The best hope for the ceasefire talks in Pakistan is that both the United States and Iran have strong reasons to call a halt to the war. The biggest obstacle to their success is a total absence of trust, no discernible common ground, and the fact that Israel, America's full partner in the war, has hugely escalated its onslaught on Lebanon.
US President Donald Trump is already speaking about the war in the past tense. He has declared victory and needs an exit. Not only does he have a state visit from King Charles in the diary for later this month, followed by a summit with China's President Xi Jinping in May, there are midterm elections in November. With America's summer holiday season looming, Trump also needs petrol prices to fall back to where they were before he went to war. Royal visits, summits, and elections do not mix well with wars.
Iran's regime has its own reasons to end the war. It is as defiant as ever, still able to launch missiles and drones, with its social media warriors pouring out AI videos lampooning Donald Trump. But Iran has suffered massive damage. Cities have come to an economic standstill and the regime needs time to regroup and will try to use the talks in Pakistan to strengthen its position.
The Pakistani intermediaries who will be shuttling between the two delegations have a tough job on their hands. The declared positions of the two sides are as far apart as it is possible to be.
Trump has a 15-point plan that has not been published but leaked versions make it sound more like a surrender document than a basis for negotiation. Iran's 10-point plan contains a list of demands that America has consistently rejected in the past.
Creating a more durable ceasefire will require some kind of agreement to at least keep talking about the two sides' contradictory lists of intractable issues.
The newest and most urgent problem they face concerns reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow exit from the Gulf. Keeping it closed gives Iran a chokehold on the world economy. Reopening the waterway that was used by hundreds of ships a day until the US and Israel attacked Iran has become the central issue in the negotiation. The millions of civilians in the Middle East who have been caught up in this conflict hope this negotiation will be the war's endgame.
The long-term consequences of the war will reverberate across the Middle East and beyond. The wealthy Arab monarchies of the Gulf have spent years and billions on turning themselves into global hubs for business, tourism, and air travel. A few weeks of Iranian attacks have done lasting damage to that strategy for modernization and development.
China is watching closely, so is Russia as Trump once again threatens NATO allies he claims were not there when America needed them. China pushed the Iranians to agree to a ceasefire and is likely to keep pushing to keep them talking. It relies on Middle Eastern oil – Iran has let its own tankers heading to China through the Strait of Hormuz – but will also be ready to exploit any gaps left by Trump's haphazard foreign policy.
