Welcome back to the MBN Iran Briefing.
This week: The clock is ticking on the two-week ceasefire that took effect two weeks ago. But there are other time pressures out there, from Lebanon to the Bab al-Mandab and the global fertilizer crisis.
Find out more below.
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 check out the latest Iran Briefing podcast. In this edition, the podcast reckons with diplomacy — and reality. Starting with Lebanon. For the first time in 30 years, Lebanese and Israeli officials sat in the same room. The meeting in Washington last week was the first step toward what would be a historic breakthrough. But there is a different story on the ground — where, even with the ceasefire in Iran, fighting continues, and people are being displaced. Leila Bazzi, Matt Kaminski, and yours truly explore this gap. The stakes are even higher in the U.S. military and energy standoff with Iran. So are we at turning points or, as so often in the Middle East, is there more and possibly bigger trouble ahead? Watch in English or Arabic.
MBN Iran Briefing Podcast
Expert conversations unpacking the latest developments in Iran and how they are reshaping security, energy markets, and geopolitics across the Middle East.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Our speed in updating and refilling missile and drone launch platforms is even greater than before the war.”
— Brig. Gen. Seyed Majid Mousavi, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, on Iranian state television
TOP OF THE NEWS
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Who’s Really in Charge in Tehran?
As U.S. Vice President JD Vance heads to Islamabad for a second round of talks along with special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, there’s a less-reported story on who’s really in charge in Tehran. It’s becoming increasingly unclear who in the Iranian system has the authority to negotiate and conclude a deal.
The first round revealed a structural problem. After twenty-one hours of talks, Vance told reporters the Iranian negotiators had to return to Tehran to get approval for anything. The chain of authority ran through people who were not in the room. The U.S. is negotiating with a divided committee of hardliners and pragmatists that lacks a cohesive, unified position, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf do not have authority to independently determine Iran’s negotiating stance. The foreign minister’s announcement on Friday that Hormuz was fully open, which briefly triggered a rally in global markets, was overruled by the IRGC within hours. Hardline website Tasnim headlined its article about his announcement like this: “Araghchi’s bad and incomplete tweet and false ambiguity about the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Ghalibaf and Araghchi, the nominal negotiators, lack the leverage or formal executive authority to shape decision-making, let alone finalize anything the IRGC deems insufficiently hawkish.
When the war began, Iran’s decision-making had clear anchors: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani, one of the few in the leadership figures with experience engaging with the West; and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, as a seasoned diplomatic operator. All three are now gone or sidelined. Larijani’s replacement, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, is a career IRGC man with no diplomatic background. Above him sits IRGC Commander-in-Chief Ahmad Vahidi, who is now driving both military operations and Iran’s negotiating posture. Araghchi remains foreign minister in title but the open criticism of him in the press shows that his position is damaged. February’s Iran had a hardline system with experienced operators in key roles. Today the operators are gone and the IRGC fills the space directly.
So the real question for Islamabad is not so much whether Ghalibaf and Araghchi show up at Islamabad’s Serena Hotel, but whether anyone in the Iranian system is currently positioned to say yes to a deal that the IRGC considers too soft, and survive politically.
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The Lebanon Ceasefire Runs Out this Weekend
The ten-day Lebanon ceasefire that expires on Sunday doesn’t have an agreed mechanism for an extension. The State Department text says that it may be extended by mutual agreement between Lebanon and Israel “if progress is demonstrated in the negotiations.” As of today there is no demonstrated progress, direct Israel-Lebanon talks in Washington last week produced no breakthrough, and Hezbollah is not a party to the agreement, meaning the Lebanese government cannot guarantee Hezbollah compliance even if it wanted to. On Saturday Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said fighters would “remain in the field with their hands on the trigger.” On Sunday Hezbollah claimed it destroyed four tanks in southern Lebanon – the first attack since the truce began.
The expiry matters beyond Lebanon. When Araghchi announced on Friday that Hormuz was open, his post on X said explicitly it was “in line with the ceasefire in Lebanon.” So if the Lebanon truce collapses or is not extended on Sunday, Tehran has already shown it views the opening or closing of Hormuz as an option whenever they choose to exercise it as a response.
Another chokepoint: the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, within striking range of the Houthis. Photo: Reuters
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Bab al-Mandab: Another Chokepoint
Roughly 10-12 percent of global seaborne trade passes en route between Europe and Asia via the Suez Canal and past the Bab al-Mandab, the thirty-kilometer-wide strait between Yemen and Djibouti that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis, who control Yemen’s western coast, sit directly on the strait’s northern shore, giving them the ability to threaten or harass shipping passing through it with drones, missiles, and naval mines.
