Mouin Rabbani
WHILE details regarding the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding have yet to be confirmed, and although the document is by no means a peace treaty, it resolves a fundamental conundrum for Washington.
The 8 April ceasefire agreement between the two countries served Iranian and Arab interests more than those of the US or Israel.
For Iran, the ceasefire meant the end of the US and Israeli bombings and missile attacks on the country without Tehran having to relinquish its trump card, its control over the Strait of Hormuz established in response to the war unleashed against it on 28 February.
For the Arab states, it meant the end of Iranian missile and drone attacks on their territory. But it did not include provisions that enabled them to resume crucial energy exports.
For Israel the end of military operations against Iran was nothing short of a disaster. It suggested the war likely to end without any of its objectives having been secured, and that any future confrontation with Iran would have to be conducted by Israel alone, without the full might of the US military in the lead.
From Washington’s perspective, the ceasefire created space for negotiations about a more formal cessation of hostilities but not much else. It did not remove the disruption to the global economy, for which the US rather than Iran was being held responsible. And the price shock resulting from its war was inexorably heading towards a much more serious supply shock.
Absent either a US military victory or a formal agreement with Iran, the prospects of things returning to normal were essentially zero. Maritime shipping insurance rates, for example, were not returning to economically viable levels.
While it is true that disruptions to global trade resulting from the war hurt US allies and rivals more than the US itself, the US was hardly immune to damage, and this was not limited to significant increases in fuel prices, which have also had multiple secondary effects. With midterm elections approaching this became a cause for increasing concern. More to the point, global economic disruption had an only limited impact on Iran, which the US has spent nearly half a century disconnecting from the global economy.
Simply put, the ceasefire was for Washington an unsustainable reality that left it with only two choices.
The first was a renewal of full-scale military hostilities to achieve at least several of its initial war aims, or at a minimum forcibly re-open the Strait of Hormuz. Doing so would have required massive US resources, many of which it either does not possess or was unwilling to commit. As importantly, success was very far from assured.
The alternative was a formal agreement with Iran that by comparison would make the 2015 agreement concluded by the Obama administration look like an Iranian capitulation. If in 2015 the leverage in the negotiations resided primarily in Washington, in 2026 it was very much in Tehran. And if Obama’s agreement secured snapback sanctions on Iran, the snapback lever would this time be in Tehran’s hands in the form of the Strait of Hormuz.
Faced with this bitter choice Washington attempted to create a third option: to weaken Iran through blockade and attrition and secure an agreement whose terms at least equaled those of the JCPOA.
Initially the approach seemed to be working, or at least the US believed this to be the case. Recognizing its weakening position, Iran struck back. It resumed attacks on several Arab states across the Persian Gulf, struck Israel when it bombed the outskirts of Beirut on 6 June, escalated its attacks to include Jordan in response to further US bombings, and once again targeted commercial shipping in the Gulf.
Essentially Iran threw down the gauntlet to the Americans: reach an agreement sooner rather than later, or accept a rapid slide back into full-scale war.
Tehran’s approach paid off, and the Americans blinked first.
While many details about the negotiations that led to the Memorandum of Understanding have yet to be revealed, it appears that neither the nuclear file nor the Strait of Hormuz were the main obstacles. Rather, the key issues requiring a mutually satisfactory resolution were Israel’s war against Lebanon, and Iran’s access to its frozen assets.
Because the Iranians have come to view the US as thoroughly dishonest, untrustworthy, and unreliable negotiators; because Tehran is convinced that the US was maneuvered into this war by Israel; and in order to protect their most important regional ally, Hizballah, Iran demanded a US guarantee that it would end military operations by its Israeli proxy against Lebanon. A refusal or failure by the US to do so would be interpreted by Iran as a signal that Washington is either unable or unwilling to uphold its commitments, making any agreement with it worthless and further diplomacy a waste of time.
The question of Iranian assets and of US sanctions on Iran were the easier to resolve, since they concern US decisions about US policy. They require only Trump to eat crow, but appear to have been finessed in a manner that the US strongman can claim he is dining on peacock even if purchased with many billions heading towards Tehran.
The question of Lebanon however cannot be resolved with Trump’s trademark bullshit artistry. He needs to establish strict control over the actions of his Israeli proxy in both word and deed.
