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Notes -
IRAN WINS IRAN WAR
President Trump on Truth Social:
Iran foreign minister Araghchi confirms the agreement.
No regime change
Assurances of "safe" passage through the strait of Hormuz, but no assurance of "free" passage.
Absolutely no mention of uranium, enrichment, or nuclear weapons.
No mention of proxies.
Possible sanctions relief.
I feel like a lot of the takes flying around about the ceasefire are severely premature, both in places like this and in the regular news. Even on its face this is only a two week ceasefire for the purpose of negotiations, and as far as anyone knows the two sides are still very far apart diplomatically. In fact as of my typing this (it’s an insomniac kind of night) Iran has not actually ceased fire, missiles were impacting in Israel and the UAE many hours after the announcement (although this could just be down to their degraded command and control taking a long time to disseminate the orders, to be fair). And Israel is still fighting actively in Lebanon and saying that front isn’t part of the ceasefire agreement, while Pakistan (the broker) says it is.
Not to mention the Iranian-aligned regional militias, which they don’t have perfect control over; a rogue or misinformed group could hit an important US asset (think a lucky rocket or Shahed causing real damage to a US embassy or a Saudi refinery during the ceasefire period) and tank the whole thing without even really meaning to, although that is an edge case.
Just yesterday I was talking to my wife about the war, and I commented that the aftermath of the F-15 shootdown and pilot rescues probably leaves both sides feeling like they’re in a position of strength (Iran can still meaningfully threaten US aviation even under this much pressure; the US can operate deep inside Iran even without having a large-scale presence on the ground). The US has still been moving assets into the region and Iran has been continuing to fire on US bases, Israel, and the gulf Arab countries’ infrastructure. Both sides are feeling enough pain to want to negotiate, but neither seems to feel enough pressure to give anything up, and they certainly haven’t used up their options to escalate. All of the material signs in the past few days pointed to both sides settling in for a relatively protracted war, on the scale of months vs weeks, and I don’t really see that changing. It’s true that Trump could use this as an off-ramp, he is famously erratic and I’m sure the current situation was never the plan, but I’m not so sure he has a strong incentive to back down if Iran still isn’t making concessions, and Iran has no real need to concede anything as things stand.
I would be very surprised if both sides aren’t using the ceasefire as an opportunity to regroup and rearm in expectation of re-opened hostilities when the two weeks are up (or sooner if something else happens). That doesn’t mean negotiations are doomed to go nowhere, but I think people assuming the war is plainly over are engaging in wishful thinking. Not to mention that Israel was not involved in the talks and may decide to continue fighting with or without the US if they don’t like where the peace talks are headed (supposedly their threat of doing just that was a big part of how we got dog-walked into the war in the first place).
Again, the diplomatic positions of the two countries were very far apart right up until the announcement. Even Trump’s own statement only calls it a “basis to negotiate.” Right now the ceasefire is presented in such a way that both sides can at least try to spin it as a win, which is a fine way to begin peace talks, but that may not last when it’s time to hammer out lasting terms. It would be very easy for one or both sides to say the other is being intransigent or duplicitous and resume strikes after two weeks without having to take on the bad look of “violating the ceasefire” at all.
Color me skeptical, I guess is all I’m saying.
UAE Ministry of Defense posted a tweet saying they are currently dealing with Iranian drone and missiles, 15 minutes prior to this comment of mine. If mosaic strategy is true, this would be expected, but then Iran can't be said to be able to sign any ceasefires.
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