It May Not Be a Ceasefire. It Might Be a Strategic Pause.
I could spend a lot of this column musing about the absolute whiplash gripping the American and global commentariat surrounding the announcement of a ceasefire in the Iran War Tuesday evening. Instead, I’m going to let Ace of Spades knock that out for us, because his treatment of the instant pivot from Trump The Barbarian Civilization Killer to Trump The Cowardly P*ssy Who Caved To Iran was as good as I’ve seen:
Remember, the “smart people” are also the “thoughtful” and “responsible” people. They have all the answers, they’ll tell you. They definitely do not simply spam out random disingenuous claims completely incompatible with each other as the day’s news cycle might require.
David Strom wrote about this. I’ve seen it all over myself.
The “nuke” thing was absurd. Trump threatened to use a top-secret conventional weapon the world had never seen before. What was it? I dunno. Maybe some kind of non-nuclear EMP to take out the power plants without harming the child human shields Iran stuffed them with? At no point did he threaten or imply a threat to use a nuke.
Now I might think “Trump is making up some secret uber-weapon,” but then again, Delta Force does seem to have unleashed absolute top-secret Sci-Fi weaponry in the Venezuela Snatch-and-Stash operation.
But he never hinted at a nuke.
But the “reasonable,” “responsible,” “thoughtful” people — you know, the really “smart” people you can rely upon for their intelligence and probity and smooth emotional restraint — all just went on twitter and did what they usually do, shriek lies that no one including themselves believes.
Are you ready to abase yourself now that Trump has negotiated a ceasefire rather than nuking Iran? Trump was NEVER going to nuke Iran. Any serious person knew that. It is shameful that you participated in this ridiculous charade.
— David Strom (@DavidStrom) April 7, 2026
https://twitter.com/bonchieredstate/status/2041662113664368798?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2041662113664368798%7Ctwgr%5Edfbc3d08d12a9e7731bce56acf43468ff60d18f6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Face.mu.nu%2F
But the thing was, no sooner was the ceasefire announced but waves of rockets descended on Israel — and Israel was pounding the living hell out of Lebanon.
That didn’t look much like a ceasefire.
Vice President JD Vance, who is said to be leading the U.S. negotiation team engaging with the Iranian regime in Pakistan this weekend, did his best, perhaps honestly, to explain away the carnage between Iran/its Hezbollah proxies and Israel:
JD Vance:
“I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought the ceasefire included Lebanon.
That said, the Israelis as I understand it have offered to check themselves in Lebanon because they want to make sure our negotiation is successful.”… https://t.co/dAkUZze9U4 pic.twitter.com/5oYKAz5Qhj
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) April 8, 2026
I dunno. Maybe that’s true.
Except the Iranians apparently also bombed four of the Gulf states after the announcement of the ceasefire, including something quite serious:
Saudi East-West gas pipeline to Yanbu was hit by Iranian drones today
– Financial TimesAccording to sources, one of the pumping stations along the 1,200-kilometer pipeline was attacked around 1:00 PM local time on Wednesday. The pipeline has become one of the main routes for… pic.twitter.com/lwpJFixr4C
— Sprinter Press (@SprinterPress) April 8, 2026
And then the Iranians declared that because the Israelis had violated the ceasefire, their promise to open the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic was no longer valid.
This puts Vance in a rough spot, because there was already a lot of ambiguity surrounding President Trump’s formulation of our agreement to the ceasefire. Trump said that the 10-point plan the Iranians had put forth as the basis for a ceasefire was “workable” — which doesn’t mean we’re agreeing to it, but it’s something we’ll talk about in Islamabad — and that our objectives have largely been met through military action.
Let’s remember what those are. One of the weirdest things about this war has been the constant assertion by pundits across the political spectrum that the Trump administration hasn’t clearly outlined its war aims where Iran is concerned. But Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others in the administration have actually been quite clear and consistent about why we’re doing this. There are four points.
