Two months after American and Israeli forces first struck Iranian targets, the conflict has settled into a tense and unstable pause. A ceasefire reached on April 7 has been held, with no exchanges of fire since. But the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to most shipping, the United States Navy continues its blockade of Iranian oil ports, and global energy markets are on edge. Oil prices have climbed above $120 a barrel at times, gasoline costs in the United States are rising, and the United Nations secretary-general has warned that a prolonged chokehold on this vital waterway will drag down global growth, fuel inflation, and push tens of millions more people into poverty and hunger.
Op-Ed
Washington and Tehran Need an Off-Ramp Before It’s Too Late
The United States and Iran are locked in a dangerous limbo. A two-month war that began with joint US-Israeli strikes on Feb. 28 has killed thousands, shattered economies across the Gulf, and sent global energy prices soaring. A ceasefire brokered by Pakistan on April 8 has held, but barely. Now President Donald Trump has ordered his national security team to prepare a prolonged naval blockade of Iranian ports, a decision reached in recent Situation Room meetings and confirmed by US officials to The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, Tehran has floated a proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting that very blockade, while postponing any immediate reckoning over its nuclear program.
The Clock Is Ticking
As May 1 approaches, the United States finds itself at a constitutional crossroads of its own making. Two months ago President Donald Trump notified Congress that American forces had entered hostilities with Iran. Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, that notification started a 60-day clock. When it expires this Thursday, the law is unambiguous: absent congressional authorization, the president must end the operations. The fragile ceasefire does not change that. The naval blockade of Iranian ports keeps US ships and sailors legally in a state of hostilities. Trump has made clear he has no intention of complying.
Endgame Without End
Eight weeks after the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28, the conflict has settled into precisely the kind of grinding, expensive impasse that Donald Trump once boasted he would never tolerate. American aircraft carriers patrol the Persian Gulf. Iranian ports are under naval blockade. The Strait of Hormuz — the narrow throat through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas once moved — is contested by both sides. Oil prices remain roughly 40 percent above prewar levels. Supply chains for fertilizer, petrochemicals, plastics, and agricultural goods are snarled from Asia to Europe. And this weekend, in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, the two governments are once again circling each other through intermediaries, each insisting it is negotiating from strength while privately acknowledging that neither can prevail on the battlefield or in the marketplace.
A New Gulf Order?
The war the United States and Israel launched against Iran in February was sold as a limited operation to degrade a nuclear threat. It has become something far more consequential: a wrecking ball swung through the fragile security architecture of the Persian Gulf. For the six monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the conflict did not simply interrupt their carefully calibrated balancing act between Washington, Tehran, and their own divergent interests. It exposed the act itself as unsustainable. The economic damage is already staggering and grotesquely uneven. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz — the conduit for roughly one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas — produced what the International Energy Agency called the largest supply shock in the history of the energy market. More than 12 million barrels a day were shut in. Some 40 energy facilities were damaged or forced offline. Brent crude jumped 60 percent in March, the largest monthly increase on record. But the windfall did not flow evenly. Iran’s oil revenues rose 37 percent. Oman’s climbed 26 percent. Saudi Arabia eked out a 4.3 percent gain, thanks to the 1,200-kilometer East-West pipeline constructed during the Iran-Iraq War, now running at full 5-million-barrel-a-day capacity to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The United Arab Emirates found partial shelter in its Habshan-Fujairah bypass. Iraq and Kuwait, with no viable alternatives, watched export revenues collapse by roughly three-quarters. Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex, a cornerstone of global LNG supply, suffered strikes that could require years of repairs. Non-oil sectors — aviation, tourism, logistics, even the desalination plants that turn seawater into drinking water — were hit directly. Food imports that normally move through the strait were thrown into crisis. The International Monetary Fund has now slashed its growth forecast for the Gulf Cooperation Council to 2 percent this year, down from 4.3 percent before the fighting began. For the broader Middle East and North Africa, the outlook is even grimmer: 1.1 percent growth, 2.8 percentage points below prewar projections. IMF Middle East director Jihad Azour noted that the shock extends beyond crude: fertilizer exports, specialty chemicals, and the region’s role as a logistics and aviation hub have all been disrupted. These are not temporary price spikes. They are structural scars on economies that have spent years trying to reduce their dependence on oil.
