A three-page deal is on the table in Islamabad. And while the world watches that room, Washington has quietly begun dismantling its relationship with Baghdad.
Dollar shipments to Iraq’s Central Bank have stopped. Security coordination is suspended. Funding to Iraqi institutions has been cut. The U.S. Embassy issued its highest travel warning. This is the most severe rupture in U.S.-Iraq relations since 2003, and it is running in near silence, in parallel with every other crisis this week.
Also in this edition: Israel has drawn a permanent line ten kilometers inside Lebanon and said it will not leave. The Gulf is watching a deal take shape in Islamabad with no Gulf voice in the room. And inside Iran, the Revolutionary Guard is deploying children as young as 12 in operational roles across Iranian cities.
Dalshad Hussein, Mustafa Saadoun, and Randa Jebai contributed to the Agenda this week.
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Expert conversations unpacking the latest developments in Iran and how they are reshaping security, energy markets, and geopolitics across the Middle East.
Washington Signals
The Three-Page Deal
The United States has put a three-page deal on the table in Islamabad. Iran has not confirmed that it will come to pick it up.
A senior White House official told MBN the framework offers $20 billion for Iran’s uranium stockpile and extends the ceasefire up to 60 days to allow broader negotiations. Vice President J.D. Vance, Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Senior Adviser Jared Kushner are leading the U.S. delegation in Islamabad. U.S. advanced security teams are on the ground. Pakistan has deployed 10,000 additional security personnel and implemented a security lockdown. “The offer is there,” the official said. “The question is whether the Iranian regime is serious or whether they’re using the talks to run out the clock.”
A deal exists. A deadline is approaching. And the side that needs to say yes has not said anything publicly that sounds like yes.
Iran is not speaking with one voice. After 21 hours of talks collapsed in the first Islamabad round, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Monday the country has “no plans for the next round of negotiations.” Iranian regime-linked media declared that sitting with the Vance delegation again would be “a waste of time” before the second round even begins. But Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif held a 45-minute call with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. The split tracks exactly with what MBN has reported throughout the conflict: The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, not civilian leadership, are driving Tehran’s public position. Pakistan is betting the civilian side wins.
The ceasefire expires Tuesday night Eastern Time. Trump told Bloomberg the extension is “highly unlikely” without a deal. “I will knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” he wrote on Sunday.
The ship seizure sharpened the stakes. U.S. forces aboard the USS Spruance, with Marines from the 31st Expeditionary Unit, boarded and disabled the Iranian-flagged cargo vessel Touska after a six-hour warning period. CENTCOM confirmed 25 commercial vessels had been turned back since the blockade began. Iran called it “piracy.” The Treasury Department’s 30-day waiver on stranded Iranian oil at sea expired April 19 and will not be renewed.
“We are not going to comment on every IRGC commander’s negotiating posture or every alleged Israeli violation along the Lebanese border,” the White House official told MBN. “This week is about whether Tehran takes the deal before the deadline hits.”
Wednesday is the ceasefire deadline. Wednesday is also Israeli Independence Day.
Scoop
The Baghdad Rupture
The U.S. flag is seen above the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad following a rocket attack, Iraqi security sources said, March 14, 2026. Photo by Ahmed Saad/Reuters.
Washington has taken a series of punitive steps against Iraq. Baghdad is only now beginning to feel its full weight.
Four measures have been confirmed by MBN’s Washington bureau and Baghdad correspondents. Dollar shipments to Iraq’s Central Bank have been halted. All high-level security coordination meetings are suspended. Funding for several Iraqi security institutions has been cut. And Washington has signaled it may withdraw from Victory Base, the former U.S. military installation now used as a diplomatic support center.
The dollar halt is especially serious. Under arrangements established after the 2003 U.S. invasion, all Iraqi oil revenues flow into an account at the U.S. Federal Reserve in New York. Physical dollar shipments from that account are the primary source of liquidity for Iraq’s domestic market. Two government sources in the Iraqi Council of Ministers confirmed the halt to MBN. Iraq’s Central Bank denied it. The US State Department did not.
