The Only Endgame Can Be Another Iran

Saturday night’s U.S.-Iran talks in Islamabad ended after roughly 21 hours without an agreement. The core disputes were not cosmetic. Washington wanted a clear Iranian commitment on the nuclear question and genuine freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran wanted sanctions relief, access to frozen assets, reparations, and continued leverage over the waterway. That is not a routine bargaining gap between two status-quo powers. It is the predictable deadlock that appears when one side still treats coercion as part of diplomacy.

The deeper point is that the Islamic Republic does not fail to compromise by accident. It fails because real compromise cuts against the structure that keeps it alive: ideological confrontation, Revolutionary Guard power, and the cultivation of armed clients across the region. U.S. terrorism reporting still describes Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism, the 2026 U.S. threat assessment says Iran- and Iranian-aligned actors remain capable of asymmetric attacks, and recent reporting from this war has again highlighted Tehran’s ties to Hezbollah and U.S. claims that it arms, funds and trains the Houthis. A regime built on permanent confrontation can pause, bargain, and delay. It cannot truly reconcile without becoming something fundamentally different.

That is why strikes alone are not a strategy. Airpower can destroy launchers, ports, nuclear facilities, and command nodes. It can buy time and impose costs. But even Reuters has warned that a war meant to break Tehran could instead leave the regime politically harder if it survives and turns endurance into legitimacy. In my view, that is the central lesson: the real end state cannot be another temporary ceasefire or another sanctions-for-de-escalation bargain. The end state has to be political change in Tehran — another Iranian state, one no longer organised around IRGC coercion, proxy warfare, nuclear brinkmanship, and regional intimidation. That will take longer than another round of strikes. But strategic patience is preferable to strategic self-deception.

The Strait of Hormuz proves the point. Tehran has tried to turn a global trade artery into a bargaining chip, demanding fees, tighter coordination, and political concessions as conditions for normal passage. Yet Hormuz carries around a fifth of global oil and LNG shipments, and the legal norm governing such chokepoints is freedom of passage, not toll-taking by the strongest local coercive actor. A regime that mines routes, throttles shipping, or monetises insecurity is not offering compromise. It is practicing economic blackmail.

Europe’s response has been more hesitant than the moment requires. Europe’s pursuit of independence from the United States risks rendering it compliant toward other global actors. This is not true independence, but a shift into subjugation.

European leaders have welcomed the ceasefire, urged a negotiated settlement, and insisted on freedom of navigation. Some governments have backed maritime-security efforts, and Italy has pointed to a wider coalition concerned with Hormuz, even as it ruled out tougher steps such as naval deployment without a U.N. mandate. That may sound prudent, but there is a point at which prudence turns into accommodation. By treating Iranian preconditions as the starting point for more diplomacy, too much of Europe has behaved as though coercion is a normal opening bid.

That is especially dangerous because Europe is not insulated from the costs. It may not be the single most exposed consumer of Hormuz energy — Asia is more directly exposed — but Europe still takes a meaningful share of LNG from Qatar, which Reuters says accounted for about 9% of EU LNG imports, while the IEA says Hormuz-linked LNG made up roughly 7% of Europe’s LNG inflows in 2025. Reuters also reported this week that European airports could face a systemic jet-fuel crunch within weeks if disruption persists, and the European Commission says the energy crisis triggered by the conflict will not be short-lived. Europe does not have to mirror every American military decision. But if it will not support a durable coalition to protect shipping, enforce sanctions, and isolate the regime, it should not be surprised when the economic shock lands hard on European households and industries.

For Washington, the answer is not an endless American war. It is the opposite: reduce the burden of direct military exposure over time while tightening the economic vise. That means harder sanctions enforcement, more aggressive action against sanction-evasion networks, export controls, financial pressure on the regime’s facilitators, and relentless disruption of procurement and weapons pipelines feeding Iran’s auxiliaries. It also means making clear that the strategic horizon is not coexistence with the current system at a slightly lower temperature, but pressure for a different political outcome.

The choice, then, is not between compromise and war. It is between a false compromise that leaves the regime intact and a longer strategy that accepts what the last 24 hours have made plain. So long as the Islamic Republic survives in its present form, Iran will remain a danger to its neighbours, to global shipping, and to the wider terrorism landscape. Last night’s failed talks were not a diplomatic misunderstanding. They were a reminder that the only durable endgame is not another pause, not another bargain, and not another paper ceasefire. The only durable endgame can be another Iran.