A new kind of ‘ceasefire’ between the US and Iran: Talks, strikes are instruments in the same process

LONDON – The United States and Iran have now perfected a new kind of “ceasefire”, one that no one respects yet no one abandons, a game in which the guns still fire because both sides believe that talking and shooting are not opposing alternatives, but instruments in the same process.

What has unfolded across the Gulf over the past forty-eight hours - two consecutive nights of US airstrikes on Iran and Iranian missile barrages against the Arab monarchies in the region - looks like the collapse of the June memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the US and Iran. The reality, however, is that the current violence does not spell the failure of diplomacy, but merely its continuation by other means.

The sequence of the latest events is by now predictable. Iranian drones struck tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, and the US Central Command answered with strikes on Iranian air-defence installations, coastal radars, and Iranian fast attack boats, the craft that have done the bulk of the harassment of ships in the international waterway.

Anyone who followed the near-identical exchange of fire between the US and Iran at the end of June will recognise the choreography.

The rhetoric this time is, however, angrier, even lurid. The ceasefire with Iran, US President Donald Trump said on July 8 during a visit to the Turkish capital of Ankara to attend a NATO summit, was “over”. Iran’s rulers were “scum”, “sick”, “liars” and further talks with them were just a “waste of time”.

Trump also mused aloud about reimposing his naval blockade and seizing Kharg Island, through which the overwhelming majority of Iran’s crude exports flow. The US added further menace by revoking the licence that had, for the first time in years, permitted Iran to sell oil openly on international markets.

Yet minutes after Trump pronounced the MoU with Iran “dead”, he also said that his negotiator can continue dealing with Iranian officials if they wish. Soon thereafter, Trump started insisting that the war would not resume, that “anything that happens is going to be over very quickly”, and that oil would soon flow “very free, very easy”.

This is not the language of a leader preparing for a renewed military offensive. Instead, it is the vocabulary of a US President seeking to strengthen his leverage, largely because he has realised that the latest negotiations with Iran have failed to deliver what he expected.

Control over Strait of Hormuz

Iran’s calculations in the current showdown are equally obvious. The Iranians are trying to defend the single asset the war has given the country: potential control over the Hormuz waterway.

The quarrel at the heart of the latest violence is written into the 14-point MoU signed by Iran and the US. Under this document, Iran undertook to devote its “best efforts” to secure safe passage through Hormuz for 60 days, while the strait’s future governance was left to negotiation.

Tehran has chosen to interpret this ambiguity as freedom to control the waterway outright, to dictate vessels’ routes and, in time, to levy fees for transit, overturning a century of international law practice.

Iranian state media has made this strategy explicit. As analysts in Tehran now like to put it, the strait has become the Islamic Republic’s substitute for the nuclear capabilities destroyed by the US and Israel.

Meanwhile, the US interprets the same ambiguity in the MoU as precluding Iran from changing the legal status of the strait without further negotiations; Trump has made it clear that the US will not tolerate further attacks on ships that ignore Iran’s orders.

Two factors make this confrontation more dangerous than the similar US-Iranian flare-up in June.

The first is the timing of the current crisis. The exchange of fire coincides with the funeral ceremonies for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who was killed with many in his family in the US-Israeli strikes of Feb 28.

Some Iranian experts based in the US and Israel claim that Mojtaba Khamenei, the slain leader’s son and political heir, has decided that now is the moment to push Iran’s claims to Hormuz more aggressively, and that this is the true explanation for the current showdown with the US.

This is mere speculation. What we do know, however, is that there is a power struggle inside Iran, that some of Iran’s top leaders are unhappy with the MoU, and that as a result, the chances of an Iranian miscalculation and a slide into an all-out war remain much higher than they were in June, when the Iranians last clashed with the US.

Arab monarchies no longer sitting targets

The second factor that makes the current confrontation more dangerous is the mounting anger of the Gulf’s Arab monarchies, who are yet again on the receiving end of Iranian fire, and are increasingly unwilling to remain sitting targets.

The Arab condemnations have sharpened this time. Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, accused Iran of a sustained effort to wreck regional peace, “in blatant defiance of all international laws, norms, and agreements”.

The Gulf monarchies are still taking their strategic cues from Washington, but they are also increasingly more vocal in their opposition to any Iranian attempt to seize control of Hormuz.

For the moment, all sides have an interest in using the language of war, without sliding into one.

By selectively hitting Iranian targets, Trump projects strength, a useful advantage as the US leader faces growing criticism about his handling of Iran and the concessions implicit in the MoU.

Iran, for its part, escapes the appearance of capitulation while continuing to push for international acceptance of its claim to control the strait.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who remains party to the war but not to the MoU, regains the freedom to strike at Hezbollah, the Iranian-funded proxy based in Lebanon, as long as the US and Iran are locked in a military confrontation.

The snag is that this delicate and elaborate showdown rests on a single premise: that all parties continue to read each other’s signals in the same way, and that nobody wants a return to all-out war.

Yet this is always a very risky assumption in the Middle East.