A 15-point peace plan sent by the US to Iran, just a month before a total war in the Middle East is top news in the international press which reported on Tehran’s immediate response showing a widening chasm between the two sides.
The original document was not made public, but “trafficked” between the Americans and the Iranians through Pakistani intermediaries and, according to reports. The US offer and Iran’s response abound in maximalist claims.
It is normal for the two camps to start by emphasizing their tough objectives.
Two points – included in the American plan – are related to a 30-day ceasefire, and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz for the free movement of ships, which the US has every reason to ardently want.
Both the truce and navigation are becoming maximalist in the current context because for the Trump administration they represent a politically and economically vital insurance policy. For the Iranian regime they represent a life insurance policy, as prolonging the conflict and blockading the strait are the most convincing weapons in its arsenal.
The equation is simple:
- If Trump obtains a ceasefire for at least a month, as well as a removal of the blockade in Hormuz, he can shrug off the infernal pressure of the markets, which are stridently amplifying the US impasse; a stalemate caused by Iran’s asymmetric reaction. In addition, it would buy precious time for a reshaping of the original strategy towards Iran.
- If Iran accepts the two points put forward by America, then Tehran loses its best cards in the context of American-Israeli pressure. The regime itself risks deep fractures, not the relative superficial ones it has now. Nor will the U.S.-Israeli policy of killing top leaders stimulate the regime’s current heavyweights to consider how a pause could later harm their chances of surviving.
This equation therefore injects extraordinary difficulty into Trump’s core approach to the first steps towards peace, and the fact that the main American negotiators, Jared Kushner-Steve Witkoff are not helpful.
The two – the son-in-law and golf partner of the US president – have “generously” demonstrated their incompetence in negotiations so far with Russia, and in the pre-war negotiations with Iran. It is hard to imagine, therefore, that they became professional overnight to manage an even more complex phase.
In his public interventions, President Trump usually says that his strategic priorities is to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program and for America to destroy this program if Iran does not voluntarily give it up, as well as to deprive Iran of the ability to pose another threat to Israel and the Gulf allies of the United States. On various occasions, but in a way that you can’t understand much, Trump also speaks of regime change in the Venezuelan sense.
But as the war drags on and deepens (Washington has already concluded that the situation has degenerated to such an extent that it can no longer automatically rule out a U.S. intervention on the ground), Trump’s unspoken priorities have rather turned upside down.
And the new priorities are as follows: before it can afford to dream of the denuclearization of Iran and the military emasculation of Iran, the Trump administration needs breathing space to first get rid of the daily nightmare: a temporary halt in the fighting and navigation in the strait.
For these are the two stimuli which would cause the markets to react positively and instantaneously, as well as creating “fantastic” headlines. At the same time, these would be the elements that can remove, at least temporarily, the colossal risks associated with an expansion of American military operations on the ground.
Therefore, if we were to correctly assess what the key points of the American peace offer are, special attention needs to be given to two elements: the pause in fighting and the unblocking of the Strait of Hormuz.
Judging by Tehran’s reactions so far, it seems that the Iranians have correctly identified the key points.
At the moment, Trump has a burning desire to create at least the appearance of positive news, and his peace plan is part of that. Unfortunately, Iran has its hand on the tap today, and Donald Trump is an open book, just as he is for Russia and China.
The current context where the American president is pursuing at least a temporary cessation of hostilities with Iran, is as ironic as it could be.
Because the same Donald Trump bears much of the blame for the international community’s inability to force Russia to accept a truce on the front in Ukraine.
Through his policy of strangling Kyiv and comforting Moscow, Trump has encouraged Putin not to take the ceasefire seriously as a precondition for starting serious peace negotiations. Trump was quick to accept Putin’s position of not accepting a truce and did everything to impose it on the rest of the world and legitimize it in the eyes of the whole world.
In doing so, Trump defied and ignored the views and fundamental needs of Ukraine, and mocked the views of Ukraine’s allies, who had warned that in the absence of a truce, Moscow and Kyiv would not come closer to peace, instead it would be more elusive.
Now, Donald Trump finds out first-hand how important a ceasefire is, how harmful it is to not achieve it, how frustrating it can be to depend on it and especially how much everyone pays for not having it, namely the refusal of the conflicting sides to impose or accept a ceasefire as an elementary condition for later advancing towards the great goal – peace.
