The duo started the war and they have to end it: A two-week ceasefire

By Elijah J. Magnier –

Victory is normally announced when the war ends with a victorious and a defeated party. However, the United States and Iran both claim victory, but in Israel, where Iranian bombs continue falling with the first light of day, the picture is very different. Washington and Tehran say they achieved their objectives, yet Israel’s broader aim was far more ambitious: the destruction of the Iranian ruling system, the very system with which Washington is now negotiating. Any ceasefire on all fronts, including with Lebanon, is therefore politically dangerous for Benjamin Netanyahu. Domestically, it risks backfiring because he has failed to achieve one of his central stated aims: the disarmament of Hezbollah, which today appears more entrenched and battle-hardened than before. That failure leaves Netanyahu exposed at home and opens the possibility that he may try to undermine or sabotage the current two-week ceasefire arrangement. Israel announced that a phone conversation took place between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, but it did not disclose its content. The devil, as always, is in the details. In such circumstances, caution is justified. A ceasefire on paper is not yet a settled peace, especially when one of the main actors may see continued escalation as politically safer than compromise. It is, however, certain that the same points that led to a ceasefire could have been easily achieved without a war.

The timing of Washington’s message was especially telling. Roughly ninety minutes before the expiry of Trump’s ultimatum to destroy all of Iran’s infrastructure, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared that Trump had “achieved and exceeded” his core military objectives in just 38 days. She presented the U.S. operation as a victory, said military success had created “maximum leverage” for tough negotiations, and claimed that Trump had secured the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, media leaks not denied by Washington suggested a non-official American approval of a two-week ceasefire proposed through Pakistan. Iran indicated that it was prepared to respond positively, on the basis of ten points passed to the United States through the mediator. The meaning was clear: after launching the war and threatening total devastation, Washington moved toward a ceasefire while trying to present that shift as proof of success, not as an admission that escalation had reached its limit.

According to Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency, Tehran’s proposed framework to end the war was based on ten points passed to Washington through the mediator: a U.S. commitment in principle to guarantee non-aggression; continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz; acceptance of uranium enrichment; the removal of all primary sanctions; the removal of all secondary sanctions; the termination of all UN Security Council resolutions; the termination of all International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors resolutions; payment of compensation to Iran; the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region; and the cessation of war on all fronts, including against what Iran describes as the resistance in Lebanon. Whether all of these terms are negotiable or acceptable is another matter. What matters politically is that Tehran answered the threat of total destruction not with surrender, but with a structured set of conditions for ending the war while preserving its sovereignty, strategic position, and regional role.