On Saturday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry announced that a navigation map had been agreed upon in diplomatic talks with Oman. The Iranian spokesman emphasised that the agreement had been reached despite US “obstruction” and efforts to “hinder” the talks. Further, the Iranian Foreign Minister consistently maintained that the Iran-Oman navigation talks are a separate endeavour to the US war talks, despite the Iran-Oman talks’ roots being within the Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding. The talks were described as “independent” relations between coastal states to ensure safe passage and preserved sovereignty. This distinction, between agreed navigation routes and agreed Strait re-opening, is a key point of contention for Iran, and re-opening remains contingent on Iran’s conditions being met. Resumption of normal commercial shipping depends on an end to “illegal US actions”, military threats, naval blockade and a US commitment to war reparations – among other things. The Oman framework, then, does not equate to a war resolution. Within Iran, it is increasingly unclear who is setting these lofty terms, removing Oman talks from their Memorandum origins and choosing the degree of Iranian hostility.
Iran’s Leadership Opacity
The central question of leadership in Iran regards who is actually setting terms in war negotiations, a question brought to forefront due to the minimal public presence of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. There have been no public or televised appearances from the Leader since taking office, though the Iranian Foreign Ministry attributes this to “wartime conditions” and security necessities following the assassination of Khameini’s father. This is indicative of the broader leadership vacuum in the theocracy’s clerical government; Khamenei is absent, parliament is holding virtual sessions, security portfolios are understaffed, and the Minister of Intelligence remains publicly unnamed. Whether these are breakdowns of basic state mechanics, natural products of prolonged conflict, or a shift towards a defiant type of opaque isolationism is not yet clear.
Within Iranian society, things are not much more cohesive. Tensions between the government and the populace have not eased, as grassroots demonstrations continue across key cities and the government routinely uses digital blackouts as a repressive tool during civil unrest. These protests are not just focused on economic hardship (exacerbated by sanctions), but also on active political defiance against the Iranian regime. IRGC-affiliated media outlets are even pushing for neighbourhood mosques to function as surveillance apparatus for identifying “suspicious” actors. Thus, we can surmise that the Iranian negotiation demands are not coming directly from democratic forums, rather they are being formed within the theocratic clerical leadership – however opaque or fractured it appears.
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Two competing security models have been at play in Iran’s recent history: the first is the Hossein Taeb model; reliant on personal networks and cronyist influence within security institutions, especially the IRGC Intelligence Organisation. Power, in this model, is exercised through loyal cadres and appointment incentives – rather than a centrally-controlled institutional bureaucracy. The second is the Ali-Asghar Hejazi model; the centralised, supra-institutional system centred upon the Supreme Leader’s office, which would receive flows of intelligence from the Ministry of Intelligence, the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, and other monitoring bodies (both in Iran and in the nations of its regional proxy actors). In this model, the executive authority of the Supreme Leader is the nexus of the intelligence web and the arbiter of negotiation terms. In the former, de-centralised model, the prime decision-maker regarding terms and conditions is less clear, and less fixed.
A new model, however, appears to be forming; that of functionally differentiated power. Mojtaba Khamenei remains the political apex and ultimate decision-maker, but an inner circle of close political/security advisers also help to formulate decisions. The SNSC seem to be handling formal national-security coordination and implementation, specialised intelligence agencies retain control of individual missions, and internal-security apparatus is focused on social control, grassroots repression and mitigation of internal threats posed by the disillusioned citizenry. The tensions, under this model, are not resolved: there is ultimately no clarity on who synthesises intelligence from these bodies for Khamenei. As Iran-Contra made clear, the executive may not always make their decisions with full knowledge of the situation they’re governing.
Mojtaba appears to be restructuring the security state in response to the failures and weaknesses exposed by the war, concentrating decision-making around his inner circle while dispersing coordination, intelligence and internal repression across independent institutions. With the assassination of so many key government figures early in the war, this is a rational strategy – ensuring that the deaths of security officials doesn’t paralyse intelligence networks. While the strategy has this key advantage, it doesn’t have a built-in failsafe against elite aggrandisement – the Leader’s immediate circle may find their power growing rapidly under the new model. Returning to the negotiations, the tense dynamics in the clerical establishment may be a direct source of global doubts over the durability of any agreement reached.
Washington’s Fractured Position on Priorities
While Iran is dealing with unclear power structures and shaky leadership, their adversaries across the pond are struggling to keep up a clear line of rhetoric regarding their priorities. JD Vance declared in a recent statement that restoring oil flows through the Strait now takes priority over the nuclear issue – despite nuclear capacity being a key cassus belli six months ago. Vance justifies the shift in terms of US citizen welfare, emphasising the benefits of low oil prices for American people. Considering the heavy sanctions worsening the poverty of the Iranian people, whose oppression America claims to be fighting, one wonders why only the US population are entitled to affordable utilities. Considering the actual poverty, inequality, healthcare inaccessibility, water pollution and job insecurity already plaguing the American people, one wonders if the USA actually considers anyone entitled to basic utilities – or whether they use affordability simply as a legitimising talking point.
