Foreign Affairs49%
The Iran Cease-Fire Was Doomed to Fail 16%
By Neil Quilliam19% Sanam Vakil63%
7/22/2026, 4:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Representativeness Heuristic, Overconfidence Bias, and Pessimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 9.9% saturation with 270 hits. Analysis detected 2,302 faulty-reasoning hits from 2,740 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 32.1% and a BS Rank of 16% (16,781 of 19,794 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 84.80% of the article peer group.
The memorandum of understanding that the United States and Iran signed in June has fallen apart.
The deal was meant to halt fighting, open the Strait of Hormuz, and create a 60-day window for further negotiations, but Iran and the United States are back to launching missiles and drones at each other and have shut down commerce through the strait.
The memorandum’s failure should come as no surprise.
The agreement postponed the resolution of the most contested issues between the two adversaries—a formula that U.S.
President Donald Trump favors and that he also pursued in the Gaza Strip.
Since the October 2025 cease-fire in Gaza, large-scale combat has mostly subsided, but Hamas is still armed, over 800 Palestinians have been killed, reconstruction hasn’t started in earnest, and Israel remains in control of 70 percent of the enclave.
The Abraham Accords, inked during Trump’s first term, between Israel and a number of Arab states, also exhibited this transactional logic, securing all sides short-term gains while leaving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unresolved.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a limited diplomatic bargain, such as those that produce a cease-fire or hostage exchange.
But such discrete deals can accomplish only so much.
They tend to fail when they are made to substitute for the harder processes required to address the roots of conflict, including institution building and tough political compromise.
Unless a cease-fire is followed by sustained diplomacy, it risks becoming a mere pause that warring parties use to prepare for the next round.
The dangers of transactionalism are especially pronounced in the Middle East, where conflicts are so interconnected and pressure in one arena often produces instability in another.
When underlying disputes remain unresolved, they risk erupting and cascading across the region.
At its core, the regional security dilemma is one in which each side responds to its vulnerability in ways that make the other feel threatened.
Tehran, for example, believes it is protecting itself against coercion, attack, and regime change with a nuclear program, missile arsenal, and network of armed parters, which the Israel and the United States see as intolerable.
Unless a larger political process begins to alter that dynamic, the Iran war will continue to flare into life.
BARGAIN HUNTERS
Transactional diplomacy is hardly new, but it returned with a vengeance when Trump took office the first time.
It rests on a simple premise: states pursue immediate gains through standalone bargains, often built around personal ties between leaders rather than institutional frameworks.
Agreements serve as instruments for managing tensions in the present, not as steps toward a future resolution.
They are the geopolitical equivalent of a quick buck.
It is clear why leaders are drawn to such arrangements.
By being transactional, they can appear to act decisively and achieve a concrete outcome, without having to commit substantial diplomatic resources to reach a solution.
Transactional agreements can therefore contribute to conflict management and create diplomatic openings that would otherwise be difficult to secure.
Conflict management, however, should not be conflated with conflict resolution.
Transactional diplomacy can support a settlement when it is embedded in a broader process, but it is poorly suited to resolving conflict on its own.
History suggests that problems arise when leaders replace strategy with a series of narrow bargains.
THE WAR TO END ALL WARS
In many ways, the current moment resembles the lead-up to World War I, when ambiguous commitments, an aversion to consultation, a reliance on personal diplomacy, and shortsightedness produced a global catastrophe.
World War I represented a breakdown of the rudimentary order that was established in 1815, known as the Concert of Europe, under which the great powers of the day came up with rules of engagement and pledged to maintain a balance of power.
As the historian Paul Schroeder has argued, the system worked because the signatories saw themselves as custodians of the order, not just as competitors within it.
They maintained stability across the continent instead of pursuing every opportunity for gain.
Diplomats met to hash out major tensions before they became crises.
The system was grounded in legitimacy and mutual responsibility, and the participating governments believed that supporting the system would, in general, advance their own interests.
The system worked well for decades but began to erode in the mid nineteenth century as nationalism, German and Italian unification, and imperial competition altered how states understood their interests.
European governments began taking a more competitive, myopic approach to diplomacy and, in turn, consulted with one another less and grew wary of compromise.
They increasingly treated disputes as opportunities to defend their status, test the credibility of others, or secure strategic and territorial advantage.
When crises occurred, there were fewer tools to contain them.
By the early twentieth century, European leaders had fully jettisoned the rules of the concert in favor of a more opportunistic and transactional style of diplomacy.
They no longer accepted limits on their freedom for the purpose of sustaining order.
Such was the state of Europe when, in June 1914, a Bosnian Serb nationalist assassinated Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
What might have been a regional dispute between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia spiraled into a wider European war.
