There are three current ceasefires in the Middle East. 

• One is between Israel and the USA on one side and Iran on the other; each side accuses the other of violating it. 
• One is between Israel and Lebanon. This is odd because Israel was not fighting the government of Lebanon but the forces of Hezbollah. It began by opposing talks between the two governments but has said it will respect the ceasefire as long as it is not one-sided. Israel has accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire and the Lebanese army has reported Israeli violations. It expires on 26 April.
• And the third is in Gaza where, six months after it was first signed, Israeli attacks continue, killing at least 32 Palestinians in April (in a total of at least 738 since the ceasefire was declared on 10 October 2025).

In short, the ceasefire in the war of Israel and the USA against Iran is not unique in its complexity and uncertainty. Ceasefires are almost always tricky and routinely fragile, reflecting the dynamics of war as much as the possibilities of peace. This one has proven to be no exception to the rule. Within half a day, the parties and mediators were disputing what was agreed, whether the ceasefire was supposed to include Lebanon, what would happen with Iran’s enriched uranium, and what would happen with the Strait of Hormuz. 

From ceasefire to peace deal?

Mind you, these disputes were only about the terms of the ceasefire, not the ultimate peace agreement. In general, sorting out the terms for a durable settlement is much more complex and demands more time and energy along with concentration and creativity by all the parties.  

And to underline the point a second time, those uncertainties were visible even before Trump declared a blockade of Iran’s ports until Iran allowed fully free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. To which, predictably, Iran responded by shooting at ships again.

So what now? As I write, the US delegation seems to be on the way to Islamabad for a second round of negotiations, the Iranian delegation isn’t on its way but the government is thinking about it, and Trump has re-set one of his many deadlines, extending the ceasefire by 24 hours. After that he probably won’t extend the ceasefire again, he says, and he might order the attacks on Iran to re-start, though he’s not sure. So there we are.

On again, off again

In principle, there are two clean ways to exit from a ceasefire – resume fighting or sign a peace agreement. A resumption of fighting does not seem to be in either the USA’s or Iran’s interest but they remain far apart on the terms of a long-term deal. So we are in one those geopolitical moments that are unfortunately encountered all too frequently, when neither peace nor war is really viable. In which case, options between peace and war come into focus.

One possibility is for either one or both sides to resume military action briefly and selectively, as Iran has done by firing on merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, then stop for a while, then do start again. It has other options too, such as attacking Gulf states, Israel or US military bases. The USA and Israel have multiple options too, of course, against Iran and Lebanon and possibly the Houthis in Yemen.

The two sides can thus switch the war on and off again. And again. They will inflict some pain but not at a level that either one finds unendurable. They will also inflict continuing pain on the rest of the world, especially on the poorest, most vulnerable and most at risk of malnutrition and hunger. But the degree to which they care about that seems to be questionable at least.

They will each try to calibrate what they do to stay below a threshold of provoking all-out escalation in retaliation, while nonetheless doing enough harm to offer some kind of incentive to make some concessions at the negotiating table. In the long history of ceasefires and negotiations, there are many instances of talking and fighting at the same time, negotiating through violence as well as words.

This on-again, off-again war would prolong an unstable, unresolved and risk-filled conflict, interspersing periods of relative calm with moments of violence, destruction and death. If the world is unlucky – as it seems to be all too much this decade – the parties will find themselves trapped in and addicted to a cycle of violence that they can’t see a way out of and which will continue to damage countries and communities all round the world.

A long truce or proxy wars?

There are other possibilities, of course. One is a long, long ceasefire. The truce on the Korean Peninsula, after all, has lasted for almost 73 years (though the armistice agreement was formally revoked by North Korea in 2013). The result is an unresolved, often hostile and heavily-armed confrontation. But the period of that truce has also allowed South Korea to grow economically and become a democracy.

A quite different possibility is prolonged war by proxy. One of the major claims against Iran by Gulf states, Israel, Europe and the USA is its mobilization of the so-called axis of resistance. Hezbollah in Lebanon (and fighting for many years in Syria), the Houthis in Yemen and various Shi’a militias in Iraq are normally identified as being part of the axis, and some western analysts also include Hamas and other Sunni groups in it. The axis has been weakened by the ending of the civil war in Syria in late 2024, Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2025 and this year, and its sustained onslaught on Hamas in Gaza. 

On the US-Israel side, the obvious option is to foment ethnic conflict in Iran. Israel’s Netanyahu reportedly lobbied for months to get the Trump administration to support a Kurdish uprising in Iran. Shortly after the attack on Iran began, the CIA was reported to be preparing to arm Kurdish forces there. There has been little information about it lately, perhaps because of Turkish objections; Türkiye does not want Kurdish success in Iran to encourage renewed separatist conflict in Türkiye itself. The government of Iraq likely takes a similar view.

So what’s next?

At present, the long, long truce seems least likely of the no-peace-no-war possibilities but don’t discount it or knock it. The Korean truce was a purely military agreement between the forces of China, North Korea and the USA; the other 17 governments involved in the fighting were not signatories.* It was meant to pave the way for a conference to be held within three months ‘to settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, the peaceful settlement of the Korean question, etc.’ It transformed itself along the way (so don’t discount a similar possibility now); while there have been lethal incidents and moments of tension in the 70-plus years since, there has been no resumption of full scale war (which is why not to knock it).

Fomenting ethnic conflict by encouraging, arming and financing a Kurdish uprising would probably hinder Iran by diverting military resources. But it would be damaging for everybody – the Kurds who would face heavy retaliation, the rest of Iran’s population, and the whole region. That said it is the kind of option that Netanyahu and Trump might favour. It’s a way of attacking inside Iran without committing Israeli or US forces directly. 

It would also be wholly compatible with the calibrated violence of an on-again, off-again war. The same option of twin action tracks is available to Iran through what is left of the axis of resistance, as well as through its capacity to attack US forces, or Israel, or other Gulf states, or economic assets. 

It is unfortunately a mode of conflict that seems well suited to Trump and his outbursts of exaggerated threats and belligerences, to Netanyahu and his taste for force and chaos, and to the Iranian leadership with its long-term strategy of exhausting the USA and pushing it into withdrawing from its dominant position in the region.

(On that last point, I cannot recommend too highly Vali Nasr’s brilliant book, Iran’s Grand Strategy: A political history, published by Princeton UP.)

So all the signs seem to point towards the extended pain of an on-again, off-again war. With luck and/or wisdom, and maybe both, we can instead have a prolonged truce. With more luck and wisdom and a heap of patience, we could get a peace agreement.

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NOTE

* The primary antagonists in the war were North Korea and South Korea. North Korea was supported by China and the USSR, while South Korea was supported by the United Nations Command. As well as the USA, 15 further countries contributed combat forces: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and the UK. In addition, five countries – Denmark, India, Italy, Norway, and Sweden – provided medical support to the UN Command.