US-Iran Standoff: Neither War Nor Peace as Negotiations Collapse

Vice President J.D. Vance told confidants last week that walking out of negotiations with Iran and announcing a blockade on Iranian ports would probably force the Iranians to fold within a few days, according to the Financial Times.

Instead, Vance found himself stood up by Iranian negotiators, who waited until the last minute on Wednesday afternoon to announce that they would not attend the second round of talks in Pakistan.

President Donald Trump, who had threatened "to be bombing" the minute that the U.S.-Iranian ceasefire expired, instead announced that he would "hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal", while continuing to enforce the blockade.

Axios reports that privately, the Trump administration is willing to extend "another three to five days of ceasefire."

In other words, the U.S. and Iran are now locked in a state of neither war nor peace. As in the war itself, the Trump administration walked into the ceasefire negotiations confident that U.S. pressure could force Iran to surrender quickly and at a minimal cost. And instead, the administration has again discovered that Iran is able to hold out longer than expected and do damage in return.

Although mercifully fewer people are being killed than during the full-on war, the standoff in the Persian Gulf is an unstable situation, and the damage to the world economy is accumulating.

On Wednesday morning, Iranian forces attacked and stopped two container ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the only entrance to the Persian Gulf, causing "heavy damage" to one of them, according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Organization.

In his announcement of the ceasefire extension, Trump claimed that Iran was unable to show up to talks because its government was "seriously fractured."

But factions of the Iranian government, across the board, have been clear that they do not want to negotiate as long as the blockade remains in place. Iranian Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, whom the Trump administration had identified as a moderate leader, stated on Tuesday night that the blockade violates the ceasefire and Iran is "prepared to reveal new cards on the battlefield."

Throughout the last few days of the ceasefire, Trump tried to box Iran in by claiming it had already agreed to give up "everything," including its uranium enrichment and interventions in other countries, for free. He had, after all, successfully pushed the limits once before.

Pakistani mediators had insisted (and Trump privately agreed) at the beginning that the U.S.-Iranian truce would include a Lebanese-Israeli ceasefire. Then Trump and Vance claimed that Lebanon was not part of the deal, and Israel would have to continue fighting there. Despite Iranian leaders insisting that the continued fighting was a deal-breaker, Ghalibaf showed up to talks in Pakistan anyway. Trump declared a ceasefire in Lebanon a few days later.

So it seemed to go with the blockade. While Ghalibaf publicly accused Trump of "lies" and "tricks," he left the door open