More than two months after the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran, the situation has become increasingly stark every day. US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have proven unable, despite a particularly intensive bombing campaign, to achieve the objectives they had set for themselves.
The decapitation of Iran’s government and the degradation of its military capabilities did not produce the regime change they expected, nor did it deprive Iran of its capacity for harm, as the United Arab Emirates experienced once again on 5th May. This war of choice has even provided the Iranian regime, which is rightly despised by much of its own population, with an additional weapon: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, posing the threat of a major shock to the global economy.
It is urgent to end the conflict, which has proven disastrous for the American administration, as its increasingly chaotic communication has become ever more embarrassing. The 4ht May announcement of a military operation aimed at forcing passage through the Strait of Hormuz was abandoned the very next day. The same day, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that the war was “over,” only to be contradicted by Trump’s threat of “much stronger” bombings if no diplomatic progress were made: Washington’s word has rarely been so undermined, and this has fuelled dangerous Iranian brinkmanship.
A return to normalcy in the Gulf’s waters would make it possible to resume substantive negotiations on the central issue of the US’s dispute with Iran: Tehran’s nuclear programme. The programme’s military aims, which Tehran has denied, were nonetheless confirmed by its uranium enrichment activities, which were incompatible with purely civilian uses. As a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is entitled to civilian nuclear activities.
The priority should be to oversee these activities through restoring a robust inspection regime, which could be guaranteed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This would also neutralise a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that was likely buried during the US bombings in June 2025.
Iran was able to build up this stockpile after Washington, at Trump’s initiative, withdrew from the agreement that the Barack Obama administration negotiated in 2015. Since then, the current president has repeatedly claimed he could obtain a more restrictive arrangement, but has never succeeded. Here, too, both sides would need to temper their maximalist demands. In the face of a war that has reached a stalemate, the benefits to be gained – turning the page on this conflict for Trump, with renewed oversight of Iran’s nuclear programme, and, for Iran, lifting the international sanctions that have devastated its economy – should prompt both parties to accept a diplomatic solution. As the former Gambian president Sir Dawda Jawara once quoted the famed British Prime Minister, “to jaw-jaw is better than to war-war”.
