Are US-Iran ceasefire talks in Pakistan doomed to fail?

The bargaining problem

Scholars of war termination argue that conflicts end when both sides identify a negotiated settlement they prefer to continued fighting — a proposition that sounds straightforward until you examine the structural obstacles that have made this particular war so resistant to resolution. Three mechanisms explain why.

The first is the information problem. Wars are partly fought to reveal what diplomacy could not, showing how determined each side is to achieve its goals and how much pain it will endure to do so. Six weeks of sustained strikes have done some of that work. Both sides now have a clearer picture of American resolve and Iranian capacity to take hits and stay in the fight.

The commitment problem is the deeper obstacle. Iran has accepted verification regimes before — the JCPOA demonstrated that. But the United States and Israel launched this war while negotiations were actively underway, with the Omani mediator describing a breakthrough as “within reach.” Neither side can now credibly commit: Iran cannot be confident a new agreement survives the next Israeli government; Washington cannot be confident Iran won’t rebuild what was destroyed once pressure lifts. The US 15-point proposal compounds the problem further, demanding not just nuclear constraints but ballistic missile suspension and conditions amounting to regime change. Iran has already rejected these terms as “extremely greedy and unreasonable.” Formal commitments require not just mechanisms but the belief that the other side will honor them. That belief was destroyed on February 28, when the bombs fell while the diplomats were still talking.

The third mechanism may be the most fundamental: issue indivisibility. Iran’s enrichment knowledge cannot be erased, and its remaining infrastructure, however degraded, cannot be fully verified without access that Tehran has already refused. Either Iran retains the technical capacity for a rapid breakout, or it does not — that binary is not a negotiating position but a structural feature of the problem, and it predicts exactly the kind of ambiguous, contested endpoint we are heading toward.

Israel controls the trigger, not the exit

The United States and Israel launched this war together on February 28. But as Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged, America’s real choice was not whether to fight but how to follow; Israel’s calculus determined Washington’s options. When a patron makes its commitment unconditional, it transfers agenda-setting power to the junior partner. And what holds for entry holds, with even more force, for exit: initiating a war and ending one require different kinds of power.

Israel’s termination condition is the most demanding of any actor in this conflict: not just a degraded Iranian nuclear program, but a regime weakened to the point of strategic irrelevance. That bar has not been met. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot accept a compromise settlement without sparking outrage from his coalition.

Robert Putnam’s two-level game framework captures this trap precisely: leaders must simultaneously satisfy international negotiating partners and domestic audiences, and when those two demands pull in opposite directions, the leader is paralyzed. That gives him the power to block any deal that falls short of his conditions, but not the leverage to deliver the outcome those conditions require.

This is the trap in its purest form. Israel can block a deal it doesn’t like. The ceasefire, which Israeli officials immediately called insufficient and inapplicable to Lebanon, shows the limits of Washington’s ability to end the war on terms of its own choosing.

The United States holds the material levers but not the political ones

The United States entered this war without a clearly defined objective of its own, one distinct from Israel’s goals and achievable on American terms. As Rubio acknowledged, the administration’s choice was never between war and peace but between two pathways into the same conflict. Without an independent objective, Washington has no independent basis to declare victory and leave. Its exit criteria are borrowed from its ally’s definition of success.

Washington has formally adopted Israel’s objectives — regime weakening and nuclear neutralization — while simultaneously positioning itself as a potential deal-maker with Tehran. That is the contradiction at the heart of American strategy: you cannot negotiate with a regime you are simultaneously trying to destroy. Trump’s oscillation between threatening to blast Iran “back to the Stone Ages” and describing “very good and productive conversations” with Tehran in the same news cycle is the logical output of a strategy that was never coherent to begin with.

The polling confirms the domestic pressure. Only 34% of Americans approve of the war in Iran, a seven-point drop since the war began. Even within the Republican coalition, 28% now disapprove, and nearly one-third say the war is not worth the cost if gas rises by a dollar per gallon. The pressure on Trump is toward exit, and now he found one. But the ceasefire was brokered by Pakistan, structured around a 10-point Iranian proposal, and accepted by Israel only reluctantly.

Iran knows how to wait

Tehran’s public position has been consistent, even if its internal calculus remains opaque. Iran’s endpoint is regime survival with its enrichment capacity intact — not victory, but continuity. That is a fundamentally lower bar than any other actor in this conflict is demanding of itself, which is precisely why it is the most achievable.

This is where Hein Goemans’s work on leader survival becomes essential. Leaders who face severe domestic consequences if they are seen to have lost — including regime destabilization or a popular uprising — will fight longer and accept worse odds than leaders who can exit politics gracefully. Iran’s leadership is negotiating from an existential calculation. A settlement that looks like capitulation may be more dangerous to the regime than prolonged conflict, because it hands the domestic critics and the Iranian street exactly the opening they need to challenge the regime’s legitimacy.

This helps explain why Iran formally rejected the U.S. 15-point proposal as “extremely greedy and unreasonable.” Its foreign ministry stated: “Negotiation is in no way compatible with ultimatum, crime, or the threat to commit war crimes.” Even as it accepted the ceasefire, Iran declared the war ongoing and its “hands upon the trigger.” This signaling doesn’t foreclose a deal, but it highlights Iran’s determination to avoid public capitulation.

Conditions are moving in Iran’s favor. Midterm election pressure in Washington, a contracting global economy, and rising oil prices are pushing the United States toward settlement. Tehran knows how to wait, and the economic clock is ticking in its direction.

Three wars, three endings — and one pause

Iran’s 10-point proposal, with Tehran retaining coordination authority over Hormuz and demanding full sanctions relief, suggests it negotiated from strength, not desperation.

What the ceasefire confirms is what bargaining theory predicted: this conflict will not end with a clean settlement but with a series of contested pauses. The commitment problems identified at the outset of this piece remain unresolved, and a two-week ceasefire does not change that. The pause is measured in days; the structural problems it leaves intact are generational.

Nobody has won, though everyone will say they did. The next crisis is already being seeded in the terms of this one.