The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

The good news is that Iran’s latest ceasefire proposal apparently includes elements that US President Donald Trump finds worthwhile considering, even if he insists that it doesn’t go far enough. The bad news is that the US and Iranian positions remain so far apart that a degree of renewed military conflict seems inevitable.

The gap between the US and Iranian positions is widening. Whatever understandings existed have vanished. Driving the widening of the gap are US inflexibility, the increased influence of Iranian hardliners due to the war, and the expectation that domestic and economic pressure will force the other to blink first. The question is whether the widening gap takes on a life of its own, with a renewal of hostilities making a return to negotiations in the near future next to impossible, or constitutes brinkmanship to push the other to concede first. Which way the pendulum will swing hangs in the balance.

Celebrated Orban’s defeat-That may have been premature by James M. Dorsey

An Iranian delegation led by Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has arrived in Islamabad for talks with Pakistan’s leadership, as uncertainty hangs over potential negotiations over the weekend. Iran’s foreign ministry says no direct talks with the US are planned in Islamabad, adding that Tehran will instead relay its position through Pakistan. But in a contradictory statement, the White House says Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are set to travel to Pakistan on Saturday for face to face discussions with Iran. James M. Dorsey, joins TRT World from Singapore. He is an adjunct senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

The US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz threatens to backfire as the Trump administration and Iran seek to gain the upper hand. Iran assumes that US President Donald Trump believes it's a matter of days, or at most weeks, before the blockade's economic and military pressure compels the Islamic Republic to compromise on at least some of its demands. Mr. Trump has conditioned the lifting of the blockade on Iran putting forward a “unified” proposal that leads to an agreement on ending the war. The implication is that the proposal would have to differ fundamentally from Iran’s hitherto consistent position. That is not Iran’s perspective. On the contrary, Iran operates on the principle that time is on its side.

Will the Iran war gun remain silent by James M. Dorsey

It’s going to take more than a knife-edge game of bluff poker to get US-Iranian talks back on track. To successfully pull back from the brink, both the United States and Iran would have to fundamentally alter the assumptions underlying their negotiation strategy and what they hope to achieve in talks. That may be a tall order, particularly for President Donald Trump, who clings to the fiction of already having achieved total victory in Iran, an inflated perception of his negotiating skills and ability to dictate terms, and an overestimation of the powers of his office and country, and of what military superiority can achieve. Mr. Trump’s belief that the US-Israeli air campaign has rendered Iran militarily impotent, inflicted incalculable infrastructural damage, and that Iran is a one-man dictatorship rather than a multi-layered governance system reinforces his flawed perception of reality. On the bright side, Mr. Trump, like Iran, would prefer a negotiated resolution rather than escalation of hostilities once the current ceasefire expires on April 22. The problem is that neither the president nor Iran, both convinced that they have the upper hand, wants a resolution at any price.

The 1987 Iran-Iraq Tanker War offers important lessons for today’s US-Iranian stand-off in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The war erupted as a subset of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war after Iraq’s navy attacked Iranian tankers and oil facilities. The similarities between the Tanker War and the battle for the Strait are significant.

US embassies in three Muslim-majority countries have warned the State Department that the United States is losing the war of narratives with Iran. In cables to the State Department dated April 15, seen by Politico, US diplomats in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Indonesia cautioned that pro-Iranian digital influencers, bots, and memes effectively exploit US weaknesses, including restrictions on the embassies’ ability to respond. US embassies are only allowed to regurgitate approved, generic White House and State Department messaging rather than respond in real time to pro-Iranian social media postings with original creative content. The fallout goes far beyond Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Indonesia, and is likely representative of much of the Muslim world and beyond.

If the US, Israeli, and Iranian armed forces have anything in common, it may be militant interpretations of faith as a motivational driver that demonises the enemy, projects war as inevitable, and obstructs, if not precludes, long-term negotiated conflict resolution. The pathways of the three militaries towards positioning faith as an overarching ideological driver differ. They represent alternative models for the indoctrination of militaries with faith. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is the easiest, most straightforward model. It also suggests that faith as a motivational driver has its limits.