“Shipments have stopped, and they will not resume until there is clarity on the shape of the new government and a demonstrated commitment to stop using U.S. currency to fund attacks on Americans,” a senior State Department official told MBN. “This is not a rupture. This is a consequence.”
An Iraqi security minister confirmed the suspension of coordination to MBN. “These meetings, if not held, cause damage to Iraq,” he said. Washington has added a condition beyond government formation: Baghdad must identify those responsible for recent attacks on the U.S. embassy and a US base at Baghdad International Airport before coordination resumes.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters last Friday that Washington “will not allow Iraq’s terrorist militias, backed by Iran, to threaten American lives or interests.” State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott called on Baghdad the same day to dismantle Iran-aligned groups operating on Iraqi soil. Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” alert warning that militias “continue to plan attacks against U.S. citizens and interests throughout Iraq.”
A government source told MBN the message from Washington is plain: “An Iraq that is not beholden to Iran.”
This is the most severe rupture in U.S.-Iraq relations since 2003.
Read the full article here
Diplomatic Signals
Hands on the Trigger
Israeli military vehicles on the Israeli side of the Israel-Lebanon border, after a 10-day ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel went into effect, April 17, 2026. FLORION GOGA / REUTERS
Israel has drawn a new boundary across southern Lebanon and said it will not leave. Washington is calling it a negotiation. Lebanon cannot decide who speaks for it at the table.
On April 18, Israel announced a “yellow line,” a permanent security zone extending 10 kilometers into Lebanese territory, modeled on the buffer Israel established in Gaza. Five Israeli forces divisions, tens of thousands of troops, remain inside Lebanon. Residents are barred from returning to 55 Lebanese towns and villages inside the zone. Netanyahu was explicit: “We will not withdraw.”
The ceasefire, signed between the Israeli and Lebanese governments on April 16, allows Israel to strike targets it defines as imminent threats. It has no enforcement mechanism. Between November 2024 and March 2026, the UN documented more than 15,400 violations of the previous ceasefire agreement, averaging 25 per day. None triggered consequences. The current text is structurally identical.
A senior State Department official told MBN the limits of Washington’s role plainly: “We are facilitating discussion, not enforcing outcomes. That is the limit of our role at this table, and everyone in the room understands it.”
A former Lebanese diplomat told MBN the problem runs deeper than Washington’s silence. “President Aoun says the objective is withdrawal from the occupied southern territories. Hezbollah says it will bring down the yellow line through resistance. The United States calls it productive engagement without mentioning the yellow line at all. So who is representing Lebanon at that table? The answer is: all of them, and none of them.” The former Lebanese diplomat added that Lebanon’s government, its parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, and Hezbollah are each pursuing different objectives, and none fully controls the others. That fragmentation, the diplomat argued, is precisely what allows Israel to draw a line across Lebanese territory while the world calls it a negotiation.
There is one more complication. If the Iran ceasefire expires on April 22 without a deal, Hezbollah’s commitment to the Lebanon truce expires with it.
The question is not whether the ceasefire is holding. It is who bears the cost when it doesn’t.
MBN Magazine:
Features, debates and analysis on the Middle East from unique voices. You won’t find these stories anywhere else.
Quote of the Day
“I feel very frustrated and angry that the US went into this war without a clear exit plan.”
— Rachel Reeves, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, April 15
Iran Watch
Armed and Twelve
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is deploying children as young as 12 in intelligence and operational roles across Iranian cities. A young Tehran resident told MBN, there is “not a single street in Iran without the presence of armed children, either as foot patrols, aboard military vehicles, or at checkpoints.” In March, an IRGC official publicly announced a recruitment campaign open to volunteers aged 12, covering intelligence patrols, inspection operations, and logistical support. The Hana Human Rights Organization, an Iranian Kurdish group based in Canada, told MBN that children have also been used as human shields around power stations and vital infrastructure when the U.S. threatened to strike Iran’s economic facilities.