Collective security faltered as states issued ultimatums, mobilized their forces, and matched one another’s moves.
The Triple Alliance brought together the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and Italy, while the Triple Entente linked France, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
These were not closely integrated partnerships based on shared values but loose arrangements; Italy’s decision to switch sides in 1915 is a case in point.
Suspicion permeated these coalitions.
Driven by fears that allies would not honor commitments or that delay would leave them at a disadvantage, governments in 1914 mobilized quickly to protect their interests, leaving little room for diplomacy.
Tunnel vision led European leaders to misjudge the likely outcomes of their actions.
Germany backed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, expecting that the Schlieffen Plan—a strategy to crush French forces then turn attention to Russia—would deliver a rapid victory and resolve the crisis.
Consequently, the Austro-Hungarian Empire issued a harsh ultimatum to Serbia in the expectation that any resulting conflict would remain limited.
In the meantime, Russia mobilized to defend its interests in the Balkans; France supported Russia to uphold their alliance, and the United Kingdom took up arms once German mobilization threatened the balance of power in Europe.
In each case, decisions were influenced by a transactional logic, as states prioritized maintaining their credibility and pursuing short-term national interests over any attempt to manage the crisis collectively.
This led to greater risk-taking, as European states edged down a pathway to conflict that ultimately took the lives of millions of people.
BUYER’S REMORSE
Today, the international order is undergoing a change similar to the one Europe experienced in the late nineteenth century.
Structured frameworks are giving way to more transactional patterns of engagement.
The weakening of multilateral institutions, U.S. retrenchment after Iraq and Afghanistan, declining confidence in large diplomatic projects—such as the 1993 Oslo peace process and the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement—intensifying great-power competition, and the growing autonomy of regional powers have made narrower bargains more attractive.
These trends are reinforced at the domestic level, where voters reward leaders for achieving quick wins, not long-term planning.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Washington.
Trump is both a product of a more transactional system and a champion of it.
He treats long-standing alliances as negotiable arrangements and evaluates them based on their immediate benefit.
To make deals, he depends heavily on a small circle of trusted figures who have little background in diplomacy and his personal ties with other leaders.
Indeed, it was his personal relationships with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Syrian leader Ahmed al‑Shara that spurred Trump in 2025 to rapidly reverse the United States’ Syria policy.
In short order, he recognized Shara’s government, lifted sanctions on Syria, and removed other barriers to reconstruction.
At first, Gulf leaders took delight in Trump’s transnationalism and personal approach.
They had been frustrated with the Biden administration over its advocacy for human rights, its embrace of green energy, its inconsistency, and its refusal to offer security guarantees.
In May 2025, Trump visited the Gulf, a trip that raised hundreds of billions of dollars in arms deals, aviation orders, technology transfers, and other promises to invest in American companies.
Around the same time, members of the Trump family enriched themselves through cryptocurrency and real estate deals with firms tied to Gulf royals, raising the concern that influence in Washington could be bought.
Gulf leaders mistook access to Trump for influence over U.S. policy.
The downsides of Trump’s transnationalism soon became clear.
Just a few months after Trump’s trip to the Gulf, Israel launched a strike on a residence in Qatar in the hopes of killing Hamas officials who were there to negotiate a U.S.-backed proposal.
Doha had little capacity to prevent the attack or influence the actions of Washington’s closest regional partner.
The episode made clear that transactional access to the White House did not offer Qatar much leverage when it mattered most.
The limits of the Gulf’s sway became even clearer in February of this year, when the United States and Israel launched an air campaign against Iran.
For months leading up to the conflict, Gulf leaders had lobbied the Trump administration against military action, to no avail.
In response to the strikes, Iran attacked U.S. bases, energy infrastructure, and hotels in the Gulf.
Tehran also blocked the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting shipping, driving up insurance premiums, delaying exports, and reducing revenue flows across the region.
It will take years for some Gulf countries to recover.
And, as fighting has resumed, they are once again being struck by Iran.
Gulf leaders erred by mistaking access to Trump for influence over U.S. policy, treating commercial ties as a substitute for security guarantees, and weakening their collective bargaining position by competing with one another for Washington’s favor.
A better approach in early 2025 would have been for Gulf states to use their combined leverage over the United States to secure a more institutionalized framework for cooperation.
Such an arrangement could have included promises to consult Gulf governments before launching major U.S. military action, clearer commitments to the defense of Gulf territory, more explicit rules governing Gulf airspace, and integrated missile and maritime defense.
Such measures might not have prevented war, but they could have raised its diplomatic and operational costs and reduced the Gulf states’ vulnerability when deterrence failed.
