SYDNEY, With a shaky ceasefire between the United States, Israel and Iran – and little progress in talks to resolve the complex issues at the heart of the war – where will this conflict go?
The most likely scenario is a frozen conflict.
A frozen conflict is not static but an unresolved war that continues at a low level below the threshold of total war.
This often occurs when a comprehensive political agreement cannot be reached, such as from the fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014 to a full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. Despite the deaths of some 14,000 military personnel and civilians and ongoing cyber and information warfare, the conflict is still considered frozen.
Even if Pakistan resumes negotiations this week and eventually reaches an agreement, there are three reasons to think it will lead to a stalemate in the conflict rather than a comprehensive peace agreement.
1) Trump equates ceasefire with ending war
US President Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy suggests he will not view the ceasefire as a pause in negotiations to agree on substantive political issues. Instead, he declared the ceasefire a success for the United States and then moved on to the next global issue.
Trump claims to have ended ten wars, including the current conflict with Iran and Israel’s war in Lebanon. A closer look reveals that in most conflicts, ceasefires are unstable but substantive issues remain unresolved.
This allows conflicts to become rigid and tensions to persist. For example, India and Pakistan, which had a brief armed conflict last year, still face the risk of renewed hostilities. A lasting peace between Thailand and Cambodia remains elusive following last year’s border dispute.
However, Trump has abandoned these conflicts and has vowed to end the war as soon as major hostilities cease.
2) Asymmetric war is difficult to solve
The current war is asymmetrical because of the huge difference in military capabilities between the United States and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other.
Iran has deliberately used asymmetric tactics to counter overwhelming U.S. military power, including targeting the infrastructure of Persian Gulf states not involved in the war and shutting down commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to disrupt the global economy.
Research shows that asymmetric warfare is protracted and often indefinite in nature. As a result, they are more likely to end in frozen conflicts rather than lasting political solutions.
The reason is simple. Weaker actors cannot win conventional military battles against stronger actors. It therefore seeks to exert political, economic and psychological pressure on the more powerful states to withdraw their troops and cease hostilities.
This is what we are seeing now between the United States and Iran. Feeling these rising pressures, Trump is seeking a ceasefire while trying to claim American victory.
Iran, meanwhile, agreed to a ceasefire in order to survive as the weaker player rather than commit to a lasting end to the conflict.
It’s reminiscent of Afghanistan’s Taliban, who survived a frozen conflict with the United States for 20 years before regaining control of the country after the U.S. withdrew its troops.
3) Failure to focus on more complex issues
Neither the United States nor Iran appears committed to a long-term solution to the tensions at the root of the conflict. Key among them is the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.
For Washington, the first round of peace talks in Pakistan on April 11 and 12 collapsed because of Iran’s refusal to compromise on its nuclear program. Iran has long argued that it has the inalienable right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
Negotiations that led to a multilateral agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) on Iran’s nuclear program in 2015 took 20 months to conclude. Three years later, Trump withdrew from the agreement, calling it a “terrible one-sided agreement.”
Given this history, a quick and clear resolution to this complex dispute is unlikely.
Some analysts believe the United States and Iran may announce a partial deal that would allow many technical issues to be resolved later.
But Trump now faces opponents who are unlikely to become more tolerant of his long-term “nuclear entitlement.” Indeed, Iran has demonstrated its resolve by pushing for new geostrategic norms, closing the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting the global economy.
What a conflict freeze means for the region
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Iran’s war with the United States may end with a series of ceasefires, but is likely to remain a frozen conflict because of these underlying tensions. That means more threats from both sides about Iran’s nuclear program and periodic outbursts of violence between Israel and Iran, the United States and Iran, or both.
This is much like the frozen situation in Gaza. Last October, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire under Trump’s 20-point peace plan. The first phase of the plan was then largely implemented, leading to hostage and prisoner exchanges, a reduction in Israel’s heavy bombing of Gaza, and the resumption of aid to the Strip.
Since then, however, no progress has been made on the more complex issues of post-war governance of Gaza, the reconstruction of the Strip and, crucially, the disarmament of Hamas militants. As a result, Israel refused to fully withdraw its troops and violence continued.
The frozen conflict on the Korean Peninsula is also instructive from a historical perspective. The war ended with an armistice in 1953, but no peace treaty was signed, effectively leaving North and South Korea in a state of war to this day. This has led North Korea to develop an underground nuclear weapons program that continues to pose a threat to the world.
Likewise, the decades-long conflict between India and Pakistan has led to an arms race, instability in South Asia, and periodic violence.
A frozen conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran would undoubtedly create similar long-term instability in the Middle East, including a possible arms race and the outbreak of more violence in the Middle East, particularly around control of the Strait of Hormuz. SKS
SKS
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
