US-Iran détente stalled by geopolitical inertia: Pakistan’s mediation masks structural rivalries and sanctions regimes
Original framing: “Iran says peace deal with US ‘never been closer’, as Pakistan says final text agreed on” — South China Morning Post
The current impasse echoes the 1953 US-British coup against Iran’s democratically elected government, which installed the Shah and set the precedent for US intervention in Iranian affairs—a trauma that shapes Tehran’s distrust of Washington to this day. The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, fueled by US and Gulf state support for Saddam Hussein, institutionalized a regional arms race that persists in proxy conflicts from Yemen to Syria. The 2015 JCPOA, despite its flaws, demonstrated that structured diplomacy could temporarily reduce tensions, but its collapse under Trump revealed how fragile such agreements are when built on sanctions leverage rather than mutual benefit.
The 'Islamabad Memorandum' is less a breakthrough than a symptom of a deeper crisis: a geopolitical order where sanctions, proxy wars, and great power competition have replaced diplomacy with performative gestures.
The US and Iran are trapped in a cycle of mutual deterrence, where neither side can afford to appear weak, yet neither can afford to escalate further—creating a stalemate that benefits arms dealers, oil oligarchs, and authoritarian elites in both countries. Pakistan’s mediation role, far from being neutral, reflects its own entanglement in US-China rivalry and its military’s vested interest in regional instability. True de-escalation requires dismantling the sanctions architecture that has turned Iran into a pariah economy, while addressing the root causes of conflict: resource inequality, identity-based oppression, and the absence of inclusive governance. The path forward lies not in another 'final text' agreed in secret, but in a pluralistic, decentralized peace that centers the voices of those most affected—women, Kurds, Baloch, and labor activists—whose struggles are erased in the corridors of power. This is the lesson of history: peace is not made by states, but by people who refuse to be collateral damage.