After a few dozen false starts, it looks like the United States and Iran have finally struck a framework agreement to pause the war for another two months, stabilize global energy prices and reopen detailed negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program. President Donald Trump, in typical fashion, announced the accord on Truth Social, claiming it would put the Middle East on the road to peace. He quickly gave several interviews reiterating yet again that more U.S. military action was in the cards if Tehran didn’t satisfy its end of the bargain. 

For once, the Trump administration and the Iranians are singing from the same song sheet. Both declared that a signing ceremony would take place this Friday, and while the actual text of the agreement hasn’t been published yet, both sides sketched out its general parameters.

The war has hurt every one of its combatants mightily.

The framework is similar to what has been reported for weeks now. The U.S. Navy would suspend its blockade of Iran’s ports in exchange for Tehran reopening the Strait of Hormuz over the next 30 days. The Iranians insist that Washington also agreed to unfreeze billions of dollars of Tehran’s own money currently frozen in foreign bank accounts courtesy of U.S. sanctions. (The Trump administration has yet to verify those assertions.) The ceasefire originally signed on April 8 will officially be extended for another 60 days. And, to Tehran’s delight, the ceasefire will encompass the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

On its face, stopping the fighting, at least for another two months, is a win for all sides. The war has hurt every one of its combatants mightily. More than 7,500 people have been killed. Trump’s approval ratings have gone down the tubes as Americans of all political affiliations question the war and the resulting rise in gas prices. Iran has been losing billions of dollars in oil revenue every week. 

Even countries that didn’t want anything to do with the fighting felt the war’s negative impact. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan were all victims of Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. Washington’s traditional European allies, none of which believed this war was a good idea, faced spiraling fuel costs and an angry American president who demanded they bail him out of his own predicament. 

Given all that, a deal — any deal — is the best possible option on the table. It is certainly a better alternative than Trump renewing a bombing campaign in the unlikely hope that Tehran capitulates. 

Yet we shouldn’t get carried away and treat this framework as an unmitigated success for the United States. The U.S. fought a war of choice for six weeks, then paused it for a few months, only to end it (for now) by kicking the hard problems down the road to a later date.

Trump will likely claim this agreement is better than the one negotiated under President Barack Obama. It’s probably only a matter of time before the president insists that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for ending a war he started in the first place. But there’s no sense putting lipstick on a pig. This arrangement is a stopgap measure to buy time for a longer, technically complicated negotiation between two historical adversaries on Iran’s nuclear program, the very issue that purportedly compelled Trump to wage the conflict about four months ago.

Usually, diplomatic agreements solve problems between states. Yet this agreement doesn’t resolve anything. It turns the calendar back to Feb. 27, the day before the war, when the Strait of Hormuz was open to maritime traffic, gasoline in the U.S. was about $3 a gallon, the U.S. Navy wasn’t enforcing a blockade in the region’s waters and U.S. and Iranian negotiators were haggling over U.S. sanctions relief and Iranian nuclear concessions. In essence, with this framework, Trump and Iran are trying to wipe the slate clean and pretend the past four months never happened. 

Assuming both sides live up to their obligations — no sure thing, given the mutual distrust and constant claims of ceasefire violations — Washington and Tehran will spend the 60 days after Friday’s signing ceremony negotiating a mutually acceptable formula that provides the U.S. with assurances that Iran won’t be able to acquire a nuclear weapon. If those demands are met to Trump’s satisfaction, Iran’s economy will be rewired back into the international financial system.

This new negotiation won’t be a cakewalk, however. The Trump administration and Iran’s leaders still have different concepts of what is considered an acceptable arrangement vis-à-vis the nuclear issue. The White House expects Iran to cease all enrichment for at least 20 years; Tehran is reportedly willing to do so for 10 years. Trump wants Iran to dispose of its enriched uranium stockpile entirely; the Iranians are only amenable to diluting it to a lower grade. Iran wants immediate access to cash held up in banks around the world, U.S. sanctions relief on the front end or (at the very least) U.S. waivers in the interim so Iranian crude oil can be exported again. The White House wants those financial rewards for Iran to be staggered and conditioned on Iran fulfilling its nuclear responsibilities. 

The leaders of the Trump administration and Iran still have different concepts of what is considered an acceptable arrangement vis-à-vis the nuclear issue.

Can all this work be completed in 60 days’ time, as the framework stipulates? The odds aren’t great. The Obama administration needed three years to negotiate caps on Tehran’s uranium stockpile, centrifuge manufacturing and enrichment production, with multiple extensions required along the way. It’s difficult to picture Trump, an extremely impatient man who frequently thinks he’s getting strung along, waiting around for the full 60 days, let alone multiple years. 

