The White House & Tehran's two-week ceasefire, explained
- Michael MacArthur Bosack
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
With the help of Pakistani mediators, Washington and Tehran have, for now, averted a major escalation of hostilities. The two parties agreed to a two-week ceasefire and de facto extension of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ultimatum in which he demanded that Iranian leaders make a deal and open the Strait of Hormuz or face total destruction of the country’s energy infrastructure and bridges.
With this development, the United States and Iran have transitioned from indirect signaling to formal negotiation. The two sides are set to meet face-to-face for the first time since the outbreak of hostilities, with their talks anchored by a 15-point framework from the White House and a 10-point counterproposal from Tehran. The two sides remain far apart on core issues, creating significant obstacles to progress on a near-term, durable peace deal within the short timeframe. Further, disputes over whether the scope of the ceasefire includes Israel’s operations in Lebanon threaten to collapse an already fragile peace process.
Amidst these conditions, it is necessary to take stock of how the two sides reached this point as well as the challenges that lie ahead. In doing so, it becomes clear that of the many bellicose outcomes that remain possible, the most realistic route to de-escalation is mutual disengagement paired with a commitment to continued talks.
Understanding the “Agreement to Negotiate” Phase
To understand the current moment, it helps to situate it within the broader architecture of negotiation; namely, the six phases of negotiation: (1) pre-negotiation; (2) agreement to negotiate; (3) negotiation; (4) ratification; (5) interpretation; and (6) implementation.
The pre-negotiation phase occurs when the two sides are signaling their interests and constraints either through the media, intermediaries, or direct contact to determine whether negotiating a deal is possible and worthwhile. For the White House and Tehran, the pre-negotiation phase began in March as the two sides began communicating clear objectives and demands related to ending the war. For the U.S. side, it included things like destruction of Iran’s military capabilities, guarantees that Iran would never possess a nuclear weapon, and elimination of Tehran’s ability to support hostile proxies. For the Iranian side, the four clear demands were internationally backed security guarantees, recognition of the sovereign rights to regime survival and nuclear enrichment, withdrawal of U.S. bases from the region, and war reparations.
Once the two sides see potential value in a negotiation, they move to the agreement to negotiate phase. This is where the parties determine how the formal negotiations should proceed, and they answer questions such as: who will be conducting the negotiations; where will the deliberations take place; will there be intermediaries; and what are the parameters of the negotiations? This phase is often brief but chaotic, as the two sides scramble to navigate what is typically a narrow window of opportunity to shape formal negotiations.
The six phases of negotiation, from Negotiate: A Primer for Practitioners (2022)
In the case of the White House and Tehran, the typically short window was made even shorter by Trump’s continued ultimatums. He set an extended deadline of 6 April for Iran to make a deal and open the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. side delivered a 15-point proposal to set the parameters for a formal negotiation, suggesting the establishment of a 45-day ceasefire in which to conduct structured deliberations towards achieving a permanent peace deal. In the waning hours of the original deadline, the Iranian side engaged enough for Trump to delay another 20 hours to 7 April. Before that deadline elapsed, Tehran delivered a 10-point counterproposal as its anchor for talks that proved acceptable enough to secure a two-week ceasefire and commence formal negotiations. These face-to-face talks will reportedly occur on Saturday, 11 April in Islamabad.
The Mechanics of U.S.-Iran engagement
A key question is how the two sides actually negotiated considering they were not meeting face-to-face. In fact, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that while he had received text messages from U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, this did not constitute formal negotiations.
Instead, deliberations over the past few weeks were principally conducted via intermediaries from Pakistan, Egypt, and Türkiye. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been the most vocal and active mediator, brokering the two-week ceasefire with an eleventh-hour proposal to both sides.
The primary players involved in the peace process from the U.S. side have been Steve Witkoff and Vice President JD Vance. The White House recently designated Vance to be the lead negotiator, which was reportedly Iran’s preference.
