The Strait of Hormuz was meant to be Iran’s leverage. It has instead begun to work against Iran. What started as a pressure tactic to raise the costs of U.S. action and unsettle global energy markets has produced the opposite effect. The U.S. naval blockade has remained in place, Iran has linked its return to the second Islamabad round to lifting that blockade, and diplomacy has stalled. In effect, Tehran has tied a political process to a military lever it does not fully control. That is a risky position.

This is where Pakistan’s mediation has become important. Field Marshal Asim Munir carried broad U.S. proposals to Tehran and sought a clear response. That response has still not come. Yet President Trump agreed, at Pakistan’s request, to extend the ceasefire, even while keeping the blockade in place. The meaning is straightforward: Washington has left the door open for talks, but not indefinitely. Time has been created for Iran to decide.

The immediate problem is not that talks have collapsed. It is that talks are delayed because Iran has not produced a unified answer. The U.S. side, led again by Vice President J.D. Vance, was reportedly prepared for a second round in Islamabad. Tehran did not come, insisting first on movement over the blockade. That hesitation reflects a deeper problem in Tehran’s decision-making.

There appear to be two broad tendencies at work. On one side are President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, representing a political-diplomatic camp inclined to keep negotiations alive. On the other hand are harder security figures, including IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, and elements linked to the Guards’ wider security network, who have stressed resistance and pushed back against compromise. In between sits Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guard commander and also a negotiator, trying to bridge both worlds while under pressure from both. This is why the question of a “unified Iranian response” is political.

Contrary to what Iran experts like Vali Nasr led many to believe—that Iran’s behaviour reflects a coherent grand strategy—recent events suggest something far less orderly. There is also a pattern in Iranian conduct—part ideological rigidity, part tactical mischief—where public defiance is mixed with private accommodation. That may serve as bargaining at times. But when it produces mixed signals, frustrates mediators, or mistakes bravado for strategy, it becomes self-defeating.

There is a lesson here I have........

© The Friday Times