A Risky Bet on Iranian Collapse
President Donald Trump’s decision to extend the US-Iran ceasefire indefinitely was presented as a gesture of strategic patience. Iran, he said, was “seriously fractured,” financially collapsing, and unable to produce a unified negotiating position. The naval blockade would stay in place as leverage. Vice President JD Vance’s bags were already packed for a second round of talks in Islamabad; the trip was quietly cancelled. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was more blunt: Iran is in a “very weak position,” the cards are in Trump’s hands, and the president will decide when — or whether — the war ends. It is a high-risk gamble dressed up as strength. The ceasefire extension buys time, but it also entrenches a volatile limbo — no war, no peace, no talks — in which both sides are doubling down on postures that make compromise harder. Iran’s military parades, missile displays, and ship seizures in the Strait of Hormuz are not signs of a regime about to crumble. They are calculated signals that Tehran will not negotiate under the gun. Trump’s blockade and open-ended truce are not masterstrokes of leverage. They are a bet that economic pain will force Iranian pragmatists to override hardliners — a bet that history suggests often backfires.
Ceasefire Holds, but Diplomacy Fractures
The latest twist in the two-month-old war between the United States and Iran arrived, as so many have lately, via a late-night Truth Social post from President Donald Trump. On Tuesday, with the two-week ceasefire on the brink of expiration, Trump announced he was extending it indefinitely — or at least until Tehran submits a “unified proposal” and talks run their course. The decision, he said, came at the direct request of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir. It followed hours of frantic deliberations in the White House, where Air Force Two sat fueled and ready to carry Vice President JD Vance to Islamabad for what was supposed to be the next round of mediated negotiations.
The Strait of Hormuz Is Not a Poker Chip — It Is a Global Lifeline
The images are haunting in their familiarity: merchant vessels idling in the Persian Gulf, their crews numbering in the tens of thousands, waiting for safe passage through the narrow choke point that carries one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas. On Saturday, Iran once again declared the Strait of Hormuz under “strict military control,” reversing a fleeting reopening announced barely 24 hours earlier. President Trump responded with characteristic bluntness, insisting that Tehran could not “blackmail” the United States by closing the waterway. Shipping officials reported at least two vessels — including Indian-flagged ships — coming under fire. The fragile two-week ceasefire that had offered a glimmer of de-escalation now hangs by a thread, set to expire on Wednesday.
When UAE Deposits No Longer Buy Alignment
For more than a decade, Pakistan has treated financial lifelines from the Gulf as a structural feature of its economy rather than a temporary bridge. Abu Dhabi’s refusal to roll over roughly $3.5 billion in deposits at the State Bank of Pakistan—now being repaid in tranches that include a $2 billion maturity on April 17 —should shatter that illusion once and for all. The timing is brutal. Global oil prices have spiked past $100 a barrel amid the Iran war. Pakistan’s foreign-exchange reserves hover near $16.4 billion, barely three months of import cover. Fuel costs are surging, inflation is accelerating, and the country is scrambling to meet the International Monetary Fund’s reserve targets under its $7 billion program. But the deeper damage is strategic. What is collapsing is not merely a banking arrangement but the assumption that money can indefinitely substitute for aligned interests.
A Return to the Table in Islamabad
Pakistan’s capital has become an improbable pivot point in a war that was never supposed to last this long. Less than a week after the first face-to-face negotiations between the United States and Iran in more than 40 years collapsed in Islamabad, President Trump is signalling that a second round could begin “over the next two days.” He has even urged a New York Post reporter to stay put in Pakistan because “something could be happening.” Vice President JD Vance, who led the American side in last weekend’s 21-hour marathon, has described the Iranian negotiators as eager for a deal despite the deep mistrust. Pakistani officials, from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to the powerful army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, are racing to make it happen—Sharif leaves Wednesday for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to line up regional backing before the fragile two-week ceasefire expires next week.