Tehran likely preferred Vance over Witkoff for several reasons. First, Vance has been one of the few voices in the Trump administration not fully aligned with intervention in Iran. His scepticism toward U.S. adventurism in the Middle East likely shapes a negotiating posture that is more open to war termination.
Second, as Vice President, Vance holds institutional authority within the U.S. government. He is not just a special envoy or the president's son-in-law, and that matters for cementing durable intergovernmental agreements. Further, as a potential future president, Vance represents more than the current administration. Tehran cannot guarantee that Vance will be the next U.S. leader, but it does not hurt for them to maximize their chances for a deal that outlasts the current presidential term.
Third, Tehran has dealt with Witkoff and Kushner before, and the outcome was war. Not only were there mistakes in the way Witkoff and Kushner handled the previous nuclear negotiations, their personal ties to Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials make them less attractive interlocutors for Tehran. In this case, the devil they don't know is actually preferable to the devil they do.
Tehran has not formally acknowledged the individuals involved in negotiations, but the two main players appear to be Foreign Minister Araghchi and Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf.
At this point, formal talks are expected to begin in Islamabad, marking a shift from mediated communication to structured negotiation in what would be the highest-level U.S.-Iran engagement in decades.
The eleventh hour agreement to negotiate, as communicated via X/Twitter
Discovering the unspoken preconditions
A key point to understand about the current peace process is the unspoken preconditions. Neither side publicly articulated demands that they expected the opposing side to satisfy prior to entering into formal negotiations, yet each operated with a threshold requirement. For Tehran, it was a temporary ceasefire. For Washington, it was the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. These conditions were not negotiated in the traditional sense; they were effectively discovered through action and response. Each side signaled, tested, and adjusted until a mutually acceptable baseline emerged.
The challenge here is that preconditions—whether explicit or implied—present risk to the peace process if either side feels they are no longer being honored. This has already become a problem, as both Ghalibaf and Araghchi identified that Israel is violating the two-week ceasefire with continued military operations in Lebanon. Both the Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu administrations have stated that a ceasefire in Lebanon was not part of the arrangement, but that has only prompted the Iranian side to re-close the Strait of Hormuz.
How the two sides will respond to these preconditions remains in question. Will they hold firm on these demands? Will they bend to allow negotiations to proceed, or will they hold for resolution before moving onto other issues? All are important considerations as they prepare for their forthcoming negotiations.
Conflicting interpretations from Iran and Israel on the scope of the two-week ceasefire
The way ahead
At this point, the gap between the two sides remains substantial. Core disagreements persist over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, the structure of ceasefire guarantees, the role of regional proxies, and the question of war reparations—particularly Tehran’s interest in leveraging Hormuz transit for tolls.
Further, external actors remain potential spoilers. Both Israel and hostile proxies with ties to Tehran retain the capacity to disrupt the peace process, whether deliberately or incidentally.
Time is also a constraint. Two weeks is insufficient to negotiate a durable, implementable peace deal. Attempting to do so risks overloading the process and triggering collapse.
Under these conditions, a more plausible outcome is narrower. If the two sides pursue mutual disengagement coupled with a commitment to continue talks beyond the ceasefire window, there is a narrow opportunity for de-escalation of hostilities without requiring a formal peace agreement. In this case, both sides would declare that they have met all their objectives that require military force and would use diplomatic and economic options for resolving any outstanding issues. Barring that, near-term escalation seems likely unless one or both sides decide to abandon some of their core interests vis-à-vis the negotiation.
Michael MacArthur Bosack is a seasoned international negotiator and the founder of the Parley Policy Initiative. He is the Special Adviser for Government Relations at the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies. Previously, Michael served as the Deputy Secretary of the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission in Korea and the Deputy Chief of Government Relations at Headquarters, U.S. Forces, Japan. He is a former East-West Center Fellow, a military veteran, and the author of “Negotiate: A Primer for Practitioners.”
