Over the past week, the tenor of the confrontation between Iran and the U.S./Israel has shifted from open hostilities to bargaining and then to new forms of coercion. A two-week ceasefire commenced on 8 April, and though much fire has ceased, other belligerent acts have taken place that could lead back to all-out war. Israeli bombardment of Lebanon proceeded for several days, for instance, as did Hizbollah rocket fire at Israel. Gulf Arab states also reported incoming fire even after the ceasefire took effect. Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran began in Islamabad on 11 April, but they broke up, at least for the time being, with President Donald Trump announcing a naval blockade of Iran that came into effect on 13 April. Meanwhile, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained largely suppressed.  

The discussions in the Pakistani capital were the highest-level talks between the sides since Iran’s 1979 revolution, with Vice President JD Vance heading the U.S. delegation and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, heading the Iranian team. It was the first time that a parliamentary speaker has led negotiations for the Islamic Republic. Traditionally, this role has been reserved for either the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council or the foreign minister. It appears, however, that Qalibaf was a consensus pick, backed by both the Council and Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

Though the Islamabad talks fizzled, neither side has declared diplomacy over, suggesting that a framework for continued dialogue remains in place. On one of the main sticking points, Iran’s nuclear program, the sides could be within haggling range of a deal, if reports are correct: Washington demanded a twenty-year halt to Iranian uranium enrichment, while Tehran proposed five years; the U.S. team asked Iran to ship its existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium offshore, while Iranian negotiators said it could be downblended. But Trump has distanced himself from some of these positions, and regardless, significant gaps separate the parties. Overall, the 8 April ceasefire appears less like a step toward settlement and more like a temporary structure within which both sides will keep applying pressure in a bid to strengthen their respective hands. Whether the de-escalation produced by the truce can survive amid that pressure – including from the strait closure, the U.S. blockade and the Israeli campaign in Lebanon – is unclear.

Iran’s conduct is best understood as an attempt to convert battlefield resilience into political leverage. Tehran regards the ceasefire not as an endpoint but as an opportunity to shape the terms of the conflict’s next phase. Its negotiating position has remained consistent: any more durable cessation of hostilities must go beyond a pause in fighting to address the conditions under which Iran could accept a longer-term arrangement. These conditions – an end to the war on every front (including Lebanon), guarantees against renewed attack, financial compensation for Iran’s losses and acknowledgement of its prerogatives in “regulating” the passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – point to a broader objective of consolidating what Iranian leaders see as their achievements in the war. Having absorbed weeks of military blows, and paid significant human, economic and diplomatic costs, Tehran is unlikely to accept an outcome that appears to validate coercion as a strategy for gaining political concessions from it. 

In Tehran, the two-week ceasefire is accordingly framed as evidence that the U.S. has reached the limits of its strong-arming. Iran’s leaders are using the truce to signal that Tehran is open to diplomacy, but only on terms that show it has not suffered strategic defeat. This logic is most visible in Iran’s approach to the Strait of Hormuz. After the ceasefire began, Tehran suggested it was willing to allow a limited number of ships to pass through the waterway, but only in a manner that reinforced its position as a gatekeeper charging tolls. While at first the Trump administration seemed amenable to some version of that arrangement, it quickly returned to insisting that Iran fully reopen the strait. Four days after the truce, Trump announced that the U.S. would impose a naval blockade to force it back open. In response, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that any U.S. warship approaching the strait for minesweeping or other manoeuvres Iran deems hostile will be a target. The Iranian armed forces further declared that the security of Gulf ports is an “all-or-nothing” proposition – suggesting that any blockade of Iranian ports could trigger retaliatory measures to disrupt port operations in U.S.-allied Gulf Arab countries.

Meanwhile, Iran’s state-affiliated media laboured to explain Tehran’s decision to enter talks in Islamabad while Israeli strikes continued – albeit at lesser intensity – in southern Lebanon. Iranian officials say a comprehensive end to the war on all fronts is a red line. 

In dispatching Vice President Vance to the Islamabad talks, the Trump administration signalled its seriousness about dialogue. It also implicitly acknowledged Iran’s distrust of its previous U.S. interlocutors – envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner – following two occasions, in June 2025 and in late February, when Iran was attacked by some combination of the U.S. and Israel even as negotiations were still under way. Press reports indicate that the nuclear file remained at the top of the U.S. agenda in Islamabad. The discussions touched only briefly on Iran’s ballistic missiles, drone program and support for Middle East proxies, like Hizbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, suggesting that these issues have diminished in importance as efforts to end the war gather steam.

