7 Things that Will Decide It

 The clock is ticking on the ceasefire. Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear program, Lebanon: these and other issues are nowhere near resolution.

As the parties edge toward trying to find a middle ground, here are the seven things that will decide what happens next.

Share your thoughts, analysis and predictions with me at ailves@mbn-news.com. If you were forwarded the MBN Iran Briefing, please subscribe. Read me in Arabic here, or on the flagship MBN Arabic-language and English-language news sites.

And don’t forget to follow, and rate, our Iran Briefing podcast. This week we discuss Lebanon, Hormuz, and how the effects of the war will be felt everywhere and for a long time to come. Watch this week’s episode here.

Quote of the Week

“The global outlook has abruptly darkened following the outbreak of war in the Middle East … The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and serious damage to critical production facilities … could cause an energy crisis on an unprecedented scale.”

— Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, IMF chief economist

TOP OF THE NEWS

All Sevens

In the war’s seventh week, and with a ceasefire expiring in less than seven days, here are the seven factors that will decide what happens next.

1- The Strait

Three developments this week have made the strait question more complicated.

Mines. Iran cannot locate all the naval mines it laid in the waterway and does not have the capability to remove them quickly. The mines were deployed using small boats, without systematic tracking of their positions, and some have since drifted. Neither Iran nor the U.S. has a clear picture of how many remain or where they are. As Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said in the days after the ceasefire, the strait would reopen “with due consideration of technical limitations.”

Tolls. Iran has kept a narrow corridor open for vessels willing to operate on its terms, charging up to $2 million per transit. U.S. president Donald Trump announced the blockade partly to stop ships that had paid Iranian tolls from passing, describing the arrangement as extortion. A legal analysis published by Chatham House this week describes the tolling system as not having a basis in international law and asks “would the U.S. really capture an Indian or Chinese super-tanker if they had paid the Iranian toll, or entered its ports or coastal areas?” We haven’t had a chance to see yet how the blockade will play out or be enforced.

Chinese ships. Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun said on Monday: “Our ships are moving in and out of the waters of the Strait of Hormuz. We have trade and energy agreements with Iran. We will respect and honor them and expect others not to meddle in our affairs. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, and it is open for us.”

A U.S.-sanctioned Chinese-owned tanker, the Rich Starry, initially transited the strait on Tuesday after departing the UAE (but not an Iranian port), only to make a U-turn in the Gulf of Oman, where U.S. warships were waiting. CENTCOM has clarified that its operational area is the Gulf of Oman, not the strait itself, and that the blockade applies to vessels entering or exiting Iranian ports and coastal areas, not to ships transiting to non-Iranian destinations. The sanctioned tanker was heading elsewhere, but turned back nonetheless. CENTCOM said no ships successfully reached Iranian ports during the first twenty-four hours of the blockade, though the BBC and Reuters suggest otherwise.

Here’s the test: What happens when a Chinese vessel bound directly for an Iranian port challenges the blockade? Washington has not said. Separately, Iran is now considering a short-term pause on its own shipments through the strait to avoid triggering a confrontation. That would represent a significant concession.

More on China below.

Figures from Iranian history protecting the Strait of Hormuz. Propaganda mural in Tehran. Photo: Reuters

2- Nuclear Gap

In Islamabad, the U.S. proposed a 20-year pause on uranium enrichment. Iran countered with five years, which the U.S. in turn rejected.

In earlier rounds of talks before the war, Iran proposed enriching only to fuel specific research reactors, with no accumulation of enriched uranium gas and broad IAEA oversight. In those earlier talks, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi also offered to blend down Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to sixty percent to lower levels. Those positions did not survive the outbreak of war, and it’s not clear how much of that flexibility Tehran is still prepared to offer.

Iranian MP Seyyed Mahmoud Nabavian, who was part of the Islamabad negotiating team, said that the nuclear issue was the sole reason no deal was reached. In Araghchi’s description, the two sides were “inches away” from agreement before Iran encountered “maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade” from the U.S. 

One potential bridge has emerged from an unexpected direction. Russia renewed its offer this week to take physical custody of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile as part of any final agreement, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirming that Putin had raised the proposal directly with both Washington and regional states. “The offer still stands, but has not been acted upon,” Peskov told reporters Monday.

