After Talks Break Down, U.S.-Iran Ceasefire Collapses

Interview with Raed Jarrar, advocacy director with the group Democracy for the Arab World Now, conducted by Scott Harris

us-iran war

After the effective collapse of the U.S.-Iran 14-point memorandum of understanding—which on June 17 established a ceasefire and initiated a 60-day window to negotiate a permanent end to hostilities—both countries have now resumed missile and drone attacks across the region. After the U.S. launched airstrikes against Iran’s coastal defense systems, Iran retaliated by attacking U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Jordan—and struck two oil tankers from the United Arab Emirates.

President Trump, who announced that the U.S. is re-imposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports starting on June 14, proclaimed that the U.S. will “become the guardian” of the Strait of Hormuz. The president, who pledged to “decimate and destroy” Iran if it carries out a reported assassination plot against him, backed off his earlier threat to impose a 20 percent toll on cargo transiting the Strait.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Raed Jarrar, advocacy director with the group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) which was founded by Saudi U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his assassination by the Saudi government in 2018. Here, Jarrar assesses the escalation of the conflict, now focused on control of the Strait of Hormuz, and whether or not peace talks are likely to resume to avert all-out war.

RAED JARRAR: The war was waged under the pretenses that Trump believed it’s going to be another Venezuela where he can change the Iranian regime in a couple of days, install a friendly ayatollah and then leave. And that didn’t happen. So 60 days after the war, the United States and Israel, they had a military failure they could not achieve with force what they wanted to achieve, which is the destruction of the Iranian government. In the case of Israel, it’s a destruction of Iran as a state, as a country, as a people. They failed. So now they are negotiating this ceasefire agreement because they failed to get what they want to do through force. And of course, Trump and Netanyahu don’t believe in ceasefire and they don’t support peace. So we’re seeing on a daily basis breaches of the ceasefire, Israeli-style breaches of the ceasefire, the same way that Israel breached the ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon for months and years.

They’re doing the same with Iran now, almost daily breaches of the framework agreement, daily breaches of the ceasefire framework. I wouldn’t say that the agreement is completely dead yet because Trump and Iran still have a lot to lose if they go back to full-fledged war. So it is still grounded in some sort of an ongoing negotiations. But there is obviously a daily flare up, more bombing and more killings that is happening. And overall, I wouldn’t say the situation is very stable.

SCOTT HARRIS: Absolutely not. I wanted to ask you about some of the causes of why do you think this ceasefire agreement could not persist until they got a final agreement? They had 60 days to do it. There’s a lot of speculation that Trump’s erratic behavior, his unhinged and toxic rhetoric and the incompetence of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and his golfing buddy, Steve Witkoff, also contributed to the problems with these negotiations where they’ve now fallen apart.

RAED JARRAR: That’s a generous read. I think it’s worse than that because I don’t think what’s going on is based on incompetence and unhinged comments. It is based on very malicious, a malicious agenda by Israel. And Netanyahu didn’t even try to hide any of this. He’s very honest about it. He’s honest that he would like to see this ceasefire agreement fail. He’s against it. He’s done everything possible to destroy it by attacking Lebanon. And when that front did not prevail, I think he’s egging Trump on every day to see if that agreement could fail. Because Trump, he’s actually not interested in having a war with Iran. It’s not in his interest. It’s not in the United States’ interest whatsoever to go to war with Iran. And he was put into this war of aggression by Netanyahu who has a very clear agenda to destroy Iran. He said he wants to go to war against Iran for the past 30 years and he’s fighting Iran with our blood and treasure like he did with many other wars, including the Iraq war.
So now Trump is getting to a point where this war is very costly on him and he doesn’t really want it. It’s a difficult year for him. It’s the midterm elections. There’s World Cup going on in the U.S. He wanted to bring down the interest rate in the U.S. He wants to do this, he wants to do that. And then this Iran war crossed the threshold that would make Trump stop going to war. And that’s a very low threshold. It’s inconvenience. This war is an existential war for Iran. Iranians are fighting to protect their country, their identity, their culture. There is a lot on stake there. And their threshold is very, very high. They’re going to go to war and fight and fight and fight and tolerate lots of pain because it’s an existential war for them. For the United States under Trump, it’s a side quest.
So for him, the inconvenience is a threshold to stop the war. That inconvenience was achieved. The oil prices went up, gas prices went up. There’s a lot of headache. It became a headache. That’s why he didn’t want to continue the war. But now Netanyahu is egging him on every day, every day, every day. And as many people have said, including myself, we will see. This is the year to see if Trump is able to indeed prioritize the United States’ interest over what Netanyahu is asking him to do.

For more information, visit Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) at dawnmena.org 

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Raed Jarrar (29:07) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Trump authoritarian playbook Substack or social media, subscribe here.

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