But the most immediate issue now seems to be the Strait of Hormuz, and here, confusion reigns. Since the war began, President Trump’s rhetoric about the waterway has veered from one position to another, at times suggesting that reopening it is a problem for other countries to solve and at others angrily demanding that Iran reopen it posthaste – or face severe consequences. With the imposition of a naval blockade, itself an act of war, Trump appears to have settled on the latter stance, opening the way to a resumption of full-scale hostilities if talks fail to get maritime traffic moving again. What happens will depend, however, on precisely how the blockade is carried out. It is questionable whether the U.S. would take the risk of enforcing it against, for example, Chinese-flagged vessels. It is also unclear whether Washington is fully prepared to endure the economic pain it could cause itself if it strictly enforces the blockade – even if the impact on the Iranian economy (which was already in rough shape before the war) could be greater. Certainly, if U.S. ships fire at Iranian targets, or are fired upon, the risk of further escalation is very high. 

Still, for the time being, the U.S. seems content with an ambiguous posture in which it is simultaneously trying to put military on pressure Iran, ostensibly adhering to a ceasefire (notwithstanding the belligerent character of imposing a blockade), and leaving the door ajar for diplomatic engagement. 

Israel did little to disguise its unhappiness with the ceasefire, expressing doubt it will hold and keeping its military ready to resume striking Iran at any moment. “Our finger is on the trigger”, said Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu on 8 April. He insisted that the war is not over and that Israel will achieve all its goals. Israel’s primary objectives remain removing Iran’s stores of enriched uranium – a point underscored by Defence Minister Israel Katz on 14 April as a “precondition for ending the campaign” – and thwarting its capacity to reconstitute its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Before the ceasefire took hold, Israel had largely exhausted the key military targets in Iran and begun bombing factories and oil facilities, arguing that damaging the country’s economy would bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. It was largely a bystander in the Islamabad talks.

Even after the ceasefire was announced, Israel continued to strike Hizbollah in Lebanon, mounting one of its deadliest attacks ever on the country on 8 April. That assault killed hundreds and wounded thousands, many of them civilians. Operation Eternal Darkness, as Israel dubbed this series of airstrikes, hit one hundred Hizbollah command centres in ten minutes, according to the Israeli military. Lebanese called it “black Wednesday”. Hizbollah, for its part, has continued to fire hundreds of rockets at northern Israel.

An unresolved question is whether the ceasefire was to include Lebanon. Pakistan and others who brokered it said it was. Israel and the U.S. claimed the contrary, though Washington subsequently appeared to back away from this stand. It persuaded Israel to scale down attacks in Lebanon and accede to a longstanding request from the Lebanese government for direct talks. Iran appeared to quietly accept this formula as a de facto substitute for an actual ceasefire in Lebanon. The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors met on 14 April in Washington with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio as mediator. 

While Prime Minister Netanyahu will surely keep playing for time in an effort to maximise the damage done to Israel’s adversaries before the war winds down, he remains beholden to President Trump, and he is unlikely to resist direct U.S. pressure to stand down when that is applied. 

Gulf Arab states continued to face fire from Iran in the form of drone and missile attacks after the truce announcement, the latest of them launched toward Bahrain on 13 April. These states’ reactions to the ceasefire showed that most want the war to end, but not on the terms Iran is demanding. They fear a scenario in which the U.S. exits the conflict, leaving them to face Iranian hegemony in the Strait of Hormuz and violations of their airspace alone. Against this backdrop, the Gulf Arab states refuse to treat freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz as a matter for negotiations with Iran. The United Arab Emirates was the most emphatic of the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries in making this point, while Oman was the most willing to engage Iran, though it also said it would not countenance an Iranian-led toll system in the strait. These states were not directly involved in the Islamabad talks, but Saudi Arabia participated in a group also including Pakistan, Egypt and Türkiye that supported Pakistan’s brokering of the 8 April ceasefire. It will meet again in Antalya, Türkiye on 17 April. 

The U.S. move toward imposing a naval blockade creates a new dynamic in the Strait of Hormuz by attempting to override Iranian control instead of negotiating over it. This shift in effect transforms the strait from a bargaining chip into a flashpoint for potential military escalation. The Revolutionary Guards’ message to the U.S. navy suggests that the threshold for confrontation in this domain is likely to be low. Tehran may exercise caution in testing the blockade, but it retains the capacity to attack U.S. vessels using fast boats and drones. It can also lay sea mines. 

At the same time, the risk of maritime conflict spreading elsewhere is rising. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have threatened to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, if hostilities resume. The message is blunt: the leverage of Tehran and its allies is not limited to a single chokepoint but extends to a second. Saudi Arabia in particular has been relying on oil shipments through Bab al-Mandab as a workaround with Hormuz shut. The U.S.  blockade is therefore a high-stakes gambit that could have major repercussions for global maritime trade. The International Monetary Fund has warned that the war risks causing a worldwide recession. 

The most likely near-term scenario appears to be that the messy ceasefire continues alongside renewed attempts at negotiation, with the danger of rapid escalation created in part by the new dynamic at sea. Continued or intensified Israeli attacks on Hizbollah pose a further dilemma for Tehran. Iran has cited these airstrikes among its justifications for keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed. Attacks on Gulf Arab states by Iran or Iranian allies could also make the truce unravel. A final risk lies in indirect escalation. Israeli activity, including covert action, could further corrode the ceasefire without triggering a formal breakdown.