After nearly six months of war that began with the US-Israel assault on Iran on December 28, President Trump announced on Sunday that a ceasefire deal had been reached with the Islamic Republic. Iran’s deputy foreign minister confirmed the agreement. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose government served as lead mediator, declared “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” Trump authorised the toll-free reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — effectively closed since late December — and ordered the removal of the US naval blockade. A formal signing ceremony is scheduled for Friday, June 19, in Switzerland. The deal is currently a Memorandum of Understanding; pre-implementation technical meetings are underway.
The received wisdom
The liberal-internationalist reading of this outcome is broadly celebratory: diplomacy worked, multilateral mediation — involving Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — demonstrated that the world’s middle powers can still broker peace even as the Western-led order frays. Critics of the original military campaign will note that oil prices surged from roughly $70 to $87 a barrel during the conflict, that the UK economy contracted under the pressure of disrupted energy supplies, and that the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes, was weaponised in ways that punished allies far more than they punished Tehran. On this reading, the ceasefire is less a vindication of Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy than a grudging acknowledgement of its costs. Peace was reached not because Iran was broken, but because the economic pain was becoming mutual and the diplomatic window offered by regional powers was too useful to ignore.
A different read
Grant the critics their point on the economic costs — they are real — but consider what has actually changed since December 28. Iran entered the conflict as the dominant regional military power, projecting influence through Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. The terms of the MOU, as publicly stated, include the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” That is not a trivial concession. For years, Western diplomats argued that Iran’s network of proxy forces was structurally irreversible, that any deal would have to accommodate the Islamic Republic’s “axis of resistance” as a permanent feature of the regional landscape. If the ceasefire holds on those terms, it would represent a meaningful strategic rollback — one that no Obama-era or Biden-era framework ever achieved.
The historical parallel worth considering is the 1953–1973 arc of US engagement in Southeast Asia, but in reverse: there, America made peace after absorbing significant costs and conceding strategic ground; here, the peace appears to come while the US is in a position of relative military advantage. That asymmetry matters. Deals struck from strength tend to have more durable terms than deals struck from exhaustion. Nixon’s détente with Beijing in 1972 worked partly because it came when China needed the opening more than the US did. Whether Trump’s Iran deal resembles Nixon’s China or Carter’s post-Shah improvisation remains to be seen — but the structural position of the parties at the moment of signing is not unfavourable to Washington.
The sceptical view — and it deserves airing — is that an MOU is not a treaty. The formal signing ceremony is still four days away, technical meetings are ongoing, and the critical provisions on Iran’s nuclear programme, its missile arsenal, and the future of its regional proxies have not been publicly detailed. Pakistan and Qatar were essential to getting this deal to the table; their leverage does not extend to verification or enforcement. The JCPOA’s eventual failure was not primarily a failure of aspiration — it was a failure of the domestic political architecture on both sides. Iran’s hardliners have survived military pressure before. Without structural guarantees, there is no compelling reason to assume the ceasefire will outlast the political pressures that will push against it in Tehran, in Washington, and in Tel Aviv.
What is clear is that the Strait of Hormuz question — how to demine and reopen the waterway safely — is now a genuinely collective security problem. The UK and France are already building a coalition for demining operations, and the G7 summit beginning today in Évian will be the first major multilateral forum at which the post-ceasefire architecture gets discussed. Europe has leverage it did not have six months ago: the Strait’s importance to East Asian and European energy markets means that any durable solution requires buy-in from partners who are neither American nor Middle Eastern. That is, in its own way, a return to something resembling functional multilateralism — whatever Trump’s Truth Social rhetoric might suggest.
The deeper question is whether this ceasefire reshapes the regional order or merely pauses the conflict. If Iran’s proxy networks in Lebanon and Iraq are genuinely terminated, the geopolitical map of the Middle East looks different from anything in living memory. If they are merely mothballed pending the next strategic moment, the deal will look more like the series of ceasefires in Gaza between 2008 and 2023: locally meaningful, globally overstated, and structurally temporary.
What to watch
- The June 19 signing ceremony in Switzerland: whether formal treaty language differs materially from the MOU, particularly on nuclear provisions and proxy militias. Any significant gap between public statements and treaty text will be a warning sign.
- Oil markets: Brent crude was trading around $87 a barrel as of Sunday. A sustained fall toward pre-war levels would be the clearest market signal that traders believe the deal is durable.
- Iran’s domestic politics: the reaction of the Revolutionary Guards and hardline clerical factions to the terms, once publicly detailed. Their acquiescence — or resistance — will determine whether the ceasefire holds.
- The demining coalition: which countries contribute to Strait of Hormuz reopening operations, and on what terms. That list will reveal the real shape of the post-war security architecture.
— J