Rokan's Journal

Maj Gen HRM Rokan Uddin (Retd)

The war between the United States and Iran, which began on February 28, 2026, with US-Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on day one, has entered one of its most volatile stretches yet. Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, President Trump declared that the ceasefire with Iran was finished, telling reporters “For me, I think it’s over.” He was blunter still to journalists later in the day, dismissing the diplomatic effort altogether and calling Iran’s leadership “cuckoo,” while warning that another round of strikes could follow. Yet in the same breath, US officials have signaled that talks might continue in parallel even as the formal truce collapses – a pattern that has now repeated itself several times since the shooting stopped in April.

The immediate trigger for this latest rupture was a cluster of attacks in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, July 7. Three tankers were struck within hours of each other: the Qatari-flagged LNG carrier Al Rekayat and the Saudi-flagged supertanker Wedyan were both hit by projectiles, with Al Rekayat catching fire in its engine room, and a third vessel was struck by a drone off the coast of Oman. Remarkably, none of the incidents produced casualties, though Qatar’s foreign ministry called the attack on its tanker an “unacceptable attack” on international navigation and global energy security and said it held Iran fully responsible, even as Tehran stopped short of an official claim. In response, US Central Command launched what it described as strikes targeting Iranian air defenses, radar installations, anti-ship missile sites, and dozens of small boats operated by the Revolutionary Guard, framing the operation as retaliation for what it called Iran’s violation of the ceasefire through attacks on commercial shipping. Iran answered in turn, striking more than 80 American military facilities across Bahrain and Kuwait, according to Iranian statements reported by the Washington Post. The US Treasury moved quickly as well, revoking the license that had allowed Iran to legally sell oil under the terms of last month’s agreement – a signal that Washington intends to use economic leverage alongside military pressure.

This sequence did not emerge from nowhere. The war has moved through several distinct phases since February. An initial two-week ceasefire took hold on April 8, brokered with Pakistani mediation, only to unravel after Israel struck Lebanon and Iran refused to reopen Hormuz; by April 13, following the failure of talks in Islamabad, the US had imposed a full naval blockade on Iranian ports. That blockade remained in place until a breakthrough in mid-June, when a fourteen-point memorandum of understanding was announced on June 14 and formally signed on June 17 – Trump putting his signature to it during a dinner with French President Macron at Versailles following the G7 summit, with Pezeshkian signing separately in Tehran. The memorandum called for a permanent end to military operations on all fronts, lifted the US blockade, envisioned Iran allowing safe passage through Hormuz, and opened a sixty-day window for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, with the resulting agreement meant to eventually be endorsed by the UN Security Council, mirroring the structure of the 2015 nuclear deal.

That sixty-day clock is still running, and it is the backdrop against which this week’s escalation must be read. Iran’s own internal politics have complicated the picture further. Since Khamenei’s death in the war’s opening strikes, his son Mojtaba has assumed the role of Supreme Leader, while Masoud Pezeshkian remains the elected president who negotiates with Washington. Mojtaba has reportedly told associates he holds a “different view” from Pezeshkian on the wisdom of the June memorandum, though he ultimately allowed the signing to proceed after receiving assurances that the interests of Iran’s “resistance front” – a reference to Tehran’s regional militia network, including Hezbollah – would be protected in subsequent talks. This week has added an emotional dimension as well: a six-day state funeral for the elder Khamenei has been moving through Tehran and Najaf, with burial scheduled for Thursday, July 9, in his hometown of Mashhad. Analysts have noted that the funeral period, with its calls from mourners for revenge, is precisely the kind of moment in which either side might feel pressure to demonstrate resolve rather than restraint.

The core disputes that have derailed every previous ceasefire remain unresolved. Washington’s stated position is that it wants Hormuz reopened without tolls, Iran’s enriched uranium dealt with, and firm limits on Tehran’s ballistic missile arsenal – though Trump has more recently suggested that recovering the enriched uranium itself is less urgent than simply reopening the strait, and that Iran might be allowed missiles “in relative proportion” to other Gulf states. Iran, for its part, has insisted on controlling shipping routes through Hormuz and at times charging transit fees, a position the US has resisted as incompatible with freedom of navigation. Analysts quoted by Al Jazeera describe Iran as using its position at the mouth of the Gulf as leverage precisely because it has few other cards left to play, while Washington is equally determined not to let any new arrangement expand Iranian control over the waterway.

Economically, the toll continues to mount. The cost of the war to American taxpayers was already estimated at $113.3 billion as of mid-June, before this week’s fresh strikes. Brent crude jumped roughly 2.5 percent on Tuesday to trade near $73.83 a barrel as news of the tanker attacks spread, with US Treasury yields ticking upward on renewed inflation concerns – a reminder that even a partial reopening of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG once passed, has outsized effects on global markets. Shipping data had shown real signs of recovery in the days just before this week’s attacks, with over a hundred verified crossings of the strait between July 3 and July 5, compared to as few as two tankers a day at the height of the fighting earlier in the year. That fragile recovery is now in question again.

For now, the honest assessment is that the war sits in exactly the kind of on-again, off-again equilibrium it has occupied for months: formal ceasefires that collapse within weeks, followed by renewed negotiation, followed by another provocation at sea or in the air that resets the clock. Trump’s declaration that the truce is “over” may prove, like earlier statements, to be more rhetorical than final, given that US officials have simultaneously indicated a willingness to keep talking. But with Khamenei’s funeral concluding this week, a sixty-day nuclear negotiation window still open, and neither side willing to yield on Hormuz, the coming days are likely to be decisive one way or another – either toward a durable de-escalation, or toward a resumption of the direct strikes that characterized the war’s opening months. Some interested corners do not want a peace deal to be signed; they are now trying with false narrative to hinder the peace process. Probability of killing US president is one of such kind of propaganda as some analyst say.