The Persian Gulf is not merely a body of water; it is where geography, energy, and geopolitics converge

The Iran – US/Israeli war continues and has continued – continues again. What began on the 28th of February later succumbed to the many false overtures towards peace, and the conflict that started then prevailed over all efforts to end it. A ceasefire was announced, backchannel meetings were ongoing and probably still are, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Iran and the US, with Pakistan endorsing it as a witness but not as a mediator. However, nothing seemed to hold, and animosity and physical conflict only escalated. Now it’s the 21st of July 2026, and matters have only gone from bad to worse. All sides wanted a negotiated settlement on their own terms, but were in search of a decision in their favour, from a position of strength. The US never got the upper hand, and Iran never dominated the conflict beyond staging unprecedented responses to US belligerence.

Today Iran stands firm and does not appear to be anywhere nearer to acquiescing to US demands even after 12 days of horrendous bombing in an unprecedented air campaign. Iran has instead responded through an array of ballistic missile attacks on the regional Gulf States, Syria and Jordan. Iran has shown remarkable composure as opposed to Donald Trump’s vacillations, meteoric outbursts, inconsistent behaviour and ambiguity. Some have even said that Trump is displaying controlled madness to influence negotiations. Observations related to the current air campaign mounted by the US indicate an attempt at the isolation of specific coastal towns such as Bandar Abbas and Chabahar, as well as infrastructural damage to water, energy, and bridges all over Iran. The former points towards the possibility of a ground invasion by the US, and the latter, trying to shake Iranian resolve. At this moment, a ground invasion of the Iranian coastline would be an unmitigated disaster for the US Military for several reasons, but essentially due to lack of sustainability by US troops in the face of a barrage of short-range missiles. If the US does manage to capture any ground along the Coast, it is obvious that Iran would resort to a scorched-earth strategy, leaving the US troops with nothing in hand and in a highly vulnerable position.

Why did Trump suggest an MOU in the first place? It appeared to be more of a surrender document where Iran walked away with all that they asked for and the US got nothing. Why Trump signed such a deal was probably to put into effect a ceasefire that the US needed at the time. However, if the US wanted to continue prosecuting war, why work a deal to bring about a ceasefire at all? The first probable reason is logistics, i.e., there are reliable sources stating that the US was running out of interceptors and missiles. Time was needed to top up, and it appears that the US now has a new operational lease on life for another three weeks, of which 12 days have already been consumed. The second probability was Trump playing to the world stock and oil prices, which have been driving his operational decisions all along. The third is that the US itself had dipped too much into its oil reserves and needed to bring them up to pre-war levels. Probably all three factors came into play, and Trump played out the MOU drama with premeditated deceit, never intending to uphold his commitments. A deliberate confusion was created over the routes to be adopted by commercial naval vessels in the Hormuz Straits. The US violated the MOU understanding, where instead of relinquishing control of the Straits to Iran and Oman, they decided to exercise their own control over all shipping. It was by design and was calculated to trigger the conflict into a shooting war through a considered method.

On the other hand, the MOU’s first article clearly stated the containment of operations in Lebanon, which Israel refused to act upon and the US failed to enforce. This became the second violation, which would obviously lead to further conflict. The MOU allowed Pakistan to come out of this negotiated

settlement as the biggest diplomatic winner, the Iranians with the biggest economic gains, the US with the biggest security gain, but Israel was left with the least benefits that it was aspiring for. As already explained before, this war in the Persian Gulf was more of an Israeli initiative in search of a Greater Israel. Those goals and objectives now seemed to be totally out of place, since Iran, which was supposed to be made dysfunctional, pliant, and truncated, instead, now appeared to be coming out of this war as a regional power and far more dominant than before. Israel could never allow the war to end without some visible gain, which is why it was obvious that neither did it agree with the ceasefire nor the MOU. The MOU became controversial from the very outset and, from a too-good-to-be-true agreement, eventually became a document of no consequence, leading to the present conflict, which has now escalated to another level.

Iran has shown remarkable resilience as well as restraint in the face of an unprecedented aerial bombardment, and despite tremendous infrastructural damage and loss to human life, they have remained composed, determined, and upright with an unprecedented display of moral dignity. Their ability to strike back has been a surprise for many military analysts, and they have yet to actually display their full potential. Iran has attacked the Gulf States, focusing mostly on the US bases, making them dysfunctional. Some infrastructural damage to desalination plants and energy installations has taken........

© Paradigm Shift