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Tom Hussain

A diplomatic push by Oman, Pakistan and Qatar is widely expected to yield another pause in the Iran conflict, but there remains little prospect of a stop to what analysts fear has already become a “forever war”.
On Monday, Iran and Oman agreed in principle to a temporary maritime route for ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz. This could lead to the easing of the tit-for-tat blockades imposed by Iran and the US if President Donald Trump’s administration accepts it.
Regional mediators frame it as part of a “phased” process of confidence-building measures envisioned under the Islamabad Declaration, signed by both sides in June.
Analysts, however, are sceptical about the chances of a breakthrough, saying the mediation efforts are primarily aimed at preventing a feared region-wide escalation.
“The current trajectory signals an interregnum, but the likelihood of further escalation still looms large,” What Is Iran? author Arshin Adib-Moghaddam said.

Both sides currently wanted to prevent “yet another military escalation”, said the co-director of the Centre for Iranian Studies at SOAS University of London. “The only variable that can’t be logically and rationally predicted is Donald Trump’s ability to stay consistent, as he has been incredibly unstable and irrational as a president.”
With the pivotal midterm elections on November 3 approaching, the Republican president’s administration switched the focus of the war from military action to imposing secondary sanctions against Iran’s trading partners on Monday – just hours after the Iran-Oman deal was announced.
“After President Trump and the overwhelming might of the US military dismantled Iran’s military capabilities and crippled its nuclear programme, America is entering the endgame with the single greatest financial offensive ever mounted against an adversary,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, describing the measures as the “economic asphyxiation” of Iran.
Trump, meanwhile, claimed that the US Navy had successfully demined navigation channels in the Hormuz strait. “There is a Zero Tolerance policy on mine placement in full force and effect,” he posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday.
This contrasted with the agreement between Tehran and Muscat to “implement a joint project to clear the strait of mines”.
Ebb and flow
Having already endured sanctions since 2018 and the destruction of much of its industrial base during the first phase of US-Israel attacks in April, Tehran has stuck to its guns.
“Our principle is understanding and resolving issues through interaction and negotiation, but at the same time, we will stand firm against economic pressures, as we have done so far and will continue to do,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Wednesday, according to state media.
Concurrently, the Revolutionary Guards asserted that Hormuz was under its control, with vessels attempting to exit via a US-organised route hugging Oman’s coast continuing to come under Iranian fire. “If America does not accept our conditions, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened under any circumstances,” the Guards said.
Rhetoric notwithstanding, it appeared from the comments by Trump and Bessent that the US “is pivoting away from threats of renewed military action to a new phase of economic pressure”, said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Middle East fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.


This corresponds with the overall ebb and flow of the conflict, now at its six-month point, according to Guy Burton, author of China and Middle East Conflicts.
“We have seen a recurring pattern of military confrontation followed by periods of deliberation, dialogue and diplomatic outreach,” the Brussels-based academic said, calling it a “forever war” in which military action and diplomacy occur simultaneously.
Instead of a resolution, a pause “may simply represent another period in which both sides reassess their positions before the next round of confrontation”, he said.
Regional mediation efforts continued on Thursday with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani – who is also the emirate’s foreign minister – visiting Tehran to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
This engagement with the pro-negotiation faction of the Islamic Republic, led by parliamentary speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, was preceded on Monday by negotiations between Pakistan’s influential Chief of Defence Forces Asim Munir and Mohsin Razaee, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council – the leader of Tehran’s hardliners, who are opposed to talks with the US.
Eye to midterms
The US is not the only one with an agenda heading into the midterms.
The Iranian leadership had “every interest in seeing the Republican Party defeated”, said political scientist Ali Alfoneh, author of Political Succession in the Islamic Republic of Iran. So it would use its remaining resources to stay afloat until November 3 – and preferably until the new Congress convenes in January.
By then, Tehran “hopes” that a Republican defeat, a disputed election result, and Trump’s possible refusal to accept that result could push the US into political chaos or even a constitutional crisis – “providing Iran with a much-needed reprieve”, said Alfoneh, a senior resident scholar at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute.
Iran “has an incentive” to keep regional tensions – and consequently oil prices – high before the midterms, thereby contributing to a Republican loss, he said.
Burton, who has taught international relations at universities in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and the West Bank, agreed that Iran “appears increasingly interested not simply in surviving the conflict but in imposing political costs on Trump”.

If Tehran can give Trump “a sufficiently visible ‘bloody nose’”, it may calculate that this will damage his political standing and potentially the Republican brand ahead of the midterms.
This suggests there may be “little incentive for Trump to make a major strategic concession” like conceding control of Hormuz under the Iran-Oman framework before the elections. US economic pressure and military action were “likely to coexist for some time”, Burton added.
Washington was effectively “putting multiple instruments on the table in the hope that one of them will eventually create a viable diplomatic off-ramp”, Burton said. The danger was that, without a clear political settlement, this would produce an intermittent conflict and economic confrontation that “is not quite a conventional war, but not peace either”.
Periodic flare ups could become “a new status quo”, Ulrichsen said, because each party to the conflict “appears to think it has the upper hand and can outlast the other”.
Under such circumstances, Alfoneh said regional mediators now confronted “an unenviable set of possibilities”: pushing to implement the Islamabad Declaration, “becoming targets themselves” – or “facing both outcomes simultaneously”.


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Tehran is likely to stick to its guns in the hopes that the US midterms will bring about a Republican defeat, analysts say


Tehran is likely to stick to its guns in the hopes that the US midterms will bring about a Republican defeat, analysts say.


Hormuz deal presses pause on Iran conflict, but fears of ‘forever war’ remain

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Tehran is likely to stick to its guns in the hopes that the US midterms will bring about a Republican defeat, analysts say

Tehran is likely to stick to its guns in the hopes that the US midterms will bring about a Republican defeat, analysts say