- Destroying Iran’s nuclear program and taking away the enriched uranium they’ve manufactured to date;
- Destroying Iran’s navy;
- Destroying Iran’s air force; and
- Destroying Iran’s ability to supply proxies like the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
Regime change isn’t included, though it isn’t unwelcome. Getting the Iranians to open the Strait of Hormuz isn’t included, either; in fact, there is a reasonably solid strain of thought that says it’s not necessarily a problem for us if the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz is constrained (that constrains China’s economy, after all).
In fact, one interesting item I picked up from a friend in the import-export business is that China has been dealing with such brutal fuel shortages lately, starting with the interruption of sanctioned Venezuelan crude, and now the slow traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, that factories are closing all over the country with a consolidation of the supply chain among those most connected to the Chinese Communist Party.
This isn’t horrible from the standpoint of boosting American manufacturing vis-a-vis China.
In any event, Trump noted in his Truth Social message announcing the ceasefire that our goals have largely been met militarily, and if you accept the four items mentioned above as the goals, you can argue that Trump is correct. We don’t have Iran’s “nuclear dust,” but according to him neither do the Iranians; the 60 percent enriched uranium is buried under a mountain we’ve bombed to smithereens and the site is under constant surveillance. Among the items in Trump’s 15-point plan that the Iranians conspicuously haven’t rejected is that Iran would voluntarily give up the material, ostensibly in return for getting free uranium for use in civilian nuclear power plants — an offer the U.S. has made to Iran for quite a while, only to have it rejected.
This is why we would agree to a ceasefire.
But the Gulf states seem to be making it pretty clear that they’d like to see the war continue until the Iranian regime is taken down. Regime change is certainly on Israel’s list of goals. And then there are the Iranians; not the regime, obviously, but the long-suffering people of that country whose freedom and welfare deserve to be considerations in our policy.
Which is not to say that providing them with a democratic government is our business or that it’s in our interests to try. Trump could very credibly tell the Iranians that we’ve done all we’re prepared to do, and it’s time for them to hit the streets and take their country back from the insane Twelver Shia death cult currently misruling them.
After all, nobody has done more to shrink the power delta between the regime and the Iranian people than we have over the past six weeks. At some point, though perhaps we’re not at that point, it’s going to be up to the Iranians to win their freedom — regardless of how much sacrifice in blood that’s going to take.
Which is a considerable amount, by the way. Not only has that regime slaughtered some 45,000 Iranian dissidents already this year, they’ve publicly announced they’re ramping up executions of dissidents who were caught acting against the regime.
That starts a clock ticking, in a number of ways. It means the Iranian resistance is now the hunted, and what structure it has managed to put together will be dismantled by the Sepah, the regime’s secret police, now that the bombs have stopped falling.
But it also means the regime’s race to liquidate rebels and potential rebels will likely create more of them as the outrage builds among the populace.
And something else is true, which is that the damage done to the Iranian economy with six weeks of constant airstrikes has left its currency in shambles, its banking system crippled perhaps beyond repair, and its transportation and logistics systems in ruins … it’s not unreasonable to say that Iran is bleeding out at present. In fact, the country’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who sounds like he might be the closest thing to a voice of reason among the crowd still extant in leadership, reportedly said as much to his own people in a closed-door meeting, the contents of which leaked out over the weekend:
Two sources close to the presidential office said a tense exchange took place on Saturday, April 4, between Pezeshkian and Hossein Taeb, a powerful figure close to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Those present described the conversation as unusually difficult and highly charged.
During the meeting, Pezeshkian accused IRGC chief commander Ahmad Vahidi and Ali Abdollahi, commander of Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters – the country’s armed forces’ unified command, of acting unilaterally and driving escalation through attacks on regional countries, especially against their infrastructure.
According to the sources, Pezeshkian said those policies had destroyed any remaining chance of a ceasefire and were steering the Islamic Republic directly toward “a huge catastrophe.”
He also warned that, based on what he described as precise assessments, Iran’s economy would not be able to withstand a prolonged war for much longer and that full economic collapse was inevitable under current conditions.
The confrontation comes amid mounting evidence of a broader power shift inside the Islamic Republic, with military and intelligence networks increasingly displacing both the elected government and the traditional clerical order.
