With Iran and the US still moving towards some form of truce it may be too early to provide a final assessment of the conflict.
A truce, or armistice in military terms, is something more than a lee ceasefire but something less than a peace accord. It doesn’t end a war; only moth-balls it sine die.
The USSR and Japan signed an armistice in 1956 more than a decade after Russians attacked and annexed the Kuril archipelago. Technically, therefore, the two nations are still in a state of war. There are numerous other cases of truce accords that halt a war without ending it in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Back to the case that interests us today a truce will not end a war that Iran launched against the US in November 1979 when pro-Khomeini militants attacked and occupied the American Embassy in Tehran which under international law was regarded as sovereign US territory.
Iran started its war against Israel in 1982 through proxies, at first with help from Syria intelligence based in Lebanon.
For years Israel practiced restraint in the hope that Iran, because of real or imagined anti-Arab and anti-Sunni sentiments, might emerge as an ally of the Jewish state. During the Iran-Iraq war Israel helped smuggle arms to Iran, provided intelligence material and used its international influence to portray Iraq as the aggressor.
Gradually, however, especially with Hezbollah emerging as a nuisance not to say threat that Israeli leaders began to question their illusions about our “Persian ally”.
But even as late as the 1990s many Israeli leaders were opposed to adopting an openly hostile posture towards Iran.
It was only under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel decided to go on the offensive against the Khomeinist rulers of Tehran.
What started as a cold war rose a few degrees in temperature when Israelis started their assassination spree against Iranian nuclear scientists while helping arm secessionist mercenaries based in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Last June’s 12-day war in which Israel had managed to drag the US in solidified the state of war between the two nations, a position confirmed by the latest phase of the conflict that began almost 100 days ago.
Though Israel was included in the various ceasefires that President Donald Trump has declared, and broken, almost always without securing Israel’s consent, it is clear that Israel will not be a party to the truce mediated by half a dozen countries notably Pakistan.
This means that even if a truce is concluded between Tehran and Washington it won’t necessarily commit Israel to observing it. At the same time Iran as it is already threatening intends to continue its war against Israel through the Lebanese Hezbollah. Last Tuesday Tehran said $5 billon of any Iranian frozen assets that will be released under the truce will go to Hezbollah in Lebanon to “continue the resistance.”
To make matters more complicated Iran is technically at war against several regional countries from Oman to Jordan and passing by the GCC members that it has attacked with the flimsy excuse that they shelter American military assets.
In reality, however, most of the targets hit by Tehran were civilian structures that had nothing to do with US or Israeli forces. After the first phase of the war almost all US bases in the region were evacuated and temporarily de-commissioned.
The bulk of US attacks came either from Diego Garcia or from mainland US with stopovers in Britain and Germany. The aircraft carriers that Trump had assembled 1000 kilometers from Iranian shores were mostly used as stage props with the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv serving as the key aircraft carrier.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz was also an act of war, this time not against the US and Israel neither of which depend on oil from the region but against the entire international community that has paid a heavy economic price.
Under international law Iran has the right to deny the right if innocent passage to belligerent powers, that is to say the US and Israel in this case. But it has no right to deny passage to ships flaying the flags of the other 190 members of the United Nations.
At the same time since the southern coast of the Hormuz Strait is sovereign territory of Oman its unilateral blocking is a direct act of war against the sultanate.
Since the Khomeinists seized power Iran has moved from one war to another.
The first war was between the new regime and the personnel of the fallen one. More than 25,000 military, diplomatic, political, bureaucratic, academic, scientific, art and culture, media business and social personalities were executed, and over 50,000, including 6000 university professors and teachers, were purged. Over a million others fled into exile; their number grew to almost nine million by 2026.
The new regime’s next war was launched against so-called “minorities” with massacres of Kurdish dissidents in Naqadeh and Turkoman tribesmen in Gonbad Kavous.
The next war was launched against Khomeini’s initial allies in the 1979 revolution and led to the execution of thousands of Communists, People’s Mujahedin, pro-Mossadeq and “liberal” Islamic figures.
Then there was the 8-year war against Iraq which, technically, has not ended because there has been no peace treaty. Tehran has violated Iraqi sovereignty by setting up bases there and raising paramilitary forces led by Iranian commanders.
The truce touted by President Trump will not end any of those wars, none of which are likely to end unless Iran breaks with Khomeinism and chooses another trajectory.
Prospects for such a momentous event seemed promising at the end of 2025 when a combination factor had pushed the regime onto the defensive. The war came to the rescue at a time that a wave of nationwide protests was gaining momentum with part of the regime’s base pondering the possibility of switching sides.
Changing Iran by war was always the big enchilada that successive US residents avoided. Trump half-heartedly decided to try it and the result at least in the short term is the slowing of the process of change. The final word must come from the people of Iran.
Without a regime that is at peace with its people Iran is unlikely to reach peace with anyone else.
