I have been involved in a number of face-to-face dialogues with a range of actors currently involved in the conflict, including Iranians. Many people on different sides have been working toward a de-escalation. We finally arrived at that outcome. A deal, even a bad deal, is the right move to end the conflict, gracefully exit a poorly-planned military operation, and give the administration space to determine what to do next. Americans need to now work with their Gulf partners to mitigate the fallout and strengthen the region’s resilience moving forward.
The administration built the current Iran deal framework to try to put the genie back in the bottle after choosing to fight the war in the first place, the original bad decision. There is a deal on the table now, and the choice is whether to move forward with it or renegotiate. Moving forward is probably the better option, because renegotiating would likely collapse back into conflict.
Nothing in this deal is legally binding, and nothing keeps either side committed. Either party can walk if it stops seeing the deal as serving its interests, or if it sees the other side taking actions that threaten it. This is a balancing act of interest and leverage. Vice President Vance told the New York Times that any financial mechanisms in the deal depend on verifiable progress, not blank checks. There is a high likelihood that either actor or an adjacent one could defect. Surviving the domestic scrutiny already churning on both sides will demand tremendous resilience.
The framework sets boundaries meant to restrain the escalation instinct on both sides, so they resolve their differences diplomatically rather than kinetically. That deserves to be celebrated as a net win on its own merits, because it lets the temperature across the region drop from a boil to a simmer. Washington analysts may miss this, but regional actors want and need a reprieve from months of conflict and economic degradation. No single side, except Iran, likes the new status quo this deal creates. Still, from my discussions with many actors in the region, they find it preferable to drone strikes hitting critical infrastructure across the Gulf.
The pause gives the Gulf states a moment to pursue their own deal with Iran, independent of the United States. The region is politically charged, but a point Omani officials, and Chinese officials, have pressed for years seems to have finally taken root. Any regional Gulf security mechanism has to include Iran. This will be hard for many American and Israeli policymakers to stomach. It is the price of letting the Gulf states absorb the costs of a war they did not ask for. I am personally bullish on the potential for a GCC-Iran non-aggression pact.
The U.S. and Iran did not bring the Gulf states into their deliberations, a fact not lost on Gulf Arab audiences and, in many ways, a throwback to the JCPOA process. The hurt is probably not as deep as during the Obama years, but they feel the irony all the same. Somehow, Washington has raised the expectation that the Gulf states will be the ones to foot the bill for Iran’s reconstruction. That remains to be seen.
One of the biggest challenges for the White House will be constraining Israeli leadership from continuing to fight in Lebanon, and constraining Iran from funding Hezbollah to keep fighting Israel there. If the Trump administration cannot stop the proxy funding that many expect to resume once cash starts flowing, the conflict will worsen. I am personally skeptical that U.S.-brokered Israeli-Lebanese talks will produce the outcome Washington wants.
The deal creates the diplomatic space for new series of multitrack dialogues to support the implementation of the framework. There are several pathways that can emerge from the current framework, including the development of dialogues on maritime cooperation, de-escalation, and economic integration. The only way to build trust after this war is through binding the conditions of de-escalation through a form of interdependence which reduces the incentive for conflict, though it will not fully erace regional competitions. Bringing officials and experts from the U.S., Iran, the GCC, EU, China, and Israel is needed now more than ever to build concensus around a way forward for regional security.
Conclusion
The takeaway for U.S. policymakers is that the deal buys time, 60 days of it. The harder question is what to do with it. Beyond a new nuclear deal, the best outcome it can still reach is a region better suited to GCC stability. That requires closer coordination with GCC partners on the region’s immediate future. And it means Washington cannot keep prioritizing Israeli interests at the expense of its Gulf partnerships.
Holding the pause long enough to get there depends on three things the administration only partly controls. It has to treat the financing as leverage, tying every tranche to verifiable progress rather than front-loading goodwill. It has to keep Lebanon and Hezbollah from reigniting the war, since the proxy theater is where this collapses first and where I am least convinced U.S.-brokered talks will deliver. And it has to let the Gulf states build their own track with Iran, because that track is coming with or without Washington. A GCC-Iran non-aggression pact may be the most durable thing to come out of this entire episode.
If the administration treats the MOU as a finish line, it loses the next phase by default. If it treats those 60 days as an opening move, it still has a region worth shaping and a hand worth playing.