The US citizenry are increasingly disillusioned with their government’s interests; recent polling from Ipsos indicates historic lows in citizen approval and trust across all major branches of the federal government. Public dissatisfaction is driven heavily by ongoing concerns over inflation, the cost of living, and deep political polarization. The public is increasingly aware of state personnel being drawn from and ideologically aligned with capital and ‘big business’, and of the state’s actions supporting the interests of capital over the well-being of the average citizen. With the administration facing accusations of unilateralism and corruption, affordable gas may help to shore up democratic approval.
Vance’s assertion, however, directly contradicts Trump’s own declarations on the 17th August that the first priority of the attacks “is, and always will be” preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. This is visible intra-elite and intra-governmental disagreement over which material interests (energy prices, military might) get to wear the face of national security. While Iran deals with structural power distribution concerns, the US is grappling with strategy preference divergence within an unchanging power structure – one that favours moneyed interests. Iranian negotiation terms and priorities are coming from an unclear juncture of executive authority and intelligence communities and the American negotiation agenda is increasingly divided.
Territorial vs Capitalist Logic
Last month, Trump suggested that the US could become “guardian” of the Strait, while collecting a 20% fee on products passing through. The US also explicitly rejected Iranian “service fee” proposals on the grounds of “freedom of navigation”. This double standard links explicitly to Trump’s inauguration remarks regarding the US as a “growing nation”, and parallels the pressure campaigns exerted on Canada and Greenland, as well as the recent violations of sovereignty in Venezuela. International legal experts maintain that any toll would be internationally illegal, an ironic observation considering neither Iran’s nor the US’ conduct in the war has been particularly deferential to international law.
On 14th August, Trump said he would be taking the Strait of Hormuz as territory of the US “pretty soon”. This is a rather outlandish claim to make in 2026, when the era of conquest is seen by most as consigned to sordid history. The territorial logic of power, state control of space through active occupation, is almost a taboo in the modern day – and certainly something that the world found unacceptable when Russia invaded Ukraine. More common is the capitalist logic of power; capital accumulation and rent extraction through control and occupation of a nation’s market. Neo-conquest, through the networks of the globalised economy, is far more politically acceptable, though just as morally indefensible, than its predecessor. The toll proposal is capital-led logic, the territory claim is a backwards anachronism – perhaps being resorted to because of a lack of speedy victory on the US side. The idea of taking territory as a “great service for the world” echoes the imperial past of civilising missions and land ‘scrambles’ serving to allow capital penetration and profit extraction. With Bassent’s promise that the US will apply measures which have “never been seen” on Iran, Trump’s imperial passions, and depleted stocks of missiles, oil reserves and military hardware, the internal contradictions of both territorial and capitalist logic are increasingly clear.
The Maximalist Gap Between Iran’s Terms and Trump’s Demands
Iran’s conditions to end the war are continuing to accumulate: a full end to the attacks, troop withdrawal, lifted blockade, ceased sanctions, released frozen assets, an end to attacks on Iranian regional allies, and financial compensation. On the other side, Trump’s own demands are just as lofty: for Iran to compensate Americans harmed in attacks he attributes to Tehran, and for Iran to pay the families (thousands) of Iranian protestors killed by the Islamic Republic. Alongside these diametrically opposed negotiation terms, Vance emphasises that “we don’t trust, we verify” – not the kind of rhetoric one would expect from a peace negotiator.
Despite the Memorandum of Understanding, fighting continues without much sign of stopping. Much like the continued occupation of Ukraine and the genocidal apartheid in Gaza, the US-Iran conflict is another instance of the inadequacy of peace agreements in contemporary global politics. Cooperation, compromise, unified foreign policy and clear objectives – all the typical nomenclature of war – are becoming less and less popular.
Trump’s demands and the administration’s announcements are wildly unreliable; they change on a whim, they’re incongruous, inflammatory, hyperbolic and sensationalist. This is a serious challenge for any observers, because the most militarily aggrandised nation in the world is no longer a reliable relayer of its own motives, aims and outlook. Trump can claim that he will ‘end’ a civilisation one night, that ‘help’ is coming for the same said civilization another, and that he will be taking territory from them a few months later. The administration staff are no better, packed to the rafters with warmongers, war profiteers, hardline militarists and the like. The well-documented US military-industrial complex means that prolonged war is desirable; procurement, force posture, enhanced spending, research, development, and strategic doctrine are all continuously shaped by actors whose financial survival depends on the existence of a constant threat. In essence, “we [will] have always been at war with Eastasia”, because such an arrangement profits the military-capital personnel found walking the corridors of power.
The Memorandum of Understanding (17th June) aimed to end the war on both US-Iran and Israel-Lebanon fronts, yet ended with mutual accusations of violation. Trump declared the agreement “over” on 7th June, and has killed around 50 Iranian civilians in the interim. Iran has “likewise” suspended its own commitments.
Conclusion
To conclude, it appears there is little hope for peace anytime soon. The Oman framework certainly is no indication of fully-resumed commercial shipping, or an end to civilian casualties, in the near-future. The gap between Iran’s terms and America’s demands is ever-widening, and the volatility of Trump’s perspective is ever-intensifying. Iran’s leadership is murky and detested while America’s is disdained and mistrusted. In a world of rampant international law violations, accused criminals serving as heads of state and worryingly low cooperation, the possibility of a speedy and bloodless end to this war, or any other, feels out of reach.
