At 4 pm Cairo local time, US President Donald Trump lived up to his threat of starting a blockade on Iranian ports. The move comes less than 24 hours after Islamabad hosted indirect and direct talks between Iran and the US, which ended without an agreement or a date for a second round of negotiations.
However, in a parallel move, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced a planned visit to Saudi Arabia to discuss the situation in the Middle East in view of the recent developments.
A source in Islamabad said that Sharif’s visit to Saudi Arabia is designed to garner support for the Pakistani scheme to facilitate an understanding between Iran and the US sooner rather than later.
Sharif, the source said, might also be heading to other concerned capitals for further consultations. The source added that Sharif “has been on the phone for hours already” after the Islamabad talks ended early Sunday morning, Islamabad time, to make sure that, inconclusive as the first round has been, it would not be the last.
The source said that the push for further mediation is essentially supported by three other countries: Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia—namely, the three other members of the newly established regional quartet.
Egyptian and Turkish sources confirmed that Cairo and Ankara are heavily invested in consolidating the chances for a second round of US-Iran talks. “Even if it turns out to be inconclusive, it is important to have a second round because it keeps the momentum of negotiations going,” the Turkish source told Ahram Online. He added that the very fact that the negotiations continue “is an act of resistance against the persistent attempt on the part of Israel and the Israeli lobby in the US” to push for a resumption of hostilities.
While several diplomatic sources, in and out of the region, said that it is not a very easy decision for Trump to resume a war that is highly unpopular in the US, especially given its impact on fuel prices, the influence of “those who are pushing for the war to be resumed should not be undermined at all”.
In the words of one source, “without the push from these quarters, Trump might have never actually started this senseless war in the first place”. The source added that “it is wrong to assume that it is just Israel or, more specifically, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; there are other regional parties who are on board with the war”.
In his brief press statements before leaving Islamabad in the early hours of Sunday morning, US Vice President JD Vance, who headed his country’s delegation to the Pakistani-hosted talks, did not say that the negotiations had collapsed. Neither Vance nor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Speaker of the Iranian parliament and a member of the higher defence council, who headed the Iranian delegation to Islamabad, said that there was no chance of a second round of talks.
A second Pakistani source told Ahram Online that this is because there is probably a second round of negotiations happening before the 22 April expiration date of the two-week ceasefire secured by Pakistani mediation. Speaking on Monday from Islamabad, just half an hour before the US blockade was imposed, the source said that it is most likely that a second round of talks would convene in the coming days.
“The idea for the first round was to start talks; the idea for the second round is to turn the talks into a process of negotiations between the US and Iran to allow time to reach agreements on all the sticking points, particularly the Iranian nuclear programme, which is mostly at stake now,” he said.
He added that this issue is one of the most difficult points to negotiate, simply because “under Israeli pressure”, the US decided to move from requesting a closely inspected Iranian nuclear programme with low levels of uranium enrichment to a position whereby the US is opposed to Iran having any nuclear programme at all, peaceful or otherwise.
“With such far-apart positions, clearly it would take time and effort to build confidence towards reaching a reconciliatory compromise,” he stated.
According to Syd Muhammad Ali, a senior and well-informed Pakistani security analyst, much will depend on how the US manages the blockade and how Iran reacts to it. Ali argued that it is not clear if the US would enforce a 100 per cent watertight blockade, given that several of its Arab and Asian allies need to keep some trade lines open to and from Iran. In parallel, he added, if this is the case, Iran might not want to go too far in its response.
“Imposing this blockade is part of US coercive diplomacy and is not necessarily a sign that the US does not want to resume negotiations,” Ali said. In all cases, he added, the blockade “is a lower-risk strategy compared to the resumption of bombardment of Iran”.
Meanwhile, he noted that with neither Iran nor the US being a member of the 1982 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Law of the Sea, it becomes legally complicated for either side to make claims regarding the right to protect freedom of maritime passage in the Strait of Hormuz, which is the key issue in question.
Practically speaking, he said, the Strait of Hormuz was never fully closed, and the Iranians have been allowing ships and oil tankers to pass depending on whether they consider them friendly or associated with the enemy.
Two Arab diplomatic sources told Ahram Online that Iran had greenlit the passage of some Arab Gulf-owned ships and tankers in and out of the Strait of Hormuz since Tehran imposed restrictions on the freedom of traffic. Moreover, a UN diplomatic source said there is a push by some of the permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to resolve the issue of Hormuz away from warfare.
China and Russia had tabled a draft resolution underlining the need for the parties to stick to negotiations rather than military hostilities. The UN diplomatic source did not seem to have high hopes that this resolution would escape a US veto, if only to counter the Russian/Chinese veto of a Bahraini draft resolution that called for the use of force under UN Chapter Seven to open the Strait of Hormuz.
According to Ali, it is significant that several UNSC permanent members, such as France and the US, have stated that they are not in favour of a military option regarding the Strait of Hormuz. He added that, given that Trump chose the less escalatory option, it suggests that he has not foreclosed negotiations.
“If the US were to adopt an escalatory approach towards the Strait of Hormuz, then obviously the Iranians would react,” Ali said. He added that this would simply aggravate the global energy crisis—“not something that anyone would want to subscribe to”.
Ali argued that with the US opting for the less escalatory option, Iran might also choose to exercise restraint, which would open the door for a second round of negotiations and possibly one or two further rounds that could produce the basis for an Islamabad process “that would clearly take time”.
“We are talking about very complex issues – and this is not just the nuclear programme; there is a need for time, experts’ analysis and political decision-making to happen before we can expect even a framework agreement or an MOU [memorandum of understanding] that sets the path and objectives of a negotiation process,” Ali stated.
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