Good morning. We’ll begin today in the Middle East, where the cease-fire remains shaky. Ships are still waiting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and Lebanon has declared a day of mourning after intense Israeli attacks.
A wobbly truceHow steady is the cease-fire in the Middle East? Israeli missiles have continued to fall on Lebanon, Iran threatens a military response, and shippers are confused about the status of the Strait of Hormuz. The United States and Iran don’t even agree on what it will take to open peace talks. Both sides have declared victory in the conflict. The United States has destroyed most of Iran’s navy and reduced its ability to shoot missiles across the region. But President Trump’s other goals remain unrealized. Iran still has uranium to make a bomb someday; it still guides regional militias like Hezbollah; its regime still holds power and crushes dissent. And Iran, for its part, now has total control of the strait. What could end the war?White House officials say talks are expected to begin between the two nations on Saturday, brokered by Pakistan. They are likely to be contentious. Among other things in its 10-point proposal, Iran wants to maintain its control of the strait, the narrow passage through which a fifth of the world’s oil usually flows. Iran’s chokehold on it during the war has damaged the global economy. “It is very unlikely that Washington or Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbors would accept this,” my colleague Erika Solomon reports. Iran also wants Americans gone from the region. It wants reparations to pay for damages. And it wants the U.S. to accept Iran’s right to enrich uranium. That’s not going to happen. The United States has bases across the Persian Gulf states, Israel and Iraq. The administration is unlikely to pay to rebuild Iran. And as for its nuclear ambitions, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at a news conference yesterday that the United States could send Special Operations troops to seize the fissile material. “If we have to, we can do it in any means necessary,” he said. What’s happening inside Iran?
The United States and Israel have killed scores of Iranian leaders and bombed the country’s military infrastructure to rubble. But as Yeganeh Torbati and Erika report, Iran’s leaders may now see themselves in a stronger position than they were when the war started. Who is in charge now? The new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen in public since taking office. His absence, Yeganeh reports, has fueled speculation that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — ideologically hard-lined masters of asymmetric warfare — are running Iran. Far from the corridors of power, The Times reported yesterday, the cease-fire elicited a confusing mix of emotions among Iran’s citizens. There was relief, but also shock and a sense of foreboding. Armed pro-government militia members have established checkpoints on Tehran’s streets. “The cease-fire was announced in a way that made it feel like the people were left on their own, facing a repressive regime alone,” a doctor living in the northeast of the country told The Times. “Ordinary people are very worried about the future and have less hope for change compared to before the war started.” Still, Trump’s threat to wipe out the country’s “whole civilization” was on pause. “I feel better today compared to yesterday,” one resident of Tehran told The Times. What’s next?Whether or not the cease-fire folds, the nations of the Persian Gulf now have to re-evaluate their relationships with Israel, Iran and the U.S., my colleague Vivian Nereim reported. “Politicians, investors and residents in wealthy cities like Dubai and Doha once believed they were essentially immune to the region’s conflicts,” she wrote. “The American-Israeli war with Iran has smashed that assumption.” Their oil fields were exposed to attacks, as were their water desalination plants, their hotels, their airports. And those attacks continued yesterday after the announcement of the cease-fire. “In truth, one of the most significant outcomes of this war is the shattering of the concept of a regional security system in the Gulf,” a spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry said last month. “The security framework in the Gulf was based on certain axioms. Many of these axioms have been bypassed.” More on the fragile truce
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