The Houthis are not a party to either ceasefire. The ceasefire brokered by Pakistan set no conditions on Yemen and named no Houthi obligations. On Saturday, Houthi official Hussein al-Ezzi posted on X that if the Houthis decide to close the Bab al-Mandab, the world will be powerless to reopen it.
Iran’s long-time foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar Velayati also presented the threat in explicit strategic terms, reminding the world that the security of Bab al-Mandab is in the hands of the Houthis. Saudi Arabia rerouted its crude exports through the Red Sea port of Yanbu after Hormuz closed, using its East-West pipeline as a bypass. Yanbu sits within Houthi missile range.
The Houthis have been screening Red Sea vessels. Even if the Houthis cannot fully close the strait, they can harass it into commercial paralysis, which is effectively what Iran has done seven hundred miles to the east. The trigger condition the Houthis have named is resumed escalation against Iran or Lebanon.
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The Looming Gulf Food and Fertilizer Crisis
The International Energy Agency’s release of 400 million barrels of oil in March, the largest coordinated reserve drawdown in its history, was designed to cover a short disruption in the flow of oil caused by the war and blocked sea routes. Hormuz has now been closed for over seven weeks, and global inventories are draining. The reserve cushion buys some time, but a crunch will arrive in May regardless of what talks produce.
The food and fertilizer crunch is a slower-moving clock but it’s also the hardest to reverse. As I’ve written in a previous edition of this newsletter, Hormuz is not just an oil route. The Gulf accounts for forty-six percent of global seaborne urea exports. Urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertilizer, is produced from natural gas.
Seven weeks of missing fertilizer shipments matter most acutely in East Africa and South Asia, among the most food-insecure and densely populated regions on earth, where the Gulf is the dominant supplier. Planting seasons open in May, and there is no simple alternative sourcing. A harvest shortfall will trigger humanitarian emergencies and price shocks that will ripple across global food markets, as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine demonstrated. Fertilizer that has not arrived before planting starts can’t be substituted after the fact. The consequences will run into 2027 regardless of when Hormuz reopens.
At the other end of the same supply chain, around 90 percent of Qatar’s own food arrives by sea. An Iranian missile strike on Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility in March took out two of its fourteen liquefaction trains, roughly 3.5 percent of global LNG capacity. Repairs will take years.
Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency at the quarterly IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna last month. Photo: Reuters
MBN Magazine:
Features, debates and analysis on the Middle East from unique voices. You won’t find these stories anywhere else.
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The Nuclear Monitoring Gap
The IAEA confirmed in March that damage to Natanz had made the facility inaccessible. Iran holds approximately 441 kilograms of uranium enriched to sixty percent, just below weapons grade, that is currently unaccounted for. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told AP on Saturday that transferring the stockpile to the U.S. is a “nonstarter,” while declining to address other disposition options, including Russia’s standing offer to take it. A Russian-Chinese resolution that would have kept the Security Council engaged on the Iranian nuclear issue until April 18 was not adopted, so that door closed last Saturday.
The practical consequence for tomorrow’s talks, if they happen, is that there is no functioning inspection regime against which any enrichment deal concluded this week could actually be verified. Whatever Ghalibaf and Vance agree in Islamabad, confirming Iran is honoring it would require rebuilding a monitoring architecture from scratch, and that is a process that will take months and require full Iranian consent. Nobody in the international community currently knows what Iran’s nuclear program looks like.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi welcomes Pakistan army chief Asim Munir at an airport in Tehran. Photo: Reuters
ESSENTIAL READING: PAKISTAN AND THE U.S.-IRAN TALKS
- The Motives and Constraints Behind Pakistan’s Mediation. Stimson Center, April 2026. Analytical piece on why Pakistan stepped in and the limits of Islamabad’s leverage.
- Why Pakistan is Mediating Between the United States and Iran. Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Paul Staniland, April 2026. Covers the structural question of how a domestically strained, economically pressured state parlayed the India-Pakistan ceasefire into a Middle East mediation role.
- Pakistan Keeps Pushing for Peace. Foreign Policy South Asia Brief, April 15, 2026. Covers Field Marshal Munir’s Tehran trip, Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif’s Gulf tour, and the “Islamabad Process” branding that Pakistani officials are now deploying.
- Why Pakistan has emerged as a mediator between U.S. and Iran, Munir Ahmed & E. Eduardo Castillo, Washington Post, April 2026. How Pakistan ended up as the unlikely broker between Washington and Tehran: geography, economic desperation, and Pakistani armed forces chief Munir’s personal relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Andres Ilves
Andres Ilves is Iran Editor and Senior Adviser at MBN. His career as a journalist and writer includes two decades at the BBC and Radio Free Europe.