The proposal itself isn’t new. Russia made similar offers before the war. But the context has changed. At least 220 kilograms of Iran’s declared stockpile of sixty-percent-enriched uranium is believed to remain buried in the underground tunnel complex at Isfahan, and its fate has been a central uncertainty since IAEA inspectors lost access to Iran’s nuclear sites in June 2025.

Satellite imagery published this week shows Iran using the ceasefire to dig out its underground missile bases, with heavy equipment clearing debris from blocked tunnel entrances at sites near Khomeyn and south of Tabriz. U.S. intelligence assessed that roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers survived the war, many of them buried underground by strikes on tunnel entrances rather than being destroyed.

Canceled flights at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport. Photo: Reuters

3- Lebanon

Lebanon may be the biggest challenge to the ceasefire’s continuation. Iran’s ten-point proposal was explicit: an end to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah was a condition of the truce.

Under American pressure ahead of the Islamabad talks, Netanyahu agreed to direct negotiations with Lebanon and scaled back the pace of strikes. But Israel has continued hitting targets across southern Lebanon, Beirut and the Bekaa Valley.

The Israeli-Lebanese talks at the State Department on Tuesday were the first direct talks between the two countries since 1993. They produced no ceasefire and no framework, but the two sides agreed to hold further direct negotiations “at a mutually agreed time and venue.” Israel refused to commit to a ceasefire in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said he was encouraged by a “wonderful exchange” and that the Lebanese government had made clear “they will no longer be occupied by Hezbollah.” Hezbollah’s Wafiq Safa said it will not abide by any agreements reached in Washington. On the day of the talks, Hezbollah claimed 24 separate attacks on northern Israel.

The United Kingdom has separately urged Lebanon’s inclusion in the broader ceasefire framework. This stance aligns with Iran’s ten-point proposal but has been rejected both by Washington and Jerusalem. Turkey, whose mediating role has grown beyond its mention in Gulf state diplomacy, is in active contact with both sides on the Lebanon question. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi called this week for the ceasefire to be extended and talks to continue, saying, “Success may require everyone to make painful concessions, but this is nothing as compared to the pain of failure and war.”

A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute published this week found that eighty percent of Jewish Israelis think Israel should continue fighting in Lebanon against Hezbollah regardless of developments with Iran, even if it causes friction with Washington.

4- China Factor

China hasn’t fired a shot in this war but has emerged from it with significant strategic gains.

China entered the conflict with combined strategic and commercial reserves of roughly 1.3 to 1.4 billion barrels of oil, covering approximately four months of imports. Under a twenty-five-year cooperation agreement signed with Iran in 2021, Beijing locked in discounted Iranian crude in exchange for investment and security cooperation. China can probably absorb the energy shock better than almost any other major economy.

It’s worth considering that every U.S. carrier strike group deployed to the Gulf is one fewer available in the Western Pacific. Chinese military planners observing U.S. naval operations in the Gulf in real time, including carrier movements, missile intercept patterns, and logistics flows, are presumably gathering operational intelligence directly relevant to any future scenario, including a conflict over Taiwan.

Beijing wants stability restored, trade flowing, and energy arriving on time. 

5- Gulf State Pressure

Since the onset of the conflict, Iranian strikes have reached every GCC member state, with more than 660 recorded events and at least 41 deaths. Targets have included energy infrastructure, ports, airports, and data centers. The UAE has been struck most frequently and absorbed the largest share of successful impacts. Kuwait has suffered the most casualties.

That shared experience hasn’t produced a shared strategy, though. The UAE has urged Washington to continue striking until Iran’s missile and drone manufacturing capacity is destroyed. One official said: “Ending the war with Iran still in possession of the tools it is currently using to target the GCC would be a strategic disaster.”

Saudi Arabia is pushing in the opposite direction. Riyadh urged the U.S. on Tuesday to lift its blockade of Iranian ports and return to negotiations, warning that the move risks provoking Iran into closing the Bab al-Mandeb strait, the Red Sea chokepoint now carrying most Saudi oil exports since Hormuz was shut. When the ceasefire was announced on April 8, the UAE declined to issue any formal statement of support and instead demanded guarantees, compensation, and unconditional reopening of the strait, even as Saudi Arabia formally welcomed it while its state press expressed pessimism about its prospects.

Saudi Arabia has deepened its defense pact with Pakistan and is finalizing a security agreement with Turkey. A senior Saudi official said: “Both Israel and Iran are not acting in a way that supports a region of cooperation, stability, and shared prosperity.”

