USA-Iran: Trump's previous ultimatums (2/2)
The 60-day American-Iranian roadmap must be understood in the context of the ultimatum cycles that define President Donald Trump's Middle East strategy — a method built on alternating between threats of total destruction and purely transactional diplomacy.
In April 2025, a first unilateral 60-day ultimatum demanding that Tehran dismantle its nuclear program was met with a categorical refusal from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, triggering massive U.S. B-2 bomber strikes in June 2025 against Iranian nuclear sites.
A year later, in April 2026, faced with a strangling blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the White House doubled down, threatening to devastate vital Iranian infrastructure "within four hours" — a credible threat that forced Tehran to accept, at the last moment, the principle of a ceasefire, paving the way for the protocol signed at Versailles by President Trump.
Maritime security in the negotiations
On the operational front, the United States and Iran established at Bürgenstock a "direct communication line" designed to prevent any maritime incidents in the Strait of Hormuz, the main transit point for Iranian and Arab oil.
At the same time, the U.S. Treasury granted a sanctions exemption through August 21, 2026, covering Iranian oil and petrochemical products.
These measures carry real weight for both Washington and Tehran: they address Iran's demand for immediate economic relief and reduce, in the short term, the risk of an oil price spike. They also highlight the barter logic underpinning the negotiations — security in exchange for market access — and the fragility of solutions built on temporary exemptions rather than lasting guarantees.
Lebanon and deconfliction: can a mechanism without Israel hold?
The creation of a "deconfliction cell" tasked with enforcing the ceasefire in Lebanon brings together the United States, Iran, Qatar, Lebanon, and Pakistan — but excludes Israel, a first in four decades, unlike the current mechanism and the committees established under the July 1993 and April 1996 understanding agreements.
The omission of Tel Aviv is politically explosive. For Israel, which regards Hezbollah as an existential threat, being shut out of a cell that will govern its own front line is unacceptable — and Benjamin Netanyahu has made that clear on multiple occasions — as it curtails Israel's military and operational freedom of action in southern Lebanon.
For Washington, this configuration creates a dilemma: how to stabilize Lebanon without alienating Israel, or risk losing the support of a key strategic ally against Iran by imposing constraints Israel deems dangerous.
Over the longer term, the effectiveness of this deconfliction cell is in serious doubt, and the ceasefire in Lebanon remains fragile.
The nuclear file: stated intentions but no binding commitments
Progress on the nuclear issue is questionable. JD Vance raised the prospect of IAEA inspectors returning, sparking some optimism, but Iran's Foreign Ministry clarified that Tehran had signed "no new nuclear commitments" during the session.
In other words, the door is open to oversight and transparency, but without any Iranian commitment to transfer 60%-enriched uranium to China or Russia, to dilute it, or to halt enrichment activities.
At this stage, Iran's nuclear program is admittedly in a degraded state and non-operational as a result of American and Israeli strikes.
In return for IAEA oversight, Iran expects tangible and lasting economic and security guarantees — none of which are currently in sight. Without a binding timeline for dismantling Iran's nuclear capabilities, the core of the problem remains unresolved.
This ambiguity makes a lasting agreement difficult to achieve without robust, verifiable technical clauses backed by automatic penalties in the event of a violation.
Economic gains: a temporary lifeline on top of the networks circumventing sanctions
Tehran's official announcement of a successful conclusion to the technical negotiations — sealed by a White House agreement to release $12 billion in frozen Iranian funds — illustrates a purely transactional logic.
This major financial unblocking immediately triggered a long-distance standoff, revealing the fragility of the process: while Donald Trump rushed to announce on his social media platforms that these funds would be required to go toward purchasing American agricultural products, the Iranian government categorically rejected that directive.
While the American administration seeks to frame a favorable business arrangement as a geopolitical concession, Iran intends to enshrine this financial victory as a sovereign restitution, free of any unilateral commercial strings.
Furthermore, Iran's dependence on the Chinese market remains a decisive factor, even though Beijing is not directly at the heart of the negotiations.
China thus remains an essential energy partner for Tehran, and its interests help partly account for Iran's restrained posture — namely, keeping the Strait of Hormuz open.
Finally, the shadow cast by the sanctions-circumventing export networks that remain in operation undermines the ability of Western diplomacy to exert sustained pressure.
Risk summary and scenarios
In brief, beneath the surface optimism on display in Switzerland, the sixty-day truce is constantly threatened by four geopolitical triggers.
The first is the fundamental gap between Washington's expectations — which demand that Tehran renounce its nuclear ambitions — and Iran's position, which views the deal as nothing more than an economic respite with no strategic trade-off. The second lies in Israel's exclusion from the Lebanese deconfliction framework, which leaves the Netanyahu government free to militarily undermine the ceasefire in Lebanon in order to neutralize Hezbollah, thereby forcing Iran to retaliate.
The third is Hezbollah's quiet resumption of efforts to reorganize its ranks and covertly redeploy a combat apparatus against Israel — something it managed to do with remarkable skill after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, again after UN Resolution 1701 in 2006, and once more following the ceasefire of November 27, 2024.
Should Hezbollah repeat this pattern of behavior, it would once again hand Israel a pretext to resume hostilities and override Washington's directives.
Finally, the fourth geopolitical trigger threatening the truce is the inherent unpredictability of Donald Trump, who is subject to pressures from both his right and his left flanks, which could lead him to unilaterally abandon the Bürgenstock process.
If any one of these pressure points gives way, the chain reaction will be immediate: the instant reimposition of the American blockade will provoke, as a symmetrical response, a new Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz, plunging the Gulf and the Middle East back into crisis.
Conclusion: conditional de-escalation, not guaranteed peace
The next 60 days will determine whether this roadmap is the prelude to a gradual pacification, or merely the framework for a delay that simply postpones the confrontation.
For now, we are witnessing a fragile period of relief that might allow for the patient construction of verifiable guarantees and the eventual conclusion of a formal agreement by late summer 2026 — though not without the potential risk of a return to war in Lebanon and the Gulf.
A successful stabilization would thus transform a hot war into a highly militarized regional cold war, hanging by a thread and dependent on several potential breaking points over the medium and long term.
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