Ceasefire holding for talks

The delay in USA-Iran talks is not good for lasting peace

The two main parties to the current conflict, the USA and Iran, have shown the requisite desire to keep talking, and to maintain the facade of a ceasefire even if one no longer exists in the strict sense of the term, because both sides have attempted to enforce a blockade, Iran od the Hormuz Strait and the USA od Iranian ports, even as the deadline for the original 14-day deadline expired on Tuesday. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday extended the deadline, but this time kept it open-ended, saying that this was done on the Pakistani request to allow negotiations to take place. Though he said that a US delegation was going to arrive in Islamabad on Friday (today), Iran had not confirmed this. This implies that Iran is still holding back from the kind of surrender that the USA expects. Iran should also not expect that the USA will treat it as a victor in the kind of asymmetric warfare it has engaged in.

It appears there is still a mismatch of perceptions between the two sides. It really depends on the USA at the moment, for Iran does not have the ability to make the USA stop attacking it, even in a best-case scenario. The USA is not helped by a President who insists on claiming victory which is not there, who has launched an attack without getting the outcomes he wanted. Those victory claims might rile Iran, but of greater importance is whether Israel is satisfied by then. Even now, it is doing its best to sabotage the US-Iran talks by violating the ceasefire in Lebanon. It is thereby jeopardizing its own talks with Lebanon, but it probably does not mind that, because it did not seek those talks of its own accord.

The USA is finding that Iran does have it over a barrel because of the Hormuz Strait, which it has not been able to open so far. However, that should not be assumed by Iran to mean that it has won. The world wants the Strait open, but all the interlocutors should realize that what the USA has not been able to force Iran into doing, it is highly unlikely to be able to do because of negotiations. Pakistan would do best to maintain its acceptability as a mediator to all sides, and must not favour any one side too much in its anxiety to broker a deal.