Iranian women walk past a police officer. Photo: Reuters

6- Iranian Domestic Stability

The regime is governing a country that is simultaneously at war, under an internet blackout, and experiencing acute economic rupture.

The war has caused fractures in the regime to surface. President Masoud Pezeshkian has been progressively sidelined. The IRGC has overridden his ministerial appointments, asserted direct control over wartime decision-making, and ignored his attempts to restrain strikes on Gulf neighbors. Pezeshkian reportedly warned in early April that without a ceasefire, the economy faced total collapse, a position the Guards dismissed. The tensions surfaced in the days before Islamabad, when IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi attempted to insert his own candidate onto the negotiating team and insisted the delegation refuse to discuss Iran’s missile program – demands the negotiating team resisted. Araghchi’s authority has also come under pressure from Vahidi. The man nominally in charge of all of it, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, is still absent. The IRGC fills the vacuum.

NetBlocks confirmed this week that Iran’s internet shutdown had passed 1,000 hours, making it the longest nationwide internet disruption recorded in any country. Connectivity has remained at around one percent of normal levels since early March. Iran’s Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi estimated during the January blackout that the economy was losing at least $35.7 million a day, while acknowledging the true figure was likely considerably higher. The current wartime blackout has now run more than twice as long, in an economy already far more damaged. 

Iran has begun offering businesses a limited paid internet package, restoring partial connectivity to vetted users for a fee. The move is a tacit acknowledgement that the blackout is inflicting economic damage. An estimated ten million Iranians depend directly on digital platforms for their livelihoods, and online sales collapsed by around eighty percent during the January blackout. A government spokesman confirmed that access is being provided only to individuals who “align with and reproduce the Islamic Republic’s narrative,” describing the country as operating under “special wartime conditions.”

Washington has now added a further turn of the economic screw. A sanctions waiver that had allowed roughly 140 million barrels of Iranian oil to reach global markets will expire two days before the ceasefire and will not be renewed.

In Tehran, some prices have shot up around forty percent since the war began. An insider close to the Iranian establishment said officials view the economy as the country’s Achilles’ heel. Without an influx of funds from a deal, authorities will have trouble making payroll, eventually threatening the regime’s ability to govern. The government’s own preliminary damage estimate stands at $270 billion.

7- The Clock

The ceasefire expires on April 21. A second round of talks is now taking shape. Pakistan confirmed yesterday that both Washington and Tehran have indicated openness to returning to Islamabad, with delegations keeping Friday through Sunday open. No date has been set and the composition of delegations has not been confirmed. The ceasefire could also be extended if talks are still in progress. UN Secretary General António Guterres said a return to the negotiating table is “highly probable.”

The ceasefire has meant different things to each side. Iran has spent it digging out its missile launchers. Washington has spent it tightening sanctions.

 A satellite image showing a new roof over a previously destroyed building at Isfahan nuclear site, Iran. Photo: Reuters

ESSENTIAL READING: IRAN NUCLEAR LATEST

Iran’s Nuclear Program: Set Back, Not Eliminated. Al-Monitor/AFP, April 15. Expert assessment of what the strikes actually achieved and what Iran still has.

U.S. Asked Iran to Freeze Uranium Enrichment for 20 Years, Sources Say. Axios, April 13. The original scoop on the 20-year vs. single-digit counter-offer.

U.S. Negotiators Were Ill-Prepared for Serious Nuclear Talks With Iran. Arms Control Association, April. Technical analysis of what the enrichment numbers mean.

The Islamabad Talks Were Doomed to Failure – And Hormuz Blockade Has Thrown Another Obstacle to Any Iran‑US Deal. The Conversation, April 14. Centers on the irreversibility of nuclear knowledge: “Nuclear expertise is not like territory, equipment or sanctions relief. Centrifuges can be dismantled, and sanctions can be lifted in stages – both lend themselves to phased, verifiable agreements. What the U.S. is demanding – a verifiable, permanent end to Iran’s breakout potential – requires Iran to surrender something that cannot be given back once conceded. Tehran and Washington both know this.”

Kremlin Repeats Offer to Take Iran’s Highly Enriched Uranium. Moscow Times, April 13. The Kremlin’s renewed proposal to take physical custody of Iran’s enriched stockpile.