Can Trump’s push for a deal with Iran turn a tactical pause into lasting peace?

WASHINGTON: After weeks of military escalation, economic pressure and threats of a wider regional conflict, the Trump administration now appears to be searching for a diplomatic exit from its confrontation with Iran, even as officials in Washington insist the United States still holds the upper hand. President Donald Trump’s decision this week to pause a planned naval operation aimed at escorting commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz has triggered debate over whether Washington is moving toward a negotiated settlement or simply recalibrating pressure before renewed escalation. The debate has been further intensified by Trump’s assertion that a peace deal with Iran is now likely — a claim that contrasts with the uncertainty still surrounding core disputes over nuclear capability, sanctions and maritime security. Analysts say the latest shift reflects a familiar pattern in US-Iran relations: escalation followed by partial de-escalation, without a clear end state. One of the most prominent voices analysing this moment is Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American scholar and professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. A former senior adviser to the US State Department, he has been commenting on the crisis in interviews, including to CNN, and in public commentary. Nasr argues that Washington may now be trying to wind down the confrontation without fully achieving its stated objectives. “Once the war ends, it will not start again. Likely the administration is claiming these maximal gains as political cover to end the war without achieving any of the objectives that it was after when the war started.” He adds that the crisis has created new strategic problems rather than resolving old ones: “Now its goal is to end the war and solve a problem that did not exist before the war: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.” Nasr also stresses that diplomacy between the two sides has repeatedly followed a cycle of apparent breakthroughs that fail t