High-level US-Iran talks are due to begin in Islamabad on April 11, four days after the United States and the Iranian regime accepted a two-week ceasefire proposal brokered by Pakistan to pause the war in Iran.

The fighting erupted on February 28 after the United States and Israel launched joint air strikes in Iran. These attacks killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and almost 50 key political and military figures in the Iranian regime ranging from Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Defense Council, to Aziz Nasirzadeh, the defense minister.

Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba, was wounded on the first day of the war and has yet to show his face in public.

When the ceasefire was announced, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that at least 1,665 civilians had been killed in Iran. In Israel, the civilian death toll stood at 20, with more than 7,000 wounded. Over the course of 39 days of war, Iran fired approximately 650 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel. More than 90 percent were shot down. In the Gulf states, 32 people were killed. The United States lost 13 soldiers.

The negotiations in Pakistan’s capital are sure to be extremely arduous and lengthy because the ceasefire is clouded by ambiguities and complicated by issues that may well defy a resolution.

A resumption of the war is possible, though neither the United States nor Iran wish to renew hostilities.

The truce was hammered out shortly after US President Donald Trump issued an apocalyptic ultimatum threatening to extinguish Iran’s “whole civilization” if the Iranian regime did not fully reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas flows.

The day before, Trump sent a crude warning to Iran, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Justifying the Trump administration’s acceptance of the truce, US Vice President JD Vance said that American forces had “largely accomplished its military objectives.”

Echoing Vance’s assessment, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, claimed that Iran’s military capabilities and industrial defense base had been decimated during the course of the US-Israel air campaign in Iran.

The US and Israel carried out 13,000 and 8,500 sorties respectively.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly urged Trump to press on with the war, arguing that a ceasefire at this point carried significant risks.

Trump, bent on extricating himself from a “forever” war and concerned that his presidency would be imperiled by the drastic uptick in the price of oil, decided that a ceasefire would be preferable.

All the same, the war has left Trump’s political base fractured, with some of his former supporters having accused him of........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)