There is a peculiar kind of silence that falls over the Strait of Hormuz when the gunboats withdraw just enough for a tanker to pass. It is not the silence of peace, but the hush of a held breath. And this week, courtesy of a most unlikely chain of events involving a former reality television star in the White House, a clerical establishment in Tehran, and the quiet diplomacy of Pakistan’s military establishment, that silence has been allowed to stretch into something resembling normalcy. Donald Trump, a man who measures success in the decibels of his own pronouncements, has done something that confounds both his admirers and his detractors. He has publicly thanked Iran for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Let that sink in for a moment.
The same president who tore up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, who labelled the Islamic Republic a state sponsor of terror, and who has maintained a punishing naval blockade, has offered a grudging tip of the hat to the very adversary he was trying to strangle. The waterway, through which a fifth of global petroleum passes, is once again fully accessible for commercial shipping. Trump insists that his blockade remains in place until a comprehensive nuclear deal is signed, but the physical reality of hulls moving through the strait tells a more nuanced story. This is the paradox of the second Trump era, if one can call it an era. The man who promised to tear up the rulebook has discovered that even he cannot tear up geography.
When Lebanon’s fragile ceasefire finally took hold, it did more than pause the killing along the Blue Line. It created a sliver of political space in which Tehran and Washington could conduct business without the usual soundtrack of airstrikes and centrifuges spinning out of control. Trump has declared that most of the sticking points are already resolved. Washington will secure Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile – a treasure trove of potential weapons-grade material – without writing a single cheque in compensation. The fate of Hezbollah and Lebanon’s shattered south will be ringfenced for a separate, slower conversation. And, most critically, the Israeli airstrikes that have become as routine as the sunrise over the Golan Heights are meant to stop. It sounds too neat, and it probably is.
However, for now, the oil traders have exhaled. Brent crude steadied, futures stopped their panicked convulsion, and the average motorist in Manchester or Mumbai will not see a five-pound shock at the pump this month. That is no small thing. It is also a reminder that diplomacy, even when it is ugly, transactional and conducted through megaphones, still has the power to prevent a cascade of misery. Yet the real story here is not Trump’s grudging gratitude or Iran’s tactical concession. It is the emergence of Pakistan as the improbable postman in a neighborhood full of letter bombs. For decades, Islamabad has been seen – often fairly – as a place where proxy wars go to multiply. Its intelligence services have played long and complex games in Afghanistan and Kashmir, and its civilian governments have rarely been able to outrun the shadow of the military establishment.
However, this week, something shifted. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, the army chief whose quiet authority underpins everything, appear to have found a role that suits them better than perpetual confrontation. According to sources familiar with the backchannel exchanges, Pakistani intermediaries have been shuttling messages between Washington and Tehran for several days. They have leant on Turkey, which has its own complicated relationship with the Gulf, and on Egypt, which has spent the last decade trying to rebuild its regional credibility. The goal was not to solve the nuclear dispute overnight, but to stop the Lebanese ceasefire from unravelling before it had even begun. And remarkably, it worked.
One can imagine the scene in some airless conference room in Rawalpindi, where a Pakistani brigadier who has seen too many wars sketches out a messaging matrix on a whiteboard. He is talking to a Turkish colonel via a secure line, and an Egyptian diplomat is on speakerphone from Cairo. The Iranians are not in the room, but their representative is only a text message away. This is not the diplomacy of grand summits and gold-plated podiums. It is the diplomacy of exhaustion, of people who have seen what happens when the backchannels go cold. It is, in its own ragged way, human. However, here is the Guardian’s customary note of caution, because there is always a note of caution.
The Hormuz thaw is not a peace. It is a pause, and pauses have a way of ending when the next missile is fired. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has confirmed that commercial vessels can use designated Iranian maritime paths during the truce. That is a concession, yes, but it is also a reminder that Iran controls those paths. It can reopen them tomorrow, and it can close them the day after. The enriched uranium is still there, ringfenced or not. The Lebanese state is still a skeleton, and Hezbollah is still a militia with more rockets than a small country’s army. And Israel has not signed anything; it has merely paused, for now. What makes this moment worth dwelling on is not its durability but its rarity.
In a world weary of proxy wars and sanctions, where the default setting is escalation and the vocabulary is that of vengeance, a quiet intervention by an unlikely broker feels almost anachronistic. It is achieved by the overlooked envoys, the tired generals, the foreign ministers who keep showing up to forums in Turkish resorts, and the prime ministers who trust their army chiefs enough to let them pick up the phone. It is achieved by Pakistan, of all places, remembering that its greatest strength has never been its missiles but its geography and its connections. For now, the tankers move. The oil flows. The ceasefire in Lebanon holds, more or less. In addition, in Islamabad, a few exhausted diplomats allow themselves a cup of tea before the next crisis calls. That is not a happy ending but in the Middle East, a pause is sometimes the most honest form of progress.
