounter when learning how geography shapes power.
Roughly one-fifth of global oil supplies move through it. Iran always had this power but did not want to use it unless their was an existential threat. It was their “Trump card” so to speak and the danger for them was that if it didn’t work – i.e. they were unable to close the strait effectively, their ultimate weapon would be rendered useless. Unfortunately, that is not what happened.
Now having shown the utility, the world has come to a very different understanding. Iran controls the strait. They did not need to defeat the US Navy. All they needed was to make commercial shipping prohibitively expensive, uncertain, and politically painful. That is a much lower bar.
This is why Trump’s claim that the Strait is open should be treated carefully. Some vessels were moving. That does not mean normal access has returned. Oil and gas tankers have begun turning back rather than attempting to transit the waterway following the renewed attacks.
Earlier instances were confirmed of Iranian forces ordering vessels to turn back while Iran’s Strait authority circulated an advisory stating that no vessel could pass without a valid permit. That is not open access – it is access on sufferance.
The war may have damaged Iranian military assets. It may have disrupted the economy. It may have exposed vulnerabilities inside the regime. None of that means it produced a better balance of power.
The IRGC now has a stronger domestic and regional narrative than it had before the war. It can argue that it survived US and Israeli strikes, kept the nuclear question alive, forced Washington into negotiations, placed sanctions relief and oil waivers on the agenda, and demonstrated that Hormuz can be used as a coercive lever at will.
The regime hardliners were under massive domestic pressure before the war. Economic stress, sanctions, social repression, and legitimacy problems had created deep internal strain.
War gave the regime a familiar authoritarian instrument: a national security emergency. It also gave the IRGC a chance to discipline society at home while claiming resistance abroad.
The result is perverse. The US and Israel launched a war that was sold, belatedly and unevenly, as a campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and regional threat network.
