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.
What was supposedly agreed?
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.
The core terms were roughly as follows:
- A ceasefire across all fronts, including Lebanon: This sounded expansive, but it immediately created an enforcement problem. Iran could point to Israeli action against Hezbollah and occupation in Lebanon as a breach. The US could point to Iranian-linked activity as a breach. Israel was not going to suspend its threat assessments because Washington wanted a settlement with Tehran, becoming more assertive and less concerned with the White House’s desires.
- A 60-day window for a final deal: The short timeline was supposed to generate momentum. It also gave Iran 60 days to maximize leverage. Every delay in Hormuz, every tanker incident, every ambiguous IRGC move, and every oil market wobble increases the pressure on Washington to offer relief in exchange for stability. That is not a position of strength. It is the geopolitics of “please stop making petrol expensive”.
- The US would remove its naval blockade and reduce military pressure:
Washington began giving up pressure early, while the most important Iranian concessions were pushed into future negotiations. This would allow Iran the ability to sell oil, in effect, sanctions relief that helped solidify the fragile position of the IRGC, who had been in economic dire straits. That means that Iran could bank relief, test the edges of the deal, and argue later over what the words meant. - Iran would allow commercial vessels through Hormuz without charge for 60 days: The phrase “without charge for 60 days only” was doing a lot of work. The agreement also gave Iran space to discuss “future administration and maritime services” in the Strait with Oman and other Gulf states. That is where the real danger sits. A toll does not need to be called a toll. The current regime in Tehran is now floating different systems, calling it a permit, a maritime safety fee, a routing system, a demining charge, a coastal-state service, or a technical clearance requirement. Iran believed the agreement allowed it to retain control over which ships could pass and which route they must take.
- Iran reaffirmed that it would not develop nuclear weapons: Useful language, but hardly a victory. The enriched uranium stockpile was left for a future mechanism, with down-blending under IAEA supervision listed as a minimum approach. Enrichment itself was also left for future talks. In other words, the nuclear issue was not solved. It was placed in the basket marked “later”, which is where it has existed since the JCPOA while also being the underlying excuse for why Trump launched the war in the first place.
- The US placed sanctions relief, oil waivers, frozen assets, and a $300 billion reconstruction and development plan on the table: This was the largest political gift in the framework. Iran could present the war as proof that resistance works: absorb the strikes, close or threaten Hormuz, force Washington to negotiate, and then discuss sanctions relief and investment. For a regime under domestic economic pressure, that is a massive win. Prior to the war, the IRGC had been at their weakest since the revolution in 1979. Economic turmoil was leading to massive internal unrest culminating with the mass protests at the beginning of the year where reportedly tens of thousands of innocent civilians were killed. Now, the IRGC will have the funds to continue repression, to rearm, and to solidify control having already stifled dissent.
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.
Hormuz was not a surprise
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 IRGC gets stronger
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.
The emerging settlement has so far left the nuclear question unresolved, elevated Hormuz as a negotiating weapon, and created the possibility of sanctions relief that could flow through precisely the sectors where the IRGC is strongest.
In the absence of strategy.
The latest breakdown is important, but should not be treated as completely new or unexpected. The instability and lack of a coherent strategy is the real story.
One day, the deal is a triumph. The next, it is over. Then talks can continue. Then oil waivers are revoked. Then shipping must be protected. Then escalation must be avoided. Then Iran must be punished. Then allies must fall in line. Then everyone is shocked that Iran did the most predictable thing in Gulf geopolitics and used Hormuz.
This speaks to the absence of strategy. Rather it is the noise of decision-making from a White House administration acting on the whims of a President seemingly without a basic understanding of geopolitics.
There is no clear end-state, no obvious sequencing, and no convincing answer to what Washington would do once Iran responded in the most predictable way available to it.
A coherent Iran strategy would have needed to answer several questions before the first strikes were launched. What is the political objective? Nuclear rollback, regime weakening or regime change, deterrence, maritime access, regional reassurance, or domestic spectacle?
What concessions would be acceptable? What costs would be sustainable? What would happen if Iran attacked Gulf allies? What would happen if shipping stopped? What would happen if the IRGC survived and claimed victory? What would Washington do if Israel and Iran interpreted ceasefire obligations differently?
Those questions should not have been complex.
Worse than before
The uncomfortable conclusion is that almost everyone except Iranian hardliners is now in a worse position.
The US has shown it can strike Iran, but also that it struggles to convert force into durable political outcomes. That their domestic appetite for conflict does not allow the resources that would be now needed to mobilize a ground invasion which would be now needed for success. Israel has demonstrated their reach and influence, but their global support and even support in the US has never been lower.
More and more, people are seeing them as a rogue state, a belligerent actor, and one who doesn’t care about the consequences they bring upon others. Gulf states have been reminded that they sit inside the blast radius of Washington and Tel Aviv’s decisions, while the decision makers don’t care about the collateral damage.
Europe and Asia have again been forced to watch oil markets move because of a narrow waterway they do not control. NATO allies have been repeatedly verbally attacked by Trump for doing nothing while at the same time asserting that he didn’t need their help and had won the war already. Shipping firms, insurers and energy companies now have to price political improvisation into every transit decision.
Iran, meanwhile, has learned that it can make the world negotiate over geography. It can threaten Hormuz, reopen it partially, introduce permits, test shipping routes, invoke maritime administration, and use every commercial delay as diplomatic pressure. The lesson Tehran is likely to take is not that escalation is too costly. It is that controlled escalation works if the other side is more frightened of a sustained crisis than you are.
That is the quagmire we are now in. Not a failed invasion. Not an occupation. Not a battlefield defeat in the traditional sense. Something more suited to the current age: a war launched to restore American leverage that instead revealed how much leverage Iran already had, and how little strategy Washington had for taking it away.
This article first appeared on The Geopolitical Pickle Substack and is republished with kind permission. Read the original here.
