The ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran is, from a diplomatic standpoint, merely an exit from a costly and unpopular war—not a victory celebration. It is also far from the regime change or unconditional surrender that President Donald Trump mentioned in the early stages.
The details of restrictions on Iran's nuclear development program have yet to be negotiated. The Strait of Hormuz will reopen, but this may be temporary. The agreement appears to apply to Lebanon as well, but there is no guarantee that Israel or Hezbollah will abide by it. And the most worrisome point is that Iran's hardline regime can still threaten its neighboring Arab states and Israel.
The leading figures in this negotiation are President Trump's special envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. They are the president's son-in-law and close friend, respectively, and both come from backgrounds as investors rather than diplomats. This background gave the negotiations a distinctive risk-and-reward character. It resembled an investment briefing more than a diplomatic script, and the central theme was that one must pay a price to gain a return. The U.S. proposal is to restructure Iran's capital through a $300 billion private investment plan for Iran's modernization. Kushner told the Iranian side that "the state-owned oil and gas company has the potential to become larger than Saudi Arabia's Aramco, but this is possible only when Iran ceases its anti-American revolutionary activities."
This is precisely the point that raises questions. Iran's leaders are hardliners among hardliners. They survived Israeli bombings and assassination attempts. Many hold deep religious convictions that scorn the Western world and its values. They are more interested in revenge than in a leveraged buyout funded by borrowed money. Americans think of Iran as an absolute theocratic dictatorship. But people in the region know that Iran is a multi-layered bureaucratic state that moves painfully slowly. Even the ruling Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a multi-layered structure in which various factions and figures compete. Envoys from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, who understand this culture, were able to manage the situation deftly.
For Kushner and Witkoff, these negotiations began months ago. They came close to an agreement at a February meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. One U.S. official reportedly responded to the basic framework presented by Iran by saying it was "like there being eight holes in the net, but only offering to sew up five of them." The war initially tightened the cohesion within Iran's regime. But after a ceasefire agreement reached in Islamabad, Pakistan, in April, a rift began to form within Iran's leadership between those who wanted a final agreement and those who wanted to maintain the anti-American struggle line.
Iranian Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf gave the U.S. side the impression of being a reasonable negotiating partner in the talks held in Pakistan. But as soon as he returned to Iran, he came under attack from hardliners and was pushed out of the center for a time. After the Pakistan negotiations, the power struggle within Iran's leadership was truly a "jump ball" situation, in which no one knew who would take possession. An official familiar with the negotiations explained, "We created a dynamic that generated tension within them." At present, Speaker Ghalibaf and his allies appear to be leading the situation, but the power struggle within Iran's regime is likely to continue.
On the Strait of Hormuz, the key issue, this official recalled remarks by Ali Larijani, former secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. He explained, "Former secretary Larijani said that blockading the strait was a card that could be used only once, because it was obvious how the West would respond, and that judgment was correct." Changes after this war will strengthen safety measures in the Strait of Hormuz and also create an alternative route to export oil through land pipelines instead of maritime tankers. One notable recent development is that the tanker escort plan "Project Freedom" has quietly continued. As tanker escorts continued on a reduced scale, 7 million barrels of oil per day could be exported through the Gulf.
The U.S. negotiating team expects Iran to invest in its economy and modernize the country after this peace agreement. But they also acknowledge that this expectation is a gamble. Turning Iran's direction from an anti-American revolution toward a responsible, modern state is, above all, a critical task. With regime change in Iran having failed, no better path appears than the proposal from the Trump administration's negotiating team. Asked what lesson he had drawn from these negotiations, this official answered, "It is very easy to start a war, but it is really hard to get out of one."
