“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday evening, while announcing a deal with Iran to end the war, which led to thousands of deaths and disrupted the global economy with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
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The agreement between the United States and Iran on Sunday, which is expected to be formally signed on Jun. 19 in Switzerland, should neither be dismissed nor overstated. It is not a breakthrough in the grand sense of that word. It does not reconcile the irreconcilable American and Iranian narratives, settle the nuclear dispute, or inaugurate a new regional order.
What it does is more modest, but nonetheless important: it creates a breathing space in which diplomacy can try to recover from the violence that nearly buried it. That pause was badly needed. More than three months after the US and Israel launched their war against Iran on Feb. 28, the region had settled into a dangerous twilight between ceasefire and conflict.
Washington and Tehran reached a truce on Apr. 8 that reduced the scale of fighting but not the risk of renewed escalation. American and Iranian forces continued trading blows. Iran and Israel continued to test each other. Gulf states remained exposed to retaliation. Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which the region’s insecurity quickly becomes a global economic problem, remained hostage to dueling coercive measures. Therein lies the immediate value of the memorandum.
If implemented, the Jun. 14 agreement should reopen Hormuz, unwind the maritime shadow war and give regional economies some relief from the energy and food price shocks that followed the disruption of shipping. This is the first test. If vessels do not move, markets do not calm and regional states do not feel less exposed, the agreement will exist only as a diplomatic press release. The second function of the deal is to buy time for the harder negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.
The nuclear file
Washington and Tehran now have 60 days to attempt what they failed to do before the American-Israeli war against Iran last June and, again, before their war against Iran in February: define mutually acceptable limits on Iran’s nuclear program and reciprocal economic relief. The questions are familiar, but not easier for it.
How will international nuclear inspectors be allowed to return? What happens to the fissile material produced before June 2025? How does one verify a program that has operated for years in translucence and for nearly a year in alarming opacity? What sanctions relief is Iran actually being promised in exchange? And can Washington deliver on its promises? This is where the “understanding” becomes, almost by design, a misunderstanding because each side has every incentive to hear what it wants to hear, and every reason to accuse the other of bad faith when difficult political realities intrude.
Washington can read the text as proof that pressure worked: military force and threat of greater destruction restored freedom of navigation and brought Iran back to the table. Tehran can read it as proof that resistance worked: Iran survived a devastating assault, demonstrated its ability to impose costs, and preserved enough leverage to extract relief. Both sides can claim victory. Neither has accepted defeat. That ambiguity made the agreement possible. It is also what could undo it. Nor are the complications only textual. They are psychological and political.
The Trump Administration will be tempted to believe that more coercion can extract better terms. Iranian leaders, having twice been attacked while diplomacy was underway, will be deeply reluctant to make concessions that can be banked by Washington and then discarded. Israel will fear that any deal leaves Iran with too much military and nuclear capability. The hardliners in Tehran and Washington will fear that any deal gives away too much for too little. The space for compromise is narrow, and the incentives for posturing and brinksmanship are high. Yet there is a way through, provided the parties resist the allure of the all-or-nothing bargain.
A comprehensive deal in 60 days is unlikely. A sequence of smaller, verifiable exchanges is not. Iran could restore the International Atomic Energy Agency’s access and account for missing fissile material in return for the US lifting a major category of sanctions on Iran's economy. A subsequent step could deal with the disposition of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile. Further steps could address the duration of an enrichment moratorium, the scope of monitoring and broader economic relief. This approach would not solve every dispute at once. But it would create momentum, reduce mistrust through performance and make a relapse into war more costly for both sides.
The regional track for peace
The regional track for peace between the US and Iran matters just as much. The states that helped facilitate this memorandum—Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar—should not declare the mission accomplished. They should launch a sustained dialogue on regional security, invite Iran and all willing regional states to participate, and ask the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to observe rather than dominate the process.
The agenda should be clear: the protection of maritime commerce, respect for sovereignty, non-interference and the gradual demilitarization of regional rivalries, including through commitments not to use non-state armed groups as instruments of state policy. None of this will be easy.
The agreement may collapse under the weight of its own ambiguities. It may drift into a prolonged “no war, no peace” limbo. Or it may be overtaken by a single strike, a miscalculation or a political provocation. But the alternative is not a better deal magically delivered by more pressure. It is the return of a war that has already shown its capacity to damage Iran, endanger Israel, expose the Gulf, strain the US and shock the global economy. The memorandum is not a finish line. It is a narrow ledge. The task now is to widen it before someone falls off.