The U.S.-Iran ceasefire that began on June 17 has effectively collapsed, and both sides are back to firing missiles and drones across the region.
A 14-point memorandum of understanding set the truce and opened a 60-day window to negotiate a permanent end to hostilities. That framework has now broken down. After the United States struck Iran’s coastal defense systems, Iran answered by hitting U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Jordan. It also struck two oil tankers from the United Arab Emirates.
Fight over the Strait of Hormuz
President Trump announced that the U.S. is re-imposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports, starting on June 14. He said the United States will “become the guardian” of the Strait of Hormuz. He has also pledged to “decimate and destroy” Iran if it carries out a reported assassination plot against him. One earlier threat, a 20 percent toll on cargo passing through the Strait, he has backed away from.
An advocate’s reading
Scott Harris of Between The Lines spoke with Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), the group founded by the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi before the Saudi government killed him in 2018. Jarrar, who is an advocate and not a neutral observer, called the situation unstable.
In his account, the war began because Trump expected a repeat of Venezuela, where he could change the Iranian regime within days, install a friendly ayatollah and leave. That did not happen. Sixty days into the war, Jarrar said, the United States and Israel had failed to get by force what they wanted, which he described as the destruction of the Iranian government. For Israel, he said, the goal was the destruction of Iran as a state and a people.
That failure, he argued, is why they came to the table. He also said Trump and Netanyahu do not believe in ceasefires, and he described near-daily breaches of the framework, comparing them to Israel’s conduct in Gaza and Lebanon over months and years.
Jarrar did not call the agreement dead. “Trump and Iran still have a lot to lose” if they return to full-scale war, he said, so some negotiation is still going on. But bombing and killing flare up daily.
Harris asked why the truce could not hold for the 60 days. He noted speculation that Trump’s erratic behavior and rhetoric, along with the incompetence of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, contributed to the talks falling apart.
