April opens with Tehran subjected to periodic bombardments by Israel and the U.S. armed forces, with the Strait of Hormuz turned into a closed artery choking the global energy supply, and with an Iranian political class split between those who demand total resistance and those who whisper, in ever-louder tones, that it is time to negotiate. Iran today possesses more power than it has ever held to dictate the terms of a peace. Precisely for that reason, if it does not act now, that power could become its own sentence.
The “Ramadan War” (as Tehran has named it) erupted on February 28, 2026, at a moment when both sides were engaged in diplomatic negotiations. The joint aerial bombardments by Israel and the United States surprised a portion of the Iranian political class who perhaps, with too much optimism, believed the new Trump administration could lead to an accord. That miscalculation would set the tone for everything that followed. To understand why this war is happening now, one must go back to the Vienna Nuclear Deal of 2015, an enormously intricate diplomatic agreement that capped Iran’s enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief. It was the Trump Administration’s first move to dismantle it in 2018, denouncing it as “the worst deal in history.” The subsequent spiral of maximum pressure, the expansion of Iran’s nuclear capabilities to levels of uranium enriched up to 60%, the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the gradual strangling of diplomatic space… all of these lead to this moment. The Ramadan War is the logical culmination of a chain of decisions. History, as always, accrues consequences.
“Strategic intelligence does not consist of continuing to fight until total victory, but in turning that position of strength into a negotiated agreement”
Today Iran finds itself in a position of relative advantage that has no precedent in its recent history, and that edge carries an expiry date. Its armed forces have withstood weeks of combined bombardments from two of the world’s most advanced military powers. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has dealt a severe blow to the global economy (oil prices have surged to historic highs and stock markets closed the quarter with their worst performance in years), and international public opinion shows a growing weariness with the conflict. In this context, strategic intelligence is not about fighting until victory, but about transforming that strength into a negotiated settlement that protects Iran’s national interests and closes the door to a new round of even more devastating violence. Those who mistake resistance for victory are making the same error as those who mistake mere survival for health.
What Iran Demands for the Temporary Truce to Become a Lasting Agreement
Yet the 2015 nuclear accord, which limited Iran’s atomic capabilities, was unilaterally annulled by a U.S. administration in 2018. This breach directly led to the current war, costing lives on both sides. In light of this precedent, what security can Iran (or any other nation) have that a new pact will not suffer the same fate in the near future, within four or eight years? The honest answer is that no legal text can guarantee the political will of a future administration. That does not mean, however, that all guarantees are equal, nor that Iran should sit down to negotiate with empty hands. The lesson of 2015 is not that agreements are useless. Rather, it shows that a bilateral deal with Washington is too fragile to sustain strategic interests of this magnitude.
“The American private sector (oil companies seeking entry into the Iranian market) could become an internal pressure group that politically complicates any future rupture”
A new treaty would need to be constructed in a radically different way. Tehran should insist that the agreement be anchored in a United Nations Security Council resolution with binding provisions, as was partially the case with the JCPOA, but this time with far more robust multilateral verification mechanisms and with automatic compensation clauses for any unilateral violation. Europe, which in 2018 attempted to sustain the deal with instruments like INSTEX and failed, would have to commit to tangible economic consequences for any unilateral withdrawal this time around. The American private sector (oil companies eager to access the Iranian market) could become an internal pressure group that politically complicates any future rupture. Guarantees cannot be purely legal; they must be real, economic, and politically costly to break.
An imperfect, multilateral agreement, rich in verification mechanisms and cross-cutting interests, is infinitely harder to destroy than one signed between two leaders in a room. The question Iran must ask itself is not whether it can trust America, because it never could. The question is whether it can forge an agreement so costly to breach that even those who distrust it would prefer to uphold it. That is the only kind of peace history has shown to be durable: not the peace sustained merely by good faith, but the peace sustained by the interests of all those who sign it.
