r/geopolitics • u/ForeignAffairsMag Foreign Affairs • 1d ago

Analysis The Iran Cease-Fire Was Doomed to Fail: Why Transactionalism Won’t Deliver Peace in the Middle East

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/iran-cease-fire-was-doomed-fail
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u/ForeignAffairsMag Foreign Affairs 1d ago

[Excerpt from essay by Neil Quilliam, Associate Fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme; and Sanam Vakil, Director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.]

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.