Read the full story here
The Invisible Hand
A person riding a scooter carries a flag bearing an image of Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, as displaced residents make their way back to their homes after a 10-day ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel came into effect, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, April 17, 2026. Reuters/Mohamed Azakir
A parallel MBN investigation into Iran’s role in the Lebanon battlefield found that the IRGC’s presence in Lebanon extended beyond training and support to direct participation in operational planning and coordination rooms alongside Hezbollah. Cross-analysis of open sources, obituary data, and field interviews documented around 20 names likely linked to the IRGC’s Quds Force, the branch responsible for foreign operations, killed during the conflict, a figure investigators describe as the minimum observable threshold. Iranian sources told MBN that a permanent IRGC representative sits within Hezbollah’s Shura Council, the group’s top decision-making body, while IRGC-linked personnel are embedded inside Lebanese social institutions, submitting periodic reports to Tehran. The investigation also found evidence of forged Lebanese passports used by IRGC elements to enter Lebanon through indirect routes, a case now before Lebanese courts.
Read the full investigation here
Gulf Watch
Not in the Room
Gulf oil exports collapsed 44 percent in March. Gulf producers are sitting on oil they cannot move and are not benefiting from the price. Kuwait’s airspace is fully closed. The World Bank projects Kuwait and Qatar each to contract by more than five percent this year. On the night Washington announced the ceasefire, missile alerts sounded in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. Gulf capitals absorbed incoming fire during the ceasefire, not after it.
There is a three-page deal on the table in Islamabad. It does not mention the Gulf.
Bahrain sponsored a UN Security Council resolution authorizing member states to protect freedom of navigation in Hormuz. Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan co-sponsored it. Russia and China vetoed it despite 11 votes in favor.
A Kuwaiti diplomat told me what that means in practice. “Kuwait co-sponsored the UNSC resolution. We voted with Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Russia and China vetoed it. So when I read about a three-page deal in Islamabad focused on uranium stockpiles and a 60-day ceasefire extension, I have to ask: Where is the Gulf in that document? We are not in the room in Islamabad. But we are in the path of whatever comes out. That is not a comfortable place to be.”
The UAE formally submitted three non-negotiable demands after intercepting 2,819 projectiles over 40 days: verifiable cessation of hostilities, unconditional reopening of Hormuz, and reparations. UAE diplomatic adviser Anwar Gargash told Euronews: “We do not desire a ceasefire that neglects the core issues. We have no trust in the Tehran regime.”
None of those demands appear in the Islamabad framework.
Featured Conversation
What Victory Leaves Behind
The bombs have fallen. The regime may survive. What happens to the Iranians who believed change was possible?
Roya Hakakian is an Iranian-American writer and witness to the 1979 Revolution who recently joined MBN to lead new content initiatives. Ilan Berman is Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council and an MBN board member. In a virtual discussion with MBN journalists, we talked with both about what this war means for Iranians and the region beyond the battlefield.
On civilian benchmarks: “There have to be terms that impose on Iran the restoration of the internet, a moratorium on executions, and the freeing of political prisoners. Once these things disappear, our own conviction about why we are here and what we are aiming to do begins to seem ambiguous.” — Roya Hakakian
On the opposition problem: “The opposition is incoherent. They disagree with one another. They fight with one another. They refuse to sit at a table with one another. If you’re an American looking for something you can call progress at the negotiating table, there’s only one party to talk to. This is a real problem.” — Ilan Berman
Joe Kawly
Joe Kawly is Washington Bureau Chief for MBN and a global affairs journalist with more than twenty years covering U.S. foreign policy and Middle East politics.
A CNN Journalism Fellow and Georgetown University graduate, he reports from Washington at the intersection of power and diplomacy, explaining how decisions made in the U.S. capital shape events across the Arab world.
