The memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the United States and Iran, signed on June 17, briefly appeared to have achieved what weeks of military confrontation had not. It extended the ceasefire, reopened a path back to negotiations and offered the prospect of restoring stability to one of the world’s most strategically important regions.

The early indicators were encouraging. Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries roughly a fifth of global oil trade, began to recover. Oil flows rose markedly, while Iranian exports more than doubled from their wartime low under a temporary sanctions waiver. About 340 commercial vessels passed through the Strait during the week of 22–28 June, making it the busiest period since hostilities began on February 28. For a brief moment, diplomacy appeared to be succeeding.

Within weeks, however, ships were disappearing from the strait again, military exchanges had resumed and mediators were seeking another temporary truce, simply to rescue the original agreement. What had looked like a diplomatic breakthrough rapidly became another fragile ceasefire. Its rapid unravelling exposed the missing half of the mediation process: the parties had agreed on a political text, but not on the mechanisms needed to implement it, while the states that brokered the agreement lacked the leverage to make it stick.

Part of the problem was that the signing of the agreement had been treated as the culmination of mediation rather than the beginning of its most demanding phase. The US and the mediators appear to have focused on securing a mutually acceptable political text. Success was measured by signatures and public declarations, with too little attention paid to the challenges that inevitably arise once governments, militaries, regulators, banks, insurers, shipping companies and regional allies begin to put an agreement into practice. Questions of interpretation, sequencing, verification, dispute resolution and confidence-building were largely deferred rather than resolved.

Like many ceasefire arrangements, the June MoU relied heavily on constructive ambiguity. This was understandable. Both Washington and Tehran needed sufficient political flexibility to present the agreement as........

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