US and Iran halt attacks, mediators race to restore diplomacy after strikes

Eastern Herald - The guns went quiet on Thursday, but nobody was celebrating. After two days of strikes between the United States and Iran, both sides have halted military operations in what officials described as an “uneasy calm,” even as the diplomatic machinery that might prevent a return to fighting remained broken and the mediators who put it together scrambled to reassemble it.

A US official told Al Jazeera on Thursday that Washington “remains committed to negotiations with Tehran and technical talks continue.” The phrasing was careful to the point of near-meaninglessness – commitment to talks is not a commitment to peace – but it was the first formal signal from either side that the exchange of strikes had stopped, at least temporarily.

The immediate trigger for this round of fighting stretched back 48 hours. On July 7 and 8, Iranian forces attacked multiple commercial vessels outside the routes the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had designated as permissible shipping lanes. The United States responded with extensive strikes, the most significant military exchange between the two countries since the Hormuz dispute escalated earlier this year. By July 9, President Donald Trump had formally declared the June ceasefire framework – a 14-point memorandum of understanding brokered in mid-June and known as the MoU – “over.”

The MoU had been fragile from its signing. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards struck US bases in Bahrain and Kuwait as Trump voided the agreement, marking the culmination of weeks of escalating violations that both sides had blamed on the other. The agreement’s fatal ambiguity lay in a single clause: it tasked Iran with ensuring safe passage through Hormuz while simultaneously referencing future coordination with Oman and Gulf states – language Tehran read as conferring authority and Washington read as precisely the opposite.

The structural disagreement had never been resolved, only papered over. Iran’s position, stated repeatedly since February when it first shut the Strait after US and Israeli strikes, is that any passage or maritime security arrangements should be coordinated with Tehran. The US position is equally clear: Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. No document that leaves that contradiction unresolved can hold for long under military pressure, and the MoU didn’t.

The ceasefire’s slow failure began on June 25 – nine days after the MoU was signed – when a Singapore-flagged vessel was attacked in waters the agreement was supposed to have made safe. Both sides disputed responsibility. The first post-MoU violence was followed by a pattern of smaller incidents through late June, until July 7 and 8 produced the concentrated attack on commercial shipping that drew the US military response. According to Al Jazeera’s analysis of the Hormuz dispute, Trump’s formal declaration that the MoU was finished came on July 9, even as his own Pentagon was still in the process of striking Iranian positions.

The mediating nations now trying to restore some form of dialogue include unnamed governments that brokered the original agreement. Pakistan and Qatar played prominent roles in June, though their capacity to produce a new framework under current conditions is uncertain. A ceasefire requires both sides to believe they gain more from stopping than from continuing. Whether that calculus has shifted since Thursday’s halt is the question no official statement has yet answered.

The economic stakes ensure the pressure for some form of agreement remains intense. Oil prices surged to more than $4.50 per gallon in February when Iran first closed Hormuz, then retreated after the MoU reopened the Strait and markets rallied. Another extended closure would reverse those gains in hours. Iran’s own economy, battered by sanctions and inflation, depends on oil export revenues that pass through or near the disputed waterway.

Iran’s political calendar adds a further complication. The death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had already upended the diplomatic timeline – US-Iran nuclear talks were formally paused following his death, according to statements made by Trump last week. Whoever consolidates power in Tehran will be negotiating not only a ceasefire but their own domestic legitimacy against a backdrop of military confrontation with the United States.

What Thursday’s halt leaves unanswered is whether it represents a genuine pause ahead of new negotiations or simply the interval before the next round of strikes. Technical talks, as the US official described them, are not peace talks. The structural dispute over Hormuz – who controls it, on whose terms, under what enforcement mechanism – has not changed since February. Until it does, what the region has is not a ceasefire. It is a moment between rounds.