Israel’s not unexpected bombing of Beirut’s southern suburbs as agreement between the US and Iran appeared inevitable was widely perceived as a desperate effort by the Zionist state to sabotage the agreement before it could be consummated.
This is an entirely plausible explanation. Another possibility is that Israel acted with the full support of Washington, in a final effort by the US to delink Iran from Lebanon and thus deprive Tehran of a significant strategic achievement.
Be that as it may, the gambit failed. As Iran made clear it was preparing to launch an even harsher response than it had done when Israel bombed the outskirts of Beirut in early June, and would not be constrained by the potential repercussions on negotiations with Washington, Trump blinked again. Washington offered Tehran additional concessions for it to refrain from imminent missile launches against Israel and thus save its agreement.
The US and Iran appear to have agreed that ongoing Israeli military operations in Lebanon, even if limited to the region south of the Litani River, coupled with the continued systematic destruction of Lebanese civilian infrastructure by Israel, is certain to be met by a persistent response from Hizballah and is thus a recipe for escalation that jeopardizes everything.
While unconfirmed, reports suggest Washington and Tehran have agreed that Israel will in the coming weeks be compelled to withdraw to the positions it held pursuant to the November 2024 ceasefire agreement, and must this time additionally observe the ceasefire.
This was a bitter pill for the US to swallow, not least because it deals a body blow to the Lebanese government, which Washington has been seeking to strengthen and which has been seeking to profit from Israeli aggression to weaken Hizballah. It also makes the Israeli-Lebanese negotiations sponsored by the US all but irrelevant.
The Memorandum of Understanding that has now been agreed between the US and Israel provides for a period of sixty days for the parties to resolve their differences over a range of other issues. With the partial exception of the nuclear file, these pointedly exclude each and every objective that the US and Israel invoked for launching their war.
The prospect of negotiations resolving the issues that will be discussed, within the time frame specified by the Memorandum, are non-existent. But it doesn’t really matter.
With a formal agreement now in place, Washington’s priority of restoring global economic stability has been achieved. At the end of the sixty days the parties will simply agree to extend their talks further, and then yet again. So long as neither party renounces the framework, and the US does not once again use diplomacy as camouflage for military aggression, the risks of renewed confrontation will gradually recede into the background.
All the discussion about what Israel thinks about the agreement, and how strongly it is opposed to it, can by contrast be safely ignored. Decisions will be made by the US, not by Israel. So long as Washington makes clear it is willing and able to enforce its will upon Israel, and will impose consequences if its instructions are disobeyed, the Zionist state will do as it is told and won’t be able to threaten the agreement. The risk is not that Israel will successfully defy its US sponsor, but rather that the US will allow or enable it to do so.
That risk is admittedly very real, particularly given Trump’s increasingly short attention span and penchant to lose interest once matters become complex. The influence in Washington by the combined forces of the Israel Firsters and Iran war hawks is of course very real. But it is important to recognize that it is the US rather than Israel that will be the ultimate decision maker in this equation, and thus bears full responsibility for Israel’s actions.
The problem has never been one of insufficient US leverage over Israel, but rather of cowardice by the US political class when it comes to using this leverage, and the conviction of US elites that Israeli aggression serves US interests.
Palestine, and specifically the Gaza Genocide, appears not to have been a point of contention in the US-Iran negotiations. It appears the Iranian leadership concluded it would not be able to extract specific US commitments regarding this issue, and will argue it is encompassed in the clause that calls for an end to military hostilities throughout the region.
This is not an approach that is going to work. Israel will argue that anything not explicitly referenced in the agreement is not part of it, and that is presumably why the Iranians insisted on specific references to Lebanon.
On a related note, Iran may also have felt less committed to support Hamas than it does Hizballah since Hamas made no effort to coordinate its October 2023 attacks with Tehran nor informed its erstwhile ally prior to launching them.
Just as Obama awarded Israel USD 38 billion in military assistance to compensate it for an agreement with Iran that served vital Israeli interests, so the Trump administration is likely to compensate its Israeli proxy for ending a war it fought on Israel’s behalf by giving it a free hand in Palestine. That is precisely the US-Israeli policy that produced October 2023 and the Gaza Genocide.
