On March 23, President Donald Trump announced that the United States and Iran had reached “major points of agreement”. Shortly after, he claimed that Tehran had delivered a significant concession related to oil, gas, and the Strait of Hormuz.

These statements, along with the decision to postpone strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, generated considerable diplomatic optimism. Global markets responded positively to what was perceived as a sign of de-escalation.

This optimism, however, conflates two analytically distinct phenomena: the emergence of a mutually hurting stalemate, which creates the conditions under which parties become willing to negotiate, and the existence of a viable bargaining architecture, which determines whether durable agreements can be reached.

In the current conflict, the former is beginning to crystallise while the latter remains structurally absent.

The stalemate condition

American scholar William Zartman’s concept of the mutually hurting stalemate holds that conflict termination becomes possible when both belligerents perceive that continued fighting imposes costs that cannot be offset by anticipated military gains.

The empirical indicators of this condition are becoming visible on both sides. Iran’s ballistic missile inventories have been significantly depleted, its naval capabilities degraded, and the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has disrupted the institutional coherence of its security apparatus.

On the opposing side, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flow, has generated an energy shock the International Energy Agency describes as more severe than the combined oil crises of 1973 and 1979, with direct inflationary consequences for the United States domestic economy.

These pressures explain the diplomatic signalling now under way. They do not, however, resolve the deeper structural problem that has defined this conflict from its inception: the near-total erosion of trust between both sides that functional war termination requires.

The commitment problem

The analytical literature on war termination identifies the commitment problem, the inability of belligerents to make credible post-agreement commitments in the absence of an enforcement authority, as among the most significant barriers to durable peace. In the present conflict, this problem is constitutive.

The war began on February 28 during active nuclear negotiations in which Oman’s foreign minister had declared that a breakthrough was “within reach”. Military operations launched in the middle of functioning diplomatic channels eliminated the foundational premise upon which any diplomatic process depends: namely, that agreements made at the negotiating table will not be invalidated by unilateral action.

Iran’s rejection of the proposed ceasefire-first framework reflects this structural reality. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has stated that Tehran does not seek a ceasefire because it does not wish to see “last year’s scenario to repeat”, demanding instead a permanent end to hostilities accompanied by enforceable guarantees against future aggression.

This position is the rational inference of a state that has engaged in two serious rounds of nuclear diplomacy with Washington and been subjected to military strikes on both occasions.

Under a ceasefire, US and Israeli forces could regroup while Iran’s degraded military assets cannot be meaningfully reconstituted. Should subsequent negotiations collapse, Iran would resume hostilities from a materially weaker position.

The structural incentive, therefore, is to maintain pressure until guarantees are secured in advance rather than promised for the future.

The declaratory off-ramp

Trump’s 15-point plan, conveyed through Pakistani intermediaries, demanding the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear facilities, cessation of uranium enrichment, and permanent opening of the Strait of Hormuz, represents a comprehensive statement of US and Israeli war objectives rather than a calibrated opening bid.

As a negotiating instrument, it is unlikely to produce agreement in its current form. Its significance lies less in its specific provisions than in establishing the outer boundary of American ambition.

More consequential is the declaratory dimension of Trump’s recent statements. By asserting that the regime change objective has been fulfilled and invoking the structural transformation of Iran’s command architecture as evidence that a central war aim has been achieved, he created the political conditions necessary for a negotiated exit.

What matters for war termination purposes is that the Trump administration is released from its maximalist rhetorical commitments and opens space for a settlement that can be presented domestically as a product of military success.

This is the face-saving formula that mediation theory identifies as essential when audience costs have been elevated by prior public commitments. Iran’s partial concession on Hormuz serves a symmetrical function, signalling willingness to negotiate while preserving the appearance of strategic autonomy rather than coerced compliance.

A viable framework

The negotiating framework most likely to produce a durable agreement would sequence issues across divergent time horizons. A first phase centred on a verifiable Hormuz arrangement and the cessation of strikes against third-party states would address the immediate global economic emergency while providing both parties with tangible deliverables.

The nuclear component, given its complexity and the depth of mistrust now operative, is better addressed subsequently through a political framework agreement that establishes parameters for negotiation without requiring immediate resolution. The technical feasibility of such an arrangement has been demonstrated by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The barrier has never been technical. It has been political, specifically whether any agreement can be rendered durable against changes in administration and the persistent pressure of actors whose war termination preferences diverge from those of the primary belligerents.

This is where the current diplomatic architecture reveals its most fundamental inadequacy. Pakistan, Turkiye, and Egypt have performed a valuable role as intermediaries. None possesses the capacity, from an Iranian perspective, to serve as a security guarantor in the sense that war termination theory requires. Iran has conditioned any agreement on “firm international guarantees against future aggression.” Providing such guarantees requires an actor capable of lending credible enforcement weight to any arrangement, a capacity no current participant in the mediation process commands.

The logical candidate is China. Beijing’s material interests in the resolution of this conflict are direct: As the world’s largest oil importer and primary destination for Gulf energy exports, the Hormuz closure constitutes an acute threat to Chinese energy security.

China’s “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Iran, combined with its institutional relationships across the Gulf, provides both the diplomatic access and the credibility in Tehran that other potential guarantors lack.

The standard objection that Sino-American strategic competition precludes such engagement misreads the historical record. The P5+1 negotiation of the JCPOA was conducted under conditions of significant great power tension; Chinese and Russian participation served their respective strategic interests while rendering the agreement more credible to Tehran.

The incentive structure today is comparable: The energy crisis imposes real costs on Beijing that it has every reason to resolve.

A Chinese security guarantee to Iran, formalised through a UN Security Council mechanism, would impose reputational and material costs on violations, provide Tehran with an interlocutor whose independence gives its assurances credibility, and align Chinese institutional interests with the agreement’s enforcement.

On the other hand, any agreement confined to the bilateral dimensions of the US-Iran relationship will be structurally incomplete.

The importance of regional inclusion

The 2026 conflict has drawn the GCC states – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain – into its operational theatre as targets of Iranian missile and drone strikes, hosts of American military infrastructure, and custodians of the energy architecture whose disruption has generated the present global economic crisis.

Their exclusion from any settlement framework would replicate the foundational error of prior agreements, whose stability depended on actors who had no voice in their design and therefore no institutional stake in their preservation.

The Gulf states bring to any negotiation both interests and leverage that neither Washington nor Tehran can substitute. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have demonstrated, through the 2023 Chinese-brokered Saudi-Iranian normalisation, a pragmatic willingness to engage Tehran bilaterally when the terms are acceptable. Qatar’s role as an interlocutor, strained but not severed by Iranian strikes on its energy infrastructure, preserves a channel that formal diplomacy should institutionalise rather than bypass.

Their inclusion is not a diplomatic courtesy. It is a structural requirement for any agreement intended to hold beyond the immediate cessation of hostilities.

In the current war, the pressures are accumulating on both sides, and the diplomatic signals of recent days suggest that negotiation is becoming politically viable for both Washington and Tehran. What neither the five-day postponement, nor the Hormuz concession, nor the backchannel through Islamabad yet provides is the structural foundation on which a durable agreement can be constructed.

The commitment problem that defines this conflict cannot be resolved by the parties themselves. It requires regional buy-in and a guarantor with the weight, independence, and credibility to make commitments meaningful.

That conversation, between Washington and Beijing, has not yet begun. It is, arguably, the most consequential one remaining.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.