What are the terms likely to be?

For the first time in weeks, there is a real reason to think the war in Iran may be edging toward some kind of ceasefire. Not peace, perhaps; not reconciliation. Not a grand bargain that resolves everything from Iran’s nuclear ambitions to the future of the regime. But a ceasefire? Yes, there is finally some real hope for that. 

The reason is simple: U.S. President Donald Trump isn’t just talking about diplomacy. He has delayed a threatened U.S. strike on Iran’s power grid for five days and said there were already “major points of agreement.” 

Worldwide, financial markets treated the development as meaningful. Oil fell about 11% on Monday. That is not how markets react to empty noise. That is how they react when they think the parties may be stumbling toward a deal.

The bad news: Tehran is officially denying that talks are even taking place.

But Tehran’s public denials shouldn’t be treated as the gold standard. This is a regime that has spent months crushing dissent at home. Iran’s judiciary is now implementing final sentences against January protesters, warning there will be “no leniency.” 

A government that executes or threatens to execute protesters while calling them terrorists is not a government whose public line should be accepted at face value when it claims no talks are happening. The more credible guide right now is behavior, not rhetoric. Washington paused one threatened escalation. Regional states are clearly moving. Oman says it is working intensively on safe-passage arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the language of a region expecting endless war.

So what would the terms of a ceasefire actually be?

The first term is obvious: Iran has to stop choking the Strait of Hormuz. That is not optional. It is the center of gravity now. Bahrain has already put forward a draft U.N. Security Council resolution, backed by other Gulf Arab states and the United States, demanding that Iran immediately cease attacks on merchant shipping and any attempt to block lawful transit in and around Hormuz. Oman, meanwhile, is openly working on safe-passage arrangements. In other words, the region is already sketching the outline of term number one: the waterway reopens, shipping resumes, and Iran stops treating a global energy artery as a weapon.

The second likely term is that Iran stops striking Gulf states and Gulf energy infrastructure. That, too, is non-negotiable from the perspective of America’s Arab partners. The GCC’s extraordinary March 1 statement condemned Iran’s missile and drone attacks on Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan, and the GCC-EU ministerial statement on March 5 called on Iran to cease those attacks immediately. 

No serious ceasefire will leave Gulf capitals wondering whether Iran gets to keep firing at civilian facilities and residential areas while diplomats congratulate themselves about de-escalation. Any truce that does not protect the Gulf is not a truce. It is a pause before the next regional panic.

The third term is that the U.S. and Israel halt further strikes on Iran’s power and energy infrastructure, at least conditionally. Trump has already signaled that this is on the table. He postponed threatened strikes on Iranian power plants Monday, and last week he said he told Israel not to repeat attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure after the war began spilling more directly into Gulf energy markets. 

That tells you something important. Even a White House willing to use force understands that energy escalation is where this war becomes much harder to control. A ceasefire, if it comes, will almost certainly include a mutual pullback from the energy war.

The fourth term is harder, because it gets at the question nobody has really solved: what happens to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs? 

Israel has said openly that the war will continue until it and the United States decide the time is right to stop, and that its objective is to destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities for the long term. The GCC-EU statement also explicitly called on Iran to curb both programs. That makes it very unlikely that the first ceasefire will be a final settlement. More likely, the ceasefire will freeze the immediate fighting while pushing the hardest issues into a second-stage negotiation: verification, limits, inspections, and some argument over what “enough” degradation looks like.

Iran, for its part, will want the bombing to stop and will almost certainly want some assurance against an immediate resumption of attacks. As of March 14, it was being reported that Iran rejected even the possibility of ceasefire talks unless U.S. and Israeli strikes ended first. 

But Tehran is not negotiating from strength.

Trump said just days ago that he did not want a ceasefire, only to change course once he believed stronger terms might be available. That suggests the regime is not going to get a broad, face-saving guarantee. It is more likely to get a narrow, conditional pause: reopen Hormuz, stop hitting the Gulf, stop missile and drone attacks, and in return the power-grid strikes and broader air campaign are suspended while larger talks continue.

Which means that the shape of a workable deal is finally visible. 

The war has done enough damage to frighten everyone who matters: presidents, oil markets, Gulf rulers, shipping companies, and the executives now warning that Hormuz has already caused one of the biggest energy disruptions in history. 

A ceasefire, if it comes, will not look like friendship. It will look like a hard bargain: stop strangling the region, stop torching the energy system, stop the bombardment, and move the biggest unresolved fights into the next round. 

That is not peace. 

But it is the first plausible path away from something much worse.

Escalation.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)