Is the 60-day ceasefire with Iran declared by President Trump last month over? As is often the case with what the mercurial leader of the world’s only superpower says the answer is: yes-but not quite.
In his tongue-lashing of Iran on the margin of the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump compared the present regime in Tehran to cancer that has to be cut off and thrown away. He labeled Tehran’s leader as “liars” and claimed to have halted negotiation with them.
So, where do we go from here?
A good piece of advice comes from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte acknowledged as the best Trumpologist around: Always take what Trump says seriously but not literally!
We have witnessed the soundness of that advice since June 2025 when Trump with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu in tandem launched the 12-day war against the Iran. In the past 13 months, Trump has gamboled from one ceasefire to another culminating in the 60-day “truce” which is now in peril.
The 60-day scheme could be described as “hostile-truce” a new category in the lexicon of international bellicosity. In it you are supposed to silence your guns and talk to the foe but also keep the option of opening fire when and where you wish.
The 60-day “hostile truce” was designed to suit Trump’s packed early summer agenda starting with his visit to Beijing, his birthday, the 250th anniversary of American Independence, FIFA World Cup the NATO summit and the Republican Party primaries.
The same “hostile truce” also helped bring down oil prices, tame inflation somewhat and open space for a new “reds-under-the-bed” campaign at home.
Well, all that is now beyond us. So the question is where do we go from here?
One easy option is more bombing. But Pentagon data show that US warplanes are forced to hit targets they have already struck several times before.
The other day, a dairy factory in Bandar Abbas was hit for the second time and a radar site in Bushehr for the third. Tehran retaliated by attacking Bahrain and Kuwait neither of which are party to the conflict.
Call it gesticulations if you like but the fact remains that the latest exchanges indicate how clueless both sides are when it comes to a way out of the maze they are caught in.
Trump knows that Tehran will not indeed be forced to submit by merely more bombing. For its part, Tehran knows that launching missiles and drones at Iran’s Arab neighbors won’t end bombings by Trump. We have a zugzwang that defies even the Mission Impossible squad.
Trump’s description of the Khomeinist regime as a form of cancer is misleading. Cancer cells have a way of spreading and multiplying while destroying healthy ones. The Khomeinist ideology hasn’t spread beyond Iran’s borders except in the form of paid-for proxies. In fact, the Middle East has made an historic leap away from all such ideologies to embark on a new path to modernity, freedom and prosperity.
But even if we accept the cancer diagnostic, Trump should know that these days cancers are treated with chemotherapy rather than “cutting off and throwing away.”
There is no doubt that the “Iran problem” could have a military solution.
Theoretically, the US has the power to invade Iran, march on Tehran, bring the left-over Khomeinist leadership to a Nuremberg-style trial and recruit new leaders as it did in Germany, Italy, Japan and later in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In practice, however, that option is too risk-ridden to become policy.
But that does not mean that the option of “regime change” through a mixture of proximity pressure, political spade-work and diplomacy should be shelved forever.
Right now we face four levels of power in Iran that partly overlap and partly diverge.
The first is Iran’s strong bureaucratic structure with a history of at least five centuries. With Ali Khamenei gone it is now reasserting its claim for a seat at the high table. Over more than a year of war it has shown that it can manage the paraphernalia of statehood without Khamenei’s North-Korean style control.
The second layer consists of political and military figures that have always been keen on rapprochement with the “Great Satan”. Many of them US-educated, these are the ones who send their children to the US. In 2015, the Iranian parliament reported that children of some 1,500 senior officials were in the US while numerous senior officials had Canadian residency permits.
The third layer is represented by several dozen ultra-rich oligarchs, many of them retired IRGC 1-star generals, clerics or strawmen for senior ayatollahs.
Though not necessarily pro-West, all three above mentioned groups tend to desire an end to the conflict with the outside world and a return to normality, something Khamenei adamantly rejected.
Finally, we have the hardcore Khomeinist constituency that consists of Mafia-style fraternities linked to the IRGC and the other paramilitary and security services. Their rivals within the system call them “merchants of sanctions”. Accounting for 10 to 15 percent of the population, they control the street-base of the regime, the so-called “dispossessed” masses that are now calling for revenge rather than accommodation with it.
A letter by a number of former diplomats attached to this group sent to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reminds him of the fate of Walther Rathenau, the German Foreign Minister who signed the Versailles Treaty and was assassinated as a traitor.
The snag in Iran is that those who wish to make a deal dare not do so because they lack a popular street-base within the Khomeinist movement.
And those who make can a deal because they have such a base won’t do so because if they do, they risk losing not only that support but also the wealth and position they have illegally acquired.
In Iran today the management of uncertainty is the name of the game. More bombing will strengthen the bitter-enders who have fed on raw anti-Americanism for half a century.
Paradoxically, doing nothing may also strengthen them and discredit the accommodationists who are already blamed for having kowtowed to the “Great Satan” and obtained nothing in return. Not a single dollar of frozen assets has reached Tehran while huge amounts of sanction-free Iranian oil remains unsold in tankers in the Indian Ocean.
Beyond the stretchable 60-day “hostile truce,” what is needed is a Plan B for Iran that takes into account the realities on the ground and the opportunity for positive change.
