The Iran Cease-Fire Was Doomed to Fail |
The memorandum of understanding that the United States and Iran signed in June has fallen apart. The deal was meant to halt fighting, open the Strait of Hormuz, and create a 60-day window for further negotiations, but Iran and the United States are back to launching missiles and drones at each other and have shut down commerce through the strait.
The memorandum’s failure should come as no surprise. The agreement postponed the resolution of the most contested issues between the two adversaries—a formula that U.S. President Donald Trump favors and that he also pursued in the Gaza Strip. Since the October 2025 cease-fire in Gaza, large-scale combat has mostly subsided, but Hamas is still armed, over 800 Palestinians have been killed, reconstruction hasn’t started in earnest, and Israel remains in control of 70 percent of the enclave. The Abraham Accords, inked during Trump’s first term, between Israel and a number of Arab states, also exhibited this transactional logic, securing all sides short-term gains while leaving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unresolved.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a limited diplomatic bargain, such as those that produce a cease-fire or hostage exchange. But such discrete deals can accomplish only so much. They tend to fail when they are made to substitute for the harder processes required to address the roots of conflict, including institution building and tough political compromise. Unless a cease-fire is followed by sustained diplomacy, it risks becoming a mere pause that warring parties use to prepare for the next round.
The dangers of transactionalism are especially pronounced in the Middle East, where conflicts are so interconnected and pressure in one arena often produces instability in another. When underlying disputes remain unresolved, they risk erupting and cascading across the region. At its core, the regional security dilemma is one in which each side responds to its vulnerability in ways that make the other feel threatened. Tehran, for example, believes it is protecting itself against coercion, attack, and regime change with a nuclear program, missile arsenal, and network of armed parters, which the Israel and the United States see as intolerable. Unless a larger political process begins to alter that dynamic, the Iran war will continue to flare into life.
Transactional diplomacy is hardly new, but it returned with a vengeance when Trump took office the first time. It rests on a simple premise: states pursue immediate gains through standalone bargains, often built around personal ties between leaders rather than institutional frameworks. Agreements serve as instruments for managing tensions in the present, not as steps toward a future resolution. They are the geopolitical equivalent of a quick buck.
It is clear why leaders are drawn to such arrangements. By being transactional, they can appear to act decisively and achieve a concrete outcome, without having to commit substantial diplomatic resources to reach a solution. Transactional agreements can therefore contribute to conflict management and create diplomatic openings that would otherwise be difficult to secure.
Conflict management, however, should not be conflated with conflict resolution. Transactional diplomacy can support a settlement when it is embedded in a broader process, but it is poorly suited to resolving conflict on its own. History suggests that problems arise when leaders replace strategy with a series of narrow bargains.
THE WAR TO END ALL WARS
In many ways, the current moment resembles the lead-up to World War I, when ambiguous commitments, an aversion to consultation, a reliance on personal diplomacy, and shortsightedness produced a global catastrophe. World War I represented a breakdown of the rudimentary order that was established in 1815, known as the Concert of Europe, under which the great powers of the day came up with rules of engagement and pledged to maintain a balance of power. As the historian Paul Schroeder has argued, the system worked because the signatories saw themselves as custodians of the order, not just as competitors within it. They maintained stability across the continent instead of pursuing every opportunity for gain. Diplomats met to hash out major tensions before they became crises. The system was grounded in legitimacy and mutual responsibility, and the participating governments believed that supporting the system would, in general, advance their own interests.
The system worked well for........