A portrait of Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei at a rally to commemorate the death of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on April 9, 2026 [AFP]Whatever the fate is of the putative two-week ceasefire agreement between the US and Iran, it remains historically significant due to novel dynamics that the war just revealed and that portend important new power relations regionally and globally.
These include both positive and negative developments that are epic in their magnitude and historic in their implications for the future.
Most analysis in the West has spoken of Trump searching for an “off ramp” to escape the danger he had painted himself into – using the analogy of how drivers on highways seek an exit ramp to enter a rest stop or a lower-intensity side road. But what Iran has actually done is to instead offer Trump and Israel a chance to press the ejection seat button to escape their damaged fighter-jet – and survive without achieving their war aims.
The war’s critical new dynamics have included the massive destruction of essential civilian infrastructure and military facilities across the region, by the US, Israel, Iran and Tehran’s allies.
This includes the American threat of Iran’s annihilation alongside Israel’s actual genocidal destruction of all life-supporting mechanisms in Gaza and much of south Lebanon. This disrupted vital global supply chains that impact every life and economic dimension – food, energy, water, technology, travel — and was tacitly supported by all actors’ foreign allies.
It also confirmed the death of any international law or global treaty protections for non-combatants that once differentiated between military and civilian needs. All humans on Earth now live in danger.
Positive aspects of the Pakistan-mediated two-week ceasefire agreement are that it has been accepted — if not fully implemented — by all, and includes substantive concessions by all.
Negotiations can succeed if the US and Israel send serious adults to discuss permanent peace, instead of frivolous media performers, professional killers, and nasty colonial officers. The US negotiators in particular should reflect the interests, values, and views of the American people, and stop taking instructions from Israelis.
Compliance with Israeli demands, however, is not only a Trumpian phenomenon; Washington has consistently reflected Israeli priorities and wishes in the Middle East since the 1950s, while not seeing the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians and others in the region as people with equal rights to Israelis.
This war was instigated by decades of repeated Israeli pressure, exaggerations and lies about Iran’s unproven threats to the US and the region that successive White House leaderships swallowed. It was finally triggered by Trump and a few fellow circus-vintage dramatists — who also never consulted Congress as constitutionally required, and did not reflect the wishes of the American people, two-thirds of whom oppose the war.
It is also positive that the US and Israel agreed to negotiate on the basis of the 10-point Iranian plan, rather than the 15-point US-Israel agenda. This could allow negotiations to affirm the legitimate rights and needs of all concerned, rather than surreptitiously trying like thieves in the night to achieve by brute force and war crimes tactics what Israel-US could not achieve after six weeks of fighting and decades of sanctions and assassinations.
The week ahead will clarify if this is a genuine ceasefire agreement, or just another American-Israeli con artist’s deception, like those they used to launch surprise attacks and assassinations in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iran.
This historic agreement represents the first time a Middle Eastern country has single-handedly checked the massive war-making capabilities of the US and Israel. At immense cost, Iran has revealed its human talent, technological prowess, and political will to stand up to the US-Israel axis, stopped their aggressive assault, and forced them to negotiate according to Iran’s checklist of essential outcomes that satisfy both sides and international law dictates that US-Israeli officials and armies destroyed during the past half century.
The power and impact of “resistance” have been used as a defensive strategy by parties that are weaker by conventional military measures. US-Israeli advantages have been countered to some extent by Iranian-led strategies that have prevented Israel and the US from achieving all their war aims in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Iran, though at great cost.
Just how extensive and enduring this “resistance” model is remains to be seen.
Long-term success beyond this ceasefire requires acknowledging a critical fact that the West has ignored to date: resolving the Palestine issue is central to achieving several connected goals -to contain Zionism and Israeli expansionist aims, end US imperial actions and Israeli hegemonic ones, and allow all states in the Middle East to live in peace with equal rights and sovereignty.
These essential issues must be resolved equitably in order to finally end the colonial era in the Middle East that has been spearheaded by US-Israeli-Western militarism, racism, and genocide in the past half century. If it holds, this agreement can significantly change the regional balance of power within the Middle East, and between the region and the world’s big and middle powers, which would be central to leaving behind the Middle East’s gruesome colonial centuries.
The Saudi Arabian position could help shape this, but it remains unclear, due to the extensive Israeli-American propaganda claiming that Riyadh egged on the attacks against Iran. China’s and Pakistan’s mediation role behind the scenes is also unclear, but seems pivotal.
Much remains to be clarified. But one victim of this war to date has clearly been American credibility, both as a negotiating actor and a security partner and guarantor for Arab states.
We cannot and should not waste time guessing or assuming what happens next in the Middle East. More important is to honestly assess what has actually happened over the past century.
The significance of this only emerges if one appreciates a linked chain of events, in reverse historical order: the US-Israel attacks on Iran in June 2025 and February-April 2026; the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and Israel’s genocidal war that followed; the Israeli siege of Beirut and occupation of South Lebanon in 1982; the US-UK coup against the elected prime minister of Iran in August 1953; the UN partition of Palestine resolution in November 1947; and the issuing of the Balfour Declaration in November 1917 in London that promised UK support for a Jewish homeland in 93 percent Arab Palestine.
To understand current dynamics, one must critically grasp the significance of this legacy, and appreciate the sentiments it has long elicited among the indigenous people of the Middle East. If the massive legacy of colonial violence, pain, and cruelty across the Middle East is ignored – which is the Israeli playbook and, to date, the compliant and complicit US-West response – the world would miss an opportunity to achieve human dignity and justice for all.
Continuing to ignore the reality and rights of nearly a billion people in the Arab-Islamic Middle East only sets the stage for even worse local and global catastrophes than what we have witnessed across the Middle East in the past two and a half years.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
