Five months into a war they thought they could finish with a single “obliterating” missile, the United States is once again finding itself in the same predicament it was in when it began trading missiles with Tehran, to watch the Strait of Hormuz freeze and to rely on the same one capital both sides still believe in: Islamabad.

The newest flash point was late Monday, after President Trump threatened Iran over the deaths of three U.S. service members in the previous days, US Central Command announced new Iranian strikes. State news in Iran reported explosions in several cities, and Kuwait said it had downed hostile missiles and drones after having been targeted with two Iranian missiles earlier the same day and Bahrain had reported sounding of sirens and downing Iranian missiles of its own. It is no longer a “local” fight.

The more important question unspoken by any member of the administration is whether all of this was really needed in the first place. Return to June 2025, when the American B-2s bombed Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan and Trump said Iran's nuclear program was "completely and totally obliterated. At the time, a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) evaluation determined the sites had been damaged, but not destroyed, and that the Iran program had only been delayed for a couple months, not years. Israeli intelligence independently concluded that the facilities were damaged but Iran's nuclear program was not destroyed. Even the White House's own documents were unable to keep a straight face with this one, which was issued in November 2025, and described the program as merely being "significantly degraded," rather than "obliterated. Since Trump withdrew the United States from the 2018 nuclear deal that permitted inspectors into Iran and the IAEA has been unable to access the bombed sites, no one outside Tehran has first-hand, independent information on how much of the program survived.

The result was a frenetic series of peace settlements, double-crosses and missed opportunities, almost like a joke if it weren't so serious. Pakistan also negotiated a two-week truce in April, following Iran's rejection of a 45-day ceasefire and instead putting forward its own ten-point peace plan. The truce was short-lived, though, as it was followed by a direct meeting between Washington and Tehran in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, the highest level of direct talks between the two nations since 1979, before it was broken. In mid-June, Pakistan's prime minister Shehbaz Sharif joined Iran's foreign minister and American officials, including Trump's son-in-law and vice president, in Lucerne, Switzerland to sign a fourteen-point memorandum of understanding that was supposed to finally secure a path to an enduring peace. It only lasted for three weeks. By July 9, that cease-fire had completely broken down, and both Pakistan and Qatar were working behind the scenes to bring both governments back to the table the very same mediators who had brokered the Switzerland breakthrough in the first place.

The significance of this is that central Pakistan has become the focal point of a conflict that it has nothing to do with. Islamabad-based analysts believe the war, rhetoric notwithstanding, will only serve to reinforce Iran and the US to return to Pakistani mediation as they are the only ones with whom both sides truly trust. The foreign office said last week it was not "prepared to accept the collapse of the most recent ceasefire" but that the present round was being shaped by "the logic of escalation" and continued to believe that the only viable basis for any future settlement was "diplomatic channels". It's an unusual assignment for a nation which only a year ago had little to do with Middle East diplomacy, and it's a reflection of both Washington and Tehran's declining trust of the old Gulf brokers.

The diplomatic scene is carefully orchestrated, while the economic aspect is an issue that requires much more attention than it has received. The first time in late February that the Strait of Hormuz closed to nearly all of the world's daily oil transport the site of nearly 90 percent of the world's daily oil imports nearly 20 million barrels a day were taken off the market and Brent crude broke the $100 barrier within a few days. They later climbed to $100.29, up 35 percent from the beginning of this year's revival of global stagflation fears. Middle Eastern producers had to reduce their production by over 11 million bpd, causing the OECD oil inventories to fall to their lowest level since 2003. Prices only started to pick up after the June memorandum reopened the strait, when the average price for the month of June was around $85, a decline of $22 from May, and the US Energy Information Administration has forecast a continued fall to about $74 for the third quarter, but each fresh wave of strikes since has brought the recovery into question. As the conflict has again escalated, shipping has again come to a standstill through Hormuz and, now, Trump has threatened to expand the target list to Iran's power stations and bridges, which will ensure another oil shock as markets begin to recover.

A darker political undertow exists as well that must be explicitly stated. In the months since the diplomatic efforts failed to deliver the promised dismantling of a weapons program, it seemed as if the dicussion of regime change had died down within parts of the Trump administration until this week, when the Financial Times reported that it had revived. So if that hunger is genuine, no memorandum signed in Lucerne or Islamabad will last long, as a government in a life and death situation has different negotiating priorities than one simply protecting an enrichment plant.

Consequence is the same to ordinary people from Karachi to Cairo to Kansas: Uneven fuel prices, soaring shipping insurance premiums, and an unpredictable Gulf region which cannot even plan a year in advance. The last channel that Pakistan has between Washington and Tehran is for shuttling, and it will be done probably. But brokered pauses aren't the same as lasting peace and as long as somebody in Washington lies to itself about what the war is supposed to accomplish disarmament, containment, or regime change the world should expect this game of pause and collapse to continue for quite some time.