Trump says he’s won in Iran - but this crisis is far from over

However, relief should not be confused with resolution. Donald Trump is already framing this pause as a historic victory of American coercion. That interpretation may resonate domestically, but it does not fully capture the broader strategic picture.

In geopolitical terms, a ceasefire is not synonymous with peace. Without a strategic settlement, it frequently serves as a tactical tool, creating space for combatants to regroup, reassess, and prepare for the potential resumption of hostilities. To understand what is really at stake, we must look beyond the temporary halt in airstrikes and ask what motivated both sides to step back from the brink, and how they intend to exploit the quiet.

Both sides can claim the ceasefire as a strategic victory that demonstrates that their approach to the conflict is working. Faced with the economic reality of a prolonged Middle Eastern war, the Trump administration was looking for an off-ramp, and it has secured not only its headline but agreement from Iran to negotiate on the issues America wishes to see resolved: namely Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.

For its part, after weeks of absorbing sustained American and Israeli airpower, the regime in Tehran has survived but it desperately needed breathing room. This ceasefire gives it exactly that. Fourteen days is not long politically, but operationally it is significant, providing invaluable space for Iran to disperse any surviving ballistic missile launchers, repair degraded command-and-control networks, and coordinate with its battered proxy militias.

In some ways, the lessons both sides will draw from the ceasefire may lead to its breakdown. Washington will draw the lesson that the regime in Iran can be bombed into negotiating, while Tehran will draw the lesson that it can survive any bombardment so long as the Iranian people do not come out to topple it. It will take quite the breakthrough in just two weeks of tough negotiations for any of the underlying causes of the conflict to be resolved.

The next two weeks will feel like the intervals between rounds of a boxing match. Both sides will use the coming days to recover and reconsider, analysing their strategies so far and predicting what the resolve of the other is to continue the fight. It will also see efforts from both sides to garner the support of partners. Tehran has been abandoned by its associates in Moscow and Beijing and will see what it can do to get their support to bolster the regime’s finances and firepower.

For its part, Washington will push the narrative of victory. The Americans will also attempt to rekindle relations with partners in the Middle East, whose economies have suffered, and allies from further afield, who have been caught off guard by US actions, and occasionally bristled at Trump’s steely rhetoric. American allies – in Europe and elsewhere – would be wise not to indulge in schadenfreude, not least because they lack the means, the philosophy, and the will to tackle the regime in Iran themselves.

The global consequences will outlast the ceasefire itself. Supply disruptions have added fresh pressure to already fragile inflation dynamics, forcing central banks to rethink their interest rate trajectories and placing further strain on consumers. At the same time, the crisis has delivered an unintended windfall to Moscow, boosting both the price and strategic importance of Russian oil exports at a moment when Ukraine is under intense Russian pressure.

In that sense, this deal does not resolve the crisis; it reveals a costly return to the status quo rather than a decisive American victory. It highlights once again the limits of military intervention when it is not tied to a clear political end state. Much of the Iranian state apparatus appears to remain intact, US efforts to instigate a popular uprising failed to materialise, and the Ayatollah’s son has ensured seamless leadership continuity. In this sense, the biggest losers are the Iranian people, who remain trapped under the yoke of a repressive and anachronistic regime.

Whether or not Operation EPIC FURY has degraded the Iranian state to the extent that the Iranian people will rise up, or reformers will come to the fore, is an open question. The question now is: what comes next?

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William Freer is a Research Fellow (National Security) at the Council on Geostrategy.

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