Iran’s accusation that the United States violated the April 8 ceasefire after fresh American strikes in Hormozgan has complicated an already fragile peace push, even as Secretary of State Marco Rubio says negotiators may need “a few days” to settle the language of an initial framework.
The American position is that the strikes were defensive, aimed at boats laying mines and missile launch sites in southern Iran. Tehran calls them proof of bad faith. That gap captures the difficulty facing the emerging US-Iran arrangement: the parties are still exchanging fire while trying to write the terms of a pause that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz, address Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and defer the hardest questions to later rounds.
The proposed arrangement, still unfinalised and awaiting approval in Washington and Tehran, appears to be a holding framework rather than a final settlement. It would restore traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and create a mechanism for addressing Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, while leaving long-term enrichment limits, missile capabilities and sanctions relief for later negotiations. That is why the debate in Washington has turned so sharp.
More and more analysts are of the view that Democrats can criticise the war as reckless, question the deal as inadequate, or accept that a negotiated exit may be the only way to stop the costs from widening.
Congress has now become one of the arenas in which the proposed framework will be tested. Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took to social media to warn that a 60-day ceasefire based on Iranian good faith would be “a disaster.” Senator Lindsey Graham has argued that any agreement appearing to accept Iran’s ability to threaten Hormuz and Gulf infrastructure would strengthen Tehran’s regional image. Senator Thom Tillis appeared on CNN to question why Washington might accept nuclear material remaining in Iran after the administration had previously suggested Iran’s defences had been “obliterated.”
The Republican unease has since widened. Ted Cruz said he was “deeply concerned” about the reported terms, while former secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned that the emerging deal looked too much like the Obama-era nuclear framework Mr Trump once denounced. Mr Trump pushed back over the weekend, saying critics were attacking something they did not yet understand and that the blockade of Iranian ports would remain “in full force and effect” until an agreement was reached, certified and signed.
The Democratic response has been less coherent. Representative Ro Khanna has defended de-escalation, arguing that the war has raised fuel and food prices without producing a durable answer. Senator Chris Van Hollen has sounded more cautious, saying the outline resembles the “pre-war status quo” and suggesting that Washington may only now be stopping the digging after creating the hole. Looking at the split, more and more analysts are of the view that Democrats can criticise the war as reckless, question the deal as inadequate, or accept that a negotiated exit may be the only way to stop the costs from widening.
These arguments are taking place against the backdrop of a Washington reeling from other political shocks.
The Democratic National Committee’s long?delayed autopsy of the 2024 election, released last week and quickly disavowed by the very officials who commissioned it, found that Democrats had underperformed among men, non?college voters, irregular voters and rural Americans, underfunded key races and failed to listen to complaints about the administration. Party chair Ken Martin apologised for the report’s rollout; the civil war within a party that should have been rejuvenated by the midterm results instead exposed its vulnerabilities. That leaves Democrats badly placed to turn Iran into a clean anti-Trump argument.
Republicans, by contrast, revelled in a series of primary wins by candidates endorsed by President Trump, reminding observers that his grip over the base remains strong even as his foreign policy leaves much of Washington queasy.
One unconfirmed theory now circulating among officials and analysts holds that President Trump himself has grown more eager for an exit than some of his own advisers, not because he suddenly discovered pacifism but because he feels misled; he was reportedly assured that the Iranian regime would crumble as soon as bombs fell, that jubilant crowds would welcome the United States as liberators, and that a friendly government would emerge from the ashes-promises that were always improbable and now look fanciful.
Zohar Palti, a Viterbi International Fellow at the Washington Institute, has argued that Tehran has historically exploited Western diplomatic urgency to extract concessions, buy time and rebuild financial and strategic space. His prescription is “strategic patience”: sustained pressure, maritime enforcement, quiet diplomacy and no appearance that Washington needs a deal at any cost. That argument explains why Mr Rubio’s caution matters. His “few days” formulation can be read as a message to sceptics that the administration is not racing toward a document for the sake of announcing success. Yet he and many others acknowledge that time is not cost?free. Hormuz normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, and the conflict has reduced shipping to a fraction of normal levels, raised the costs of fuel, fertiliser and food, and shaken energy markets. In other words, strategic patience may be sound in theory but expensive in practice and a prolonged war will bleed global markets and domestic approval ratings simultaneously. A prolonged war would also keep Israel and Hezbollah on a parallel track of escalation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will intensify strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Israel has continued air attacks it describes as self-defence despite a mid-April ceasefire. The Revolutionary Guards, meanwhile, warn that any additional U.S. strike will expand the war beyond the region.
There is another layer to Mr Trump’s diplomacy. Even as his administration works on the immediate Iran framework, the president has tried to connect any settlement to a broader expansion of the Abraham Accords, urging countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey to join or deepen normalisation with Israel. The move appears designed to sell an Iran exit as part of a wider regional rearrangement rather than a narrow ceasefire with Tehran.
For Pakistan, that is where the diplomacy becomes sensitive. Islamabad’s usefulness in the Iran file rests on a narrow proposition: it can help keep a channel open between Washington and Tehran. Domestic pressures mean, however, that it cannot afford to have that channel folded into an unrelated normalisation timetable with Israel. A Pakistani source familiar with the matter told Reuters that the Iran diplomacy and Abraham Accords push were “not interlinked and cannot be made so.”
The writer is OpEd Editor (Daily Times) and can be reached at durenayab786 @gmail.com. Shetweets @DureAkram.