The collapse of the interim Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the 60-day negotiating framework, as declared by President Trump, marks a significant deterioration in the diplomatic process. This development raises critical questions: Has diplomacy failed? Why was the MoU set aside? What challenges do the principal actors face, and is war now the only preferred outcome?
Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace, set against the Napoleonic Wars, offers a binding framework for understanding any war, including the current Iran conflict. Tolstoy's insight was that wars are rarely concluded by battlefield success alone; they end only when the political forces that created them become willing to construct a new political order. Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, a Russian officer fighting Bonaparte's army, states, "I said when the campaign started that it wouldn't be settled by gunpowder but by those who invented this war." This imaginative description applies today: the Iran War will not be settled by gunpowder but by those who invented it.
The Security Dilemma and Reciprocal Threat Perception
The current impasse reflects what defensive realists describe as a security dilemma and what Balance of Threat theorists identify as reciprocal threat perception. From an academic viewpoint, analyzing the Iran War under Balance of Threat, Offensive Realism, and Defensive Realism as competing theories is prudent. Iran argues its military build-up is defensive, while Israel and the US interpret those same capabilities as offensive. This leads to the security dilemma: measures taken by one state to increase its security decrease the perceived security of others. Each side believes it is acting defensively while viewing the other as offensive. Offensive and defensive realism explain each side's strategic behavior, while balance of threat explains why those behaviors generate reciprocal threat perceptions and sustain the conflict.
Has Diplomacy Ended?
The distinction between the collapse of an agreement and the collapse of diplomacy is analytically important. As long as central strategic disagreements remain unresolved—such as the future of Iran's nuclear program, sanctions, regional insecurity, and mutual guarantees against future attacks—diplomacy will likely continue in some form, even if the present MoU has collapsed. The principal actors treated the MoU as a time-bound mechanism to test whether diplomacy could produce a settlement without abandoning core strategic objectives. Once they concluded the gap remained too wide, the negotiating framework became expendable. This does not necessarily imply war is the preferred outcome; rather, both parties may believe they can improve their bargaining position through renewed pressure before returning to negotiations. The challenge is no longer to achieve a ceasefire but to create a political framework.
Building a Political Framework
The central strategic question emerging from the Iran War is how to reconcile the core security interests of all principal actors—the US, Iran, and Israel—to produce a durable regional order. Without incentives, institutions rarely emerge. Why would these actors voluntarily agree to a political framework? Only by offering incentives and strategic relief to all parties. Iran must receive economic incentives and sanctions relief and, in return, adopt state behavior aligned with the region's emerging economic and security needs.
Any durable settlement requires a political framework built on four principles:
First: External Support and a Joint Forum – No agreement is likely to endure without external support. The US is an ally of Israel, while Russia and China maintain significant ties with Iran. Instead of competing for exclusive influence, these great powers and some middle powers, including permanent observers of the UN and the EU, may establish a joint forum to guarantee key elements of any agreement, including a nuclear deal, sanctions implementation, and dispute-resolution procedures. This distributes responsibility and reduces the perception that the framework serves only one bloc.
Second: Addressing Proxy Warfare – The principal destabilizing feature of the contemporary Middle East is not always direct interstate war but proxy warfare. A future framework should include commitments to reduce material support for armed non-state groups, duly monitored by the established forum. The forum may build mechanisms to investigate alleged violations and jointly recommend punishment for violators, including regional and international isolation, to reduce and ultimately end proxy warfare.
Third: Economic Realities – The Iran War reinforces that economic realities increasingly shape strategic outcomes. The framework should include safe energy transit through the Strait of Hormuz, investment in regional infrastructure, reconstruction funds, and gradual reintegration of Iran into regional economic networks as key components.
Fourth: Crisis Management over Ideological Reconciliation – The greatest obstacle is not ideological but political. None of the principal actors currently appear willing to compromise on what each considers its core security interests. Israel seeks enduring guarantees against existential threats; Iran seeks recognition of its sovereignty and strategic autonomy; the US seeks to prevent nuclear proliferation and maintain regional stability; Arab Gulf states seek security while avoiding entanglement in major wars. These objectives require all sides to accept that absolute security for one actor produces enduring insecurity for another. A stable Middle East will not emerge from military victory but from the institutionalization of crisis management under a mutually accepted political forum that can create a political order.
Conclusion: The Real Test of Statesmanship
As highlighted earlier, the central strategic question from the Iran War is how to reconcile the strategic interests of the principal actors. The answer does not lie in Prince Andrey Bolkonsky's words about the 'use of gunpowder.' Wars are ultimately remembered not for the battles fought but for the political orders that emerged from them. The real test of statesmanship is therefore not the ability to wage war but the wisdom to design a peace that no participant has an incentive to destroy.
