Commentary: US-Iran truce is all pause and no progress

Commentary

The 60-day window for a final peace deal seems less realistic than ever, says international security professor Stefan Wolff.

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07 Jul 2026 06:00AM

BIRMINGHAM: It is becoming increasingly hard to take the prospects of a long-term deal to end their war seriously now that the United States and Iran are back to holding indirect talks.

They concluded a round of meetings through Qatari and Pakistani mediators on Jul 1, just days after agreeing to stop tit-for-tat strikes that had continued despite a ceasefire being in place.

After US President Donald Trump dispatched his son-in-law Jared Kushner and long-time real estate business partner Steve Witkoff to the Qatari capital of Doha in expectation of high-level talks, Iran said it would not meet them.

This does not mean that the already fragile ceasefire is doomed to collapse imminently. But it raises serious questions about whether the 60-day window that the US and Iran agreed to hammer out a permanent settlement is still realistic – if it ever was.

With just over 40 days left, Iran’s refusal to engage directly with the top US negotiators certainly does not bode well. The next round of talks, to come after the late Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral, will also be indirect.

THE MEMORANDUM WAS WEAK FROM THE START

The impasse is hardly surprising. The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was structurally flawed from the moment of its signing on Jun 17.

The MOU declared “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts” and committed the parties not to use or threaten force. But it failed to establish a robust enforcement mechanism.

A High-Level Committee tasked with political oversight was established and involves senior leaders such as US Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Yet, the mechanism did not function as intended when renewed hostilities broke out because of disagreements over the Strait of Hormuz.

The MOU also fails to resolve any of the foundational disputes between Iran and the US, including over who governs the Strait of Hormuz, which is as much a question of the post-war regional order as it is one of global economic and energy security.

But it is also a question that is tied up with domestic politics. For Iran, control over the strait has long been seen as a question of sovereignty, but it had been content with using it as implied leverage – until the war let it turn the issue into a test of Iran’s claimed right to charge transit fees.

The MOU explicitly notes that Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, “with no charge for 60 days only” and that the future administration of the strait will be defined with Oman.

Iran and Oman have reportedly worked out a proposed arrangement to administer the strait, which includes the joint collection of administrative fees. They seem to have some way to go to hammer out the details: Iran is apparently insisting on fee levies while Oman favours voluntary contributions towards regional projects aimed supporting the safety of waterways and protection of the maritime environment.

Either idea, however, runs counter to Mr Trump’s views who had repeatedly insisted that there will be no fees to transit the strait.

All the hardest questions – from the conditions and timeline for sanctions relief for Iran and the release of frozen assets to the future of its nuclear programme – are also to be tackled in a final deal. Similar to the issue of transit fees, the gaps between the parties are wide and the process designed to close them far from clear.

A LONG HOLDING PATTERN

Still, a bad deal that prevents escalation might be better than no deal at all. But now, it is not clear whether even a bad deal is possible.

The saving grace is likely to be a provision in the MOU that allows the 60-days timeline for completing negotiations to be extended by mutual agreement.

And this may well be the enduring legacy of the MOU – not that it created a pathway to peace and stability in the region but that it allowed the US and Iran to settle into a holding pattern, preventing a further slide towards the abyss.

The MOU provides minimal guardrails that serve the interests of both Tehran and Washington while negotiations are ongoing, such as asset release and a status quo on sanctions for Iran and a toll-free gradual re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz for the US.

As both sides come to realise the complexity of resolving their substantive issues and the compromises likely required to do so, they might find living within the parameters of the MOU acceptable, even if far from ideal.

Right now, neither the US nor Iran will want to abandon the process. They could thrash out a deal in the remaining weeks or simply agree to give themselves more time to do so.

THE REAL SPOILER

This might look like a viable strategy to stabilise the current volatile situation, but that is not the same as stability. There are still significant risks, the most important among them being Lebanon.

The MOU explicitly includes Lebanon as part of the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts” and states that the US and Iran also commit themselves to “ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon”.

Yet neither of the parties to that conflict – Israel and Hezbollah – is a signatory of the MOU. The extent to which Washington and Tehran exercise control over them is debatable.

This is not a sideshow to the main war, but a major arena in which a key part of the conflict over the future regional order of the Middle East will play out.

Israel and Lebanon reached a framework agreement for achieving “lasting peace and security” on Jun 26. But the ceasefire it calls for puts no real, and certainly no enforceable, obligations on Hezbollah but makes the group’s disarmament a condition for Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah immediately rejected the agreement to which it was not a party.

Ceasefire arrangements between Israel and Hezbollah have been running on an entirely separate track. Their most recent truce was agreed on Jun 19, mediated by Iran and Qatar, but leaving Lebanon out of the deal and preserving Iranian leverage.

Four thousand people killed and one million displaced in 2026 alone suggest that attempts to control the fighting in Lebanon are still far from effective. Agreements based on a logic of Hezbollah disarming and the Lebanese army assuming full control of southern Lebanon will continue to fail when there is nothing to suggest that Lebanon's institutional capacity or Hezbollah's attitude have changed enough to succeed.

If, or rather when, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalates anew, it could turn out to be the real spoiler of even the most optimistic American and Iranian plans.

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham and co-founder of Navigating the Vortex.

Source: CNA/ch