US-Iran MoU aims to deal with pain rather than end war | Donald Trump News

When US President Donald Trump and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf put electronic pen on paper on a 14-point memorandum of understanding (MoU) in June, was supposed to end the 109-day war between the two countries.

Located between Pakistan and Qatar, the plan lifts the US military blockade of Iran in exchange for Tehran to reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz, after an economic war that caused global energy prices to soar and caused market instability.

Despite this, the situation in the Strait of Hormuz remains unstable. Although the level of violence between the US and Iran has decreased significantly since the agreement was signed, it has not stopped completely, with clashes on Friday and Saturday between the two sides.

As Washington and Tehran enter a 60-day window to negotiate an end to the conflict, a critical question looms: Is the MoU a real step toward lasting peace, or just a way to ease the conflict?

Researchers who spoke to Al Jazeera see this as a “coercive alliance” – an alliance born of pain rather than a trust-building movement.

Edge of pain in the middle

In the context of conflict resolution, warring parties rarely come to the negotiating table to seek peace; they arrive when they reach a “painful agreement”, as is evident in the US and Iran.

Khalid al-Jaber, director of the Middle East Council for Global Affairs, said the three-month war has changed the region due to inter-state conflicts, damage to infrastructure and disruption of international services from Asia to Europe.

During the war – starting on February 28 and ending officially when the agreement was signed on June 17 – about 7,200 missiles were fired, and about 80 percent targeted civilian casualties. according to al-Jaber. This shows Iran’s strategy to increase the cost of war in the US and the region by directly targeting Arab Gulf cities, he added.

As the war continued, the US became increasingly involved in domestic politics and the global economic downturn, showing the weakness of its military power, Nabil Khoury, a former US ambassador, told Al Jazeera.

“This war showed the limits of power, the limits of using power. Power does not mean touching,” said Khoury. “You can have the most powerful military in the world, but if you can’t change the policies of a small, weak country, your power has not translated into reality in the world.”

State vs non-state: The Lebanon-Gaza contrast

Experts say there is a big gap between the current US-Iran deal and the 2025 agreement to stop fighting in Gaza and Lebanon.

The October 2025 Gaza ceasefire agreement outlined a gradual truce and prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, which was supposed to reduce violence in the Palestinian territory. But in the 260 days since then, Israel has committed 3,465 violations, killing 1,045 Palestinians, injuring 3,380, and arresting 113 others, according to reports from the Gaza Government Media Office.

The November 2024 ceasefire agreement signed by the US in Lebanon has been repeatedly violated by Israel. Analysts say Israel has used the ceasefire to create security in its favor, with hundreds of Israeli troops in Lebanon since it was signed, killing at least 4,500 people there.

Negar Mortazavi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, says that the end of Gaza and Lebanon is not good because it involves non-state actors with “fragmented laws, and a lot of competing environments”. In contrast, the agreement between the US and Iran shows “clear chains and the possibility of direct negotiations”.

Also, both countries are facing financial constraints. “Renewed wars could threaten the Strait of Hormuz again, disrupt energy markets around the world, and cost a lot not only to them but also to the economies of many countries,” Mortazavi said. The main difference, he said, is that Washington and Tehran now “have more to lose because of the collapse of negotiations than what is needed to help them”.

Talking about ‘revolution’

The fragility of the current agreement is not only due to military conflicts, but also to the domestic political situation in Washington and Tehran.

Abdelqader Fayez, an Al Jazeera reporter and researcher on Iranian studies, sees a big difference between what is written now and what was discussed in the past. In 2015, the former US President, Barack Obama, discussed the nuclear deal with Iran’s legal wing, Western academics, while the US seems to want direct contact with the Iranian military.

Mortazavi agreed, saying that the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was a “reform-Democratic diplomatic project” – very attractive but fragile for Iran and the US, due to the opposition of the two countries.

“This MoU is a mirror image: it is an agreement between the Iranian security forces and the Republican White House,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.

“This makes it unpolished, but very strong. The irony is that a free contract can be stable, because it comes from a power plant that can force it or destroy it.”

Although the Iran-US has stopped the war, small-scale attacks and disputes in the region continue, including. attacking the southern ports of Iran and the US and Iran in Kuwait and Bahrain this week.

Rather than seeing these conflicts as the collapse of the system, experts point out that they are just a violent extension of the negotiations.

Mortazavi describes this as “a dangerous but familiar post-war phase” where both sides are testing the limits, but careful not to restart the war. This is done by each party to maximize profits and reduce the acceptance of the next phase of the agreement.

“The risk is that such competitive pressures can continue,” he warned. “The main test is not if all the violence stops immediately. The main test is if these incidents do not happen and if the channel of communication remains open.”

The future of ‘doubt’

Ultimately, the US-Iran MoU is viewed by diplomats not as a peace treaty, but as a conflict resolution mechanism. As the US no longer wants regime change in Iran and is instead looking for economic incentives, it is trying to turn the conflict into a diplomatic role.

Analyzing the news of the coming 60 days, al-Jaber described how things would be in the midst of “doubt”—a combination of pessimism and hope.

Mortazavi admits that the real outcome is neither war nor friendship. “It’s a rule-based competition, and that’s a big change from the open debate,” he said.

Although a full return to war between Iran and the US is not possible in the near future, the Middle East has entered a long period of controlled competition, where the conflict is on the edge of the abyss.