Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Middle East and North Africa

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S.-Iran cease-fire was on “life support.” In truth, the cease-fire has been hanging by a thread from the moment it began, with disagreements over whether Lebanon was included in the agreement threatening to derail the truce in its early days.

In the time since, the cease-fire has faced consistent challenges amid a stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz and lack of progress in negotiations to end the war. There have also been repeated exchanges of fire, including in the past week, and both sides have accused the other of violations. Even still, while the cease-fire might be limping along, neither Washington nor Tehran has moved to formally abandon it.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S.-Iran cease-fire was on “life support.” In truth, the cease-fire has been hanging by a thread from the moment it began, with disagreements over whether Lebanon was included in the agreement threatening to derail the truce in its early days.

In the time since, the cease-fire has faced consistent challenges amid a stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz and lack of progress in negotiations to end the war. There have also been repeated exchanges of fire, including in the past week, and both sides have accused the other of violations. Even still, while the cease-fire might be limping along, neither Washington nor Tehran has moved to formally abandon it.

But the situation raises questions as to how a cease-fire is defined, who decides when a violation is committed, and what constitutes a complete breakdown. For insights on this, Foreign Policy spoke with Laurie Nathan, the director of the mediation program at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Nathan, an expert on cease-fires and peacemaking, was a member of the African Union mediation team for Sudan’s Darfur region from 2005 to 2006 and has served as a senior mediation advisor to the United Nations.

While cease-fire violations are as old as time, Nathan said “weak” mechanisms surrounding recent cease-fires “may be particular to Trump.”

“[Trump] is intent on transactional peacemaking that serves family and personal enrichment,” Nathan said, and the president’s “vacillation, almost on a daily basis and certainly on a weekly basis, makes the negotiations very difficult.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Foreign Policy: Since a cease-fire was declared in the Iran war last month, there have been repeated exchanges of fire and a U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports. A blockade is generally considered an act of war. Can we really call what has been going on between the United States and Iran over the past month or so a “cease-fire”?

Laurie Nathan: I’m going to make four points. The first is that cease-fires are never without violation. It’s almost inconceivable. Cease-fires are going to be violated to a greater or lesser extent and for a variety of reasons. All cease-fires are on a continuum. At the one end of the spectrum, the positive end, there are no violations or only........

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