On the one hand, we should give Trump some credit for choosing the least bad option in front of him. But what has the U.S. really accomplished since this conflict began? The fact that we even have to ask this question is an indictment of the war itself.  

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Less than two weeks into the war against Iran, President Donald Trump was already throwing a victory parade.

“You never like to say too ⁠early you won,” Trump told supporters on March 11. “We won. In ​the first hour it was over.”

Two days later, he was at it again, writing Iran was “totally defeated” and was living in such a desperate existence that its leadership was begging for a deal. 

Yet this past weekend, Iran launched new missile salvos at Israel, which replied in kind. And on Tuesday, Trump said in a social media post that Iran had downed a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. The pilots were unharmed, but Trump said “the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”

It’s not a stretch to assess that Iran’s leaders are putting just as much pressure on Trump as Trump is putting on them.

If these events are any indication, Iran is not only holding its own but is arguably more aggressive today than before the U.S. bombing campaign began. Yes, the regime has lost a considerable portion of its military power and has cycled through senior officials about as often as the New York Mets have cycled through pitchers. But Tehran has not lost its ability to take the offensive and clearly believes it retains the upper hand against Washington. 

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Trump had high expectations when he initiated the war. The president was so pleased with the first strikes’ results, which included the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader of nearly 40 years, that he implored Iranians to take back their government. The Trump administration told the public — and itself — a story about Tehran’s many weaknesses; its economy was floundering, its people were unhappy, its command-and-control was breaking and its leaders were on the run or dead. Trump thought the Iranian regime would crumble or give up before it decided to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Sooner or later, Iran’s nuclear program would be a figment of our imaginations. 

Of course, none of Trump’s assumptions panned out. The regime is more unified and institutionalized than the White House anticipated. Khamenei has been replaced by his more inscrutable son, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has become the most important power center in the Iranian establishment. The Strait of Hormuz remains shuttered.

Before the April 8 ceasefire, Iran was targeting its neighbors’ energy facilities, both to scare the Gulf states into pushing Trump to de-escalate and to heighten the pain at the pump. Though gas prices in the United States have dropped in the last month, as of Tuesday, Americans are still paying $4.16 a gallon — 40% more than when the war began. The unofficial extra tax has translated into terrible numbers for Trump: Even a 33% plurality of Republicans believe the war has had a more negative than positive impact on U.S. interests. 

Iran is not blind to these dynamics. If anything, it’s emboldened by them. The Iranian military apparatus may still be recuperating from the heavy U.S. and Israeli airstrikes during the war’s first weeks, but the damage inflicted has failed to translate into strategic results. Killing Iranian generals, destroying Iran’s navy and damaging the regime’s drone manufacturing capacity were not ends in themselves but rather a means to an end — coercing Tehran into a settlement on U.S. terms. The scorecard for the Americans on that front is unimpressive. Iran hasn’t just survived the U.S.-Israeli onslaught; it’s effectively pushed back through asymmetric military tactics. It’s not a stretch to assess that Iran’s leaders are putting just as much pressure on Trump as Trump is putting on them.

This past weekend’s missile salvo against Israel is a case in point. This wasn’t a sign of desperation on Tehran’s part but rather Iran making its own threats credible. The regime had warned that Israeli airstrikes against its proxy, Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon, in contraventiosn of a previously announced ceasefire reaffirmed last week, would result in Iranian military action against Israel.

This war will impact the region’s geopolitics for years to come.

If Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thought this was a bluff, Iran put those illusions to rest by sending dozens of ballistic missiles toward Israel. (Fortunately, they only caused minor damage.) Trump, desperate to keep his diplomatic process with Iran alive, has since pressured Netanyahu into postponing whatever air campaign he was ready to order beyond the retaliatory precision strikes the prime minister authorized on Sunday and Monday. 

To be clear, Iran is not solely dictating events, nor is it in a strategically advantageous position over the long-term. This war will impact the region’s geopolitics for years to come. For instance, the firing of thousands of attack drones and missiles into Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar (among others) has jeopardized the regime’s previous attempt at detente with its regional neighbors. Even the regime’s weaponization of the strait may not last; the Saudis and Emiratis are adapting by building alternative pipelines over land to ensure their oil exports are not held hostage to any future Iranian machinations there. 

But from the U.S. standpoint, the war is producing a more extreme Iranian political establishment. Its positions on core issues for any agreement, like the nuclear program, are indistinguishable from the prewar status quo . And the previous risk-adverse behavior proffered by the regime’s older guard is increasingly perceived by the new powers that be as a mistake. Whatever happens next in the conflict, these developments don’t serve U.S. interests.

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