US President Donald Trump has made Iran’s nuclear ambitions, alongside free passage through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the key to permanently ending the war. The contours of a potential agreement on the nuclear issue have been on the table since last June, when Israel launched its 12-day war against Iran during which the US bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities. The contours remained on the table in negotiations this year that were interrupted on February 28 when the US and Israel launched their latest assault on Iran. The reasons why US Vice President JD Vance and chief Iranian negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, failed to bridge the gaps between its position during talks in Islamabad a week ago have less to do with the details of a realistically achievable deal and more to do with the parties’ political needs. That is particularly true for Mr. Trump as Pakistan proposes a second round of talks in the Pakistani capital later this week.

Several factors doomed US-Iranian negotiations in Islamabad to end the Iran war from the outset. Even so, the failure did not immediately spell doomsday, that is until US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform, his first response to the failure, announcing that the United States and other unidentified countries would blockade the strategic Strait of Hormuz. “Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz. At some point, we will reach an “ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT…. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” Mr. Trump said in one of two postings. “At an appropriate moment, we are fully “LOCKED AND LOADED,” and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!” Mr. Trump added. In many ways, Mr. Trump’s escalation of the Iran conflict may have been inevitable, given that breaking the stalemate in Islamabad would have required fundamental changes in the US and Iranian approaches to negotiations.

In anticipation of Pakistan-mediated US-Iranian talks In Islamabad on ending the Iran war, James discusses the prospect for a permanent halt to hostilities on Radio Islam.

A fragile halt to Iran war hostilities was always a question of who blinks first. Even so, both the United States and Iran are declaring victory. However, a careful reading of Donald Trump and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's social media postings suggests that the US president blinked the most. Iranian officials point to Mr. Trump's acknowledgment that the Islamic Republic's plan to end the war, involving ten points, which the president earlier rejected, was "a workable basis on which to negotiate." In return, Iran has agreed to halt attacks on Israel and the Gulf states and to open the strategic Strait of Hormuz under continued Iranian control. Even so, there is no indication that the gap between US and Iranian demands has narrowed. Narrowing the gap will require significant compromise by both parties. Yet, fresh out of the starting block, Mr. Trump’s acceptance of the Iranian plan as a negotiating framework is an initial Iranian success with a caveat.

On this edition of Parallax Views, James M. Dorsey discusses the Iran War's potential consequences for the United States, Europe, the Gulf States, Israel, and Iran itself.

Three months into the new year, 2026 is emerging as a year of potentially serious setbacks for US President Donald Trump. Trapped in an expanding Iran war with no good exit strategy, Mr. Trump risks not only losing this November’s mid-term elections. He’s also at risk losing key pillars of his far-right European support base.

James discusses on TRT World what happens of US President Donald Trump unilaterally ends US involvement in the Iran war.

The Gulf states, rather than Iran, may shape the next phase of the war. With Yemen’s Houthi rebels entering the war and threatening to close Bab al Mandab, the crucial waterway that links the Suez Canal with the Indian Ocean, Saudi Arabia, alongside the United Arab Emirates, may feel that their defensive posture is no longer sustainable. If so, the Gulf states, rather than the United States and Israel, could emerge as the players capable of forcing Iran to rethink its strategy of attempting to increase pressure on US President Donald Trump to negotiate an end to the war that does not involve the Islamic Republic’s surrender.

James discusses recent developments in the Iran war on Radio Islam.

The US-Israeli war against Iran has scholars, journalists, and pundits comparing the conflagration to Britain, France, and Israel’s invasion of Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal after President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the strategic waterway 70 years ago. The jury is out on whether Iran is America’s Suez. The answer is probably Yo, yes, and no. History rendered the Suez war a symbol of the demise of the British and French colonial empires or, in the words of British historian Corelli Barnett, the “last thrash of empire.” US pressure and the Soviet Union’s threat to come to Egypt’s aid forced Britain, France, and Israel to accept a humiliating ceasefire and withdraw their troops. The similarities between Suez and Iran are glaring, but the differences are likely to count the most.