Like all wars, the fourth Gulf war is, on the one hand, a violent and deliberate clash between two belligerent parties, deploying to the best of their ability the military technologies of the age. On the other hand, it entails these parties’ pursuit of their respective vital interests through non-violent means. The gains achieved through negotiations or backchannel bargaining are never far removed from the use of arms. In war, swords and spears thrust and parry, bullets spray and bombs explode, and sometimes the actions and behaviour of human actors play a central role.
Last week, as the fourth week of the US-Israeli war on Iran reached its midpoint, two conflicting narratives emerged. On the one hand, US President Donald Trump announced that his country and Iran were engaged in talks and that the latter showed a strong desire to reach an agreement. On the other hand, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, denied the existence of any negotiations. “Messages being conveyed through friendly countries… cannot be called negotiations or dialogue. It is simply an exchange of messages through friends,” he said, adding that the US had sent Iran numerous messages via friendly countries during the past few days.
Iran has set five conditions for ending the war: a full and permanent cessation of attacks against Iranian territory and officials, concrete mechanisms to ensure that the war against Iran is not restarted, reparations for the damage inflicted by the war, a comprehensive end to hostilities on all fronts including those involving Iran-aligned resistance groups, and international recognition and guarantees of Iran’s sovereign right to exercise authority over the Strait of Hormuz.
Washington, for its part, announced its own fifteen-point “proposal” for ending the war. The points are essentially demands, foremost among them that Iran should abandon its ballistic missile programme, cut ties with the groups in the “resistance axis”, permanently cease efforts to produce a nuclear weapon, surrender all enriched uranium in its possession, ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, and refrain from harming its neighbours in the Gulf.
This exchange of announcements — even if they state demands the other side will probably reject out of hand — constitutes a step outside the framework of war. They present a list, however unworkable, to a third party or potential mediator whom circumstances have rendered acceptable to both sides and who naturally fears the repercussions of this raging war.
Last week, Pakistan emerged as a potential third party. However, after offering to host negotiations between the belligerents in order to end the fighting and thereby rescue the global economy and the future of energy in the region and the world, Lahore found that the situation to be too laden with insurmountable problems.
Meanwhile, Trump talks nonstop. One moment, he speaks of the possibility of negotiations; the next, he boasts of the victory he achieved by destroying Iran’s leadership and infrastructure. In previous wars, US officials, such as the secretary of state, national security advisor, and vice president, conducted the negotiation process, while the president would only step in through an address before Congress, to declare war or to present the terms of peace. The current president has broken with this tradition and, in the process, added several precedents to history. Foremost among those is issuing time-bound ultimatums, vowing that the adversary will “have all hell to pay” if they do not comply with certain conditions by a specified deadline, only to extend the deadline later. Last week the deadline was two days, which was then suddenly extended to five.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman highlights a particularly insidious facet of this process: possible financial market manipulation. Around $580 million in oil futures trades were placed minutes before the announcement of the five-day extension. Before then, prices had soared to over $100 a barrel against the backdrop of Trump’s threats to decimate Iranian energy infrastructure and Iranian counter-threats. Krugman explained that the person or persons who placed those trades were most probably engaging in insider trading, meaning exploiting privileged information for personal gain, which is illegal. Then he adds, “but we have another word for situations in which people with access to confidential information regarding national security — such as plans to bomb or not to bomb another country — exploit that information for profit. That word is ‘treason’.”
We are witnessing here a new form of the age-old phenomenon of war profiteering — capitalising on military escalations — as well as de-escalations, given how such fluctuations cause prices to rise or fall. In this fourth Gulf war, the fluctuating prices of oil commodities are causing the scales of national and global economies to teeter, and it has become clear that the US president — wittingly or not — can cause the scales to tilt this way or that. This brings the war into an unprecedented domain that combines with the negotiating and bargaining processes.
As for the Israeli role, it remains unclear amid growing doubts about the wisdom of the decisions of a strategic ally, as the story segues from drama into tragedy.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 2 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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