What it does is more modest, but nonetheless important: it creates a breathing space in which diplomacy can try to recover from the violence that nearly buried it. That pause was badly needed. More than three months after the US and Israel launched their war against Iran on Feb. 28, the region had settled into a dangerous twilight between ceasefire and conflict.
Washington and Tehran reached a truce on Apr. 8 that reduced the scale of fighting but not the risk of renewed escalation. American and Iranian forces continued trading blows. Iran and Israel continued to test each other. Gulf states remained exposed to retaliation. Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which the region’s insecurity quickly becomes a global economic problem, remained hostage to dueling coercive measures. Therein lies the immediate value of the memorandum.
If implemented, the Jun. 14 agreement should reopen Hormuz, unwind the maritime shadow war and give regional economies some relief from the energy and food price shocks that followed the disruption of shipping. This is the first test. If vessels do not move, markets do not calm and regional states do not feel less exposed, the agreement will exist only as a diplomatic press release. The second function of the deal is to buy time for the harder negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.
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