Whatever the fate is of the putative two-week ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran, it remains historically significant due to novel dynamics that the war just revealed and that portend important new power relations regionally and globally.
These include both positive and negative developments that are epic in their magnitude and historic in their implications for the future.
Most analysis in the West has spoken of Trump searching for an “off ramp” to escape the danger he had painted himself into – using the analogy of how drivers on highways seek an exit ramp to enter a rest stop or a lower-intensity side road. But what Iran has actually done is to instead offer Trump and Israel a chance to press the ejection seat button to escape their damaged fighter-jet – and survive without achieving their war aims.
The war’s critical new dynamics have included the massive destruction of essential civilian infrastructure and military facilities across the region, by the US, Israel, Iran and Tehran’s allies.
This includes the American threat of Iran’s annihilation alongside Israel’s actual genocidal destruction of all life-supporting mechanisms in Gaza and much of south Lebanon. This disrupted vital global supply chains that impact every life and economic dimension – food, energy, water, technology, travel — and was tacitly supported by all actors’ foreign allies.
It also confirmed the death of any international law or global treaty protections for non-combatants that once differentiated between military and civilian needs. All humans on Earth now live in danger.
Positive aspects of the Pakistan-mediated two-week ceasefire agreement are that it has been accepted — if not fully implemented — by all, and includes substantive concessions by all.
Negotiations can succeed if the US and Israel send serious adults to discuss permanent peace, instead of frivolous media performers, professional killers, and nasty colonial officers. The US negotiators in particular should reflect the interests, values, and views of the American people, and stop taking instructions from Israelis.
Compliance with Israeli demands, however, is not only a Trumpian phenomenon; Washington has consistently reflected Israeli priorities and wishes in the Middle East since the 1950s, while not seeing the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians and others in the region as people with equal rights to Israelis.
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