So where does all this leave us? We’ve got a ceasefire, the terms of which don’t seem to be universally agreed on, and actions that don’t seem particularly correlative to commitment to stop fighting, and we’ve got an Iranian regime, or the remnants of it, that doesn’t seem to be in full internal agreement as to what its direction might be.
Other than that whatever agreement we would reach with these people, they wouldn’t stick to it. Even if they turned over their nuclear material, it’s pretty clear they’d rebuild a factory and make more, and we’d be right back to this point in a few years.
So long as the regime is in power, you’re never getting a full-on commitment to peaceful coexistence with Israel or the West or even their other neighbors.
And everybody involved is facing the prospect of egg — maybe radioactive egg, at some point — on their faces.
For example, Iran bombing the Saudi pipeline to Yanbu creates an interesting scenario, seeing as though there is a mutual defense arrangement between the Saudis and Pakistan, and here the Pakistanis are trying to broker a peace when they’re essentially treaty-bound to attack the Iranians.
So I’ll just posit this.
The USS Tripoli, an amphibious launch ship carrying 2,500 Marines and a huge array of weaponry, is more or less already in place in the Arabian Sea. The USS Boxer, a similar ship carrying a similar contingent, is on the way and due in theater next week.
What if Vance and his team sit down with the Iranians in Pakistan this weekend amid a ceasefire that is poorly adhered to, if at all, only to find the Iranians no more suited to a deal than they were in February, and further, that the Iranians are insistent on a shakedown? Their public demands for war reparations are based in financial desperation and are obviously a non-starter; sanctions relief and maybe even tolls for ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could be on the table, though Oman, who would be party to any such agreement, came out Wednesday to defend open sea lanes through the strait, but Trump is not Barack Obama and there will be no pallets of cash landing on C-17 planes at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran.
If those peace talks don’t get anywhere, and right now there is little reason to think they will even though Trump and his team might have uncovered a few worthy interlocutors within what’s left of the regime, then effectively we didn’t agree to a ceasefire.
Instead we agreed to a strategic pause.
China pressured the Iranians into this pseudo cessation, mostly in order that they might free some ships to transit out of the Persian Gulf and bring oil to their ports to soften their fuel crisis. So perhaps we did the Chinese a favor that could pay off in keeping them from escalating this conflict into a world war. In return, China would let the chips fall where they may if the Iranian regime fails to perform at the peace table.
Then the Boxer and the Tripoli show up with their Marines in tow. By April 17, both should be in place. As will the 82nd Airborne, which has been deploying to the Middle East.
On April 17 over Kharg Island there will be a new moon. Zero illumination. Perfect conditions for Navy SEALS and Marines, expert fighters with night vision, to do their work.
By then the Iranian regime will be in full bleed, Iran’s restive population in boilover mode based on the regime’s campaign of repression that is starting again right now and we’ll have seen a peace process that either produces a satisfactory result or proves, not just to the U.S. but to all of Iran’s neighbors, that the regime is simply unsalvageable. And Iran’s allies will have had several days — and probably ample conversations with us — to realize there isn’t much future with the mullahs.
And then Trump sends in the starting lineup to take Kharg Island and cut Iran’s jugular vein. Like he’s been saying for 35 years should have been done.
I’m not saying this is what’s going to happen. But I am saying the ceasefire isn’t the end of the game in Iran. More is coming, and those assets moving into place absolutely increase the list of possibilities of what that might be.
Iran is claiming victory, simply because their regime has survived, so far. But the patient might yet die of his wounds, and his actions might earn him more, and deeper ones.
Lastly, Trump might be inclined to argue that the ceasefire marks the end of the current military action in Iran. And that further military action there would be new, within the definitions imposed by the War Powers Act — and that would restart the 60-day clock during which he doesn’t need congressional approval. That’s politically risky and legally hazy at best, but it might just be that by the time the question is resolved so may be the situation on the ground.
This is speculation. I trust you’ll see more meat on its bones than that it complies with the idiotic Trump Always Chickens Out narrative peddled by the same people who earlier this week thought he was going to nuke Tehran.
READ MORE:
The ‘Real’ Must Triumph Over the Fake — In Iran and Elsewhere