The long-awaited deal, on the horizon, has finally been agreed upon by the US and Iran, with the final MoU due to be signed in Geneva. While the deal ends the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and provides the US with an exit and Iran with means of survival, a realist assessment presents a hard reality for the United States and a new strategic reality for the Middle East.
Decoding the Deal: Conundrum in Disguise
The deal is nothing but a repackaging of months of offers and counter-offers from both sides. The deal has three aspects, as per the text and as reported by several media houses, and it perhaps looks like another dangerous trap rather than a formal framework for ending the conflict in the region. The first level is strategic intent. Since the day of negotiations, Iran has stuck to maximalist demands and made only slight adjustments, keeping non-negotiables intact, while the US’s intent has remained to arm-twist the red lines and attempt to coerce Iran with threats of escalation.
The US showed that it would exit by using force and by attempting to assume a position of strength in concessions or bargaining. While Iran’s strategic intent was to counter-coerce and counter-escalate to raise the cost of US misadventures, remain firm on non-negotiables, and explore concessions to ensure survival after the devastating impact on Iran’s socio-economic fabric.
The intent itself makes clear that Iran’s negotiating style was strategic resistance with sustained pressure on the US, whereas the US’s negotiating style was to dominate the negotiations by extending the madman approach and all-around coercion, launching economic fury and maritime containment in the Strait of Hormuz. The US made a stark error in its negotiating style or in its judgment of Iran’s strategic intent, assuming that coercive diplomacy is ineffective and therefore coercive diplomacy must not be the primary approach for US negotiations.
Rather than fully relying on a dominant posture, the US could have aimed to reduce Iran’s strategic resistance through negotiations and to make Iran’s rigid or maximalist demands more flexible through sustained pressure, including the use of force. This misreading of strategic intent has manifested as an invisible trust deficit on both sides, on which this deal hangs. From the outset of seeking an off-ramp through negotiations, the US’s negotiating style with Iran was off track due to a misreading of intent, just as it was in the Vietnam War, when it misread North Vietnam’s asymmetrical resolve and launched Operation Rolling Thunder to coerce North Vietnam, but the effort failed. North Vietnam was fighting for survival. The threat of pain did not outweigh Hanoi’s ideological commitment to total victory. The US also lacked leverage against Vietnam, as it was an agrarian economy with almost no industries whose destruction would cripple the state’s capacity or will to fight. Similarly, the US misread Iran’s asymmetrical resolve and economic resistance. Iran withstood decades of intense financial warfare and “maximum pressure” campaigns by executing a deliberate strategy of domestic import substitution, localised industrialisation, and alternative global trade routing (Shadow Banking). Though Iran suffered massive economic pressure and even spectacular inflation, it managed to stay afloat due to the pivot to the Asian market and decades of experience in building a resilient economy.
The misreading and negotiating style are the first aspects of this deal, which laid the groundwork for the US’s strategic failure and Iran’s victory.
The Non-Negotiables
The second aspect of this deal is limited bargaining power, caused by Iran’s firm negotiating style and the US’s aggressive one. The non-negotiables in this deal were two demands: first, control of the Strait of Hormuz; second, nuclear enrichment and missile development. At one end, Iran kept its security and strategic interests at the core; on the other, it sought economic concessions from the US to establish a baseline for entering negotiations and halting escalation, thus giving some room to stabilise oil market prices. These baseline concessions, while keeping non-negotiables intact, recall the diplomatic circus that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The Arab coalition had a non-negotiable core interest in reversing humiliation and territorial losses. As a result, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) launched a punishing oil embargo against the United States and its allies. They used the embargo as leverage to force a shift in the global balance of power.
The embargo compelled the United States to undertake unprecedented diplomatic interventions. Arab states secured major geopolitical concessions, including the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. The Arabs used oil politics to set a baseline and force the US to negotiate. Similarly, Iran’s naval blockade and control of the Strait of Hormuz, along with counter-retaliation and escalation targeting allies, with strong asymmetric resolve, pushed the US to negotiate Iran’s baseline and put Iran in a position to bargain for economic concessions. The US’s ability to bargain effectively was limited, leaving only dramatic and nonsensical threats.
The third aspect, namely the US’s desperation for a face-saving exit and the deliberate framing of the deal as a US victory, would be premature and devoid of any high strategic ground, offering only tactical value. Some of Iran’s key redlines (nuclear issue) have now been pushed further in negotiations( a specific window of 60 days), but Iran retains the strategic high ground by preserving control over strategic interests such as missile development, control of the Strait of Hormuz, and securing essential economic concessions for post-conflict survival. Just as the Nixon administration marketed the Paris Accords as “peace with honour” to mask a strategic withdrawal from Vietnam, the Trump administration has framed the Iran framework deal as a definitive victory. In a nutshell, the US failed to achieve its strategic objective, failed to steer the negotiations from a position of strength, and masked tactical value as a strategic victory.
Even if the US inserts some caveats and riders in the deal to project victory, it would further complicate and risk peace in the region rather than provide a genuine framework, putting the US security position in the region under question and straining relations with its key ally, Israel, which refuses to accept any deal and has actively engaged in both covert and overt ways to disrupt it. One of the key demands of Iran, as Aggachi recently put it, was the liberation of Lebanon from Israeli occupation, at least from key regions. This peace deal is in a conundrum that could again disrupt long-term peace in the region.
The Fragile Future
The new strategic reality in the Middle East is perhaps fueling more security anxiety due to the emergence of Iran’s power and the increase in Israel’s strategic insecurities from the deal. As a high-contestation ground remerges, other economically ambitious players like Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia have to readjust politically to manage regional stability amid intense competition and heightened security. The UAE has already learned its lessons and has chosen carefully crafted strategic autonomy, and this significant geopolitical shift in the Middle East has prompted key players in the Region to rethink regional politics in a changing strategic environment. Whatever the case may be regarding upcoming challenges and situations in the Middle East, one thing is clear: this deal will increase political and security fragility in the region.