LOSING STREAK
Trump’s first administration also pursued transactional deals in the Middle East, bargains that seemed to secure great success, without getting at the roots of major problems.
The Abraham Accords offer the clearest illustration of both the value and the limitations of these kinds of transactional arrangements.
For decades, Arab states promised that they would normalize diplomatic ties with Israel only if Israel withdrew from the Palestinian territories.
But starting in 2020, several states reneged on that promise by signing the Abraham Accords, under which they normalized relations with Israel in exchange for arms, trade benefits, and security cooperation—effectively selling out the Palestinians.
Morocco, for example, normalized relations with Israel in exchange for U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed region of Western Sahara.
It is now obvious that leaving the Palestinian issue to fester was not a winning solution.
As Saudi Arabia contemplated its own normalization deal with Israel, Hamas launched the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, setting off three years of regional war.
The attack was intended, at least in part, to prevent Saudi Arabia from joining the accords.
In this case, transactionalism was not only hollow but also dangerous.
Palestinians are still suffering from the consequences of transactional diplomacy today.
Trump’s 20-point peace plan has stalled as Washington’s focus has turned elsewhere.
What little attention the territory now receives often takes the form of outlandish plans for development and tourism—not processes designed to address the tricky political questions of the enclave’s governance and reconstruction.
IN TATTERS
The memorandum between the United States and Iran is already in tatters, as the two countries are once again at each other’s throats.
If Israel concludes that the negotiations are over, or believes that Iran is rebuilding its missile capabilities, restoring its regional proxy networks, or returning to prohibited nuclear activity, it could reenter the fight.
The Houthis, Iran’s ally in Yemen, could also join in.
The group attacked ships in the Bab el Mandeb Strait between 2023 and 2025, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, but largely stayed out of the fight in 2026.
But on July 13, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia traded strikes, breaking a cease-fire that had been in place since 2022.
And on July 20, the Houthis declared a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia.
If the group escalates and shuts down the gateway to the Red Sea while Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, the consequences for the global economy could be worse than what occurred during earlier phases of fighting this year.
And the fighting of the past three years could lead to even worse outbreaks of war in the coming decade, much like the conflicts at the turn of the last century, including the Balkans War of 1912–13, set the stage for World War I.
Blocs are already hardening in response to the bloodshed.
Today, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are tightening their coordination, while Israel and the United Arab Emirates are strengthening their own partnership.
These arrangements are certainly more fluid than the formal alliance blocs of Europe in 1914, but over time they could produce a similar security dilemma, where measures taken by one state are interpreted as preparation for confrontation by others.
Gulf governments are also rearming and drawing on Turkish and Ukrainian missile and drone expertise.
Although these measures may improve the national defense of Gulf countries, they could also spur Iran to accelerate its own build up.
Without military hotlines between the United States, Iran, and Gulf countries, advance notification of exercises, and rules governing missiles and unmanned systems, rearmament could increase the risk of a major regional war.
There is a time and place for transactional diplomacy.
It can temporarily stave off death and destruction and serve as a stepping stone for a larger political settlement.
But that requires more than personal relationships, summitry, and isolated bargains.
A more durable political settlement would see Iran receive sanctions relief in exchange for verifiable concessions on its nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium.
Such a settlement would also require credible guarantees from the United States and Israel against renewed attacks, an enforceable framework to safeguard freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, and, over time, parallel understandings between Iran and the Gulf states on nonaggression and noninterference.
Only then would there be a realistic foundation for addressing missiles, drones, and Iran’s support for armed groups across the region.
A larger deal may, paradoxically, be easier to secure.
Any bilateral agreement between the United States and Iran would then have to be integrated in a wider regional process.
Israel and the Gulf states would need a formal venue, such as a Middle East-wide security dialogue modelled on the Helsinki Accords—a 1975 agreement that reduced tensions between the Soviet bloc and the West—in which to address their security concerns.
The International Atomic Energy Agency could verify the nuclear provisions, while the United States, European partners, and the United Nations could oversee a phased sanctions relief process linked to Iran’s compliance.
Regional mediators such as Oman, Qatar, and Pakistan could help contain tensions and provide channels for resolving disputes before they escalate.
A sustained political agreement may appear overly ambitious, given that the United States and Iran have failed to even end hostilities and safeguard shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
But a larger deal may, paradoxically, be easier to secure.
A narrow bargain asks all parties to surrender leverage without addressing what drove them to war in the first place, whereas a broader framework can tackle the underlying security concerns of all parties at the same time, creating incentives that narrower arrangements lack.
Still, such a framework may seem distant at a time when fighting has resumed and trust between the parties is in short supply.
But if the region remains without a wider peace process, it may enter a state of near permanent conflict—a condition that no country can afford.
Analysis
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