Memorandum of understanding — or misunderstanding?

When negotiators and mediators sat down in Switzerland, the scene appeared to herald a new chapter in one of the Middle East's most complex crises.

Statements spoke of de-escalation, of confidence-building steps, and of understandings that could open the door to a different phase — even if not a permanent peace. But then came the targeting of vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, followed by an American response in the form of a fresh series of strikes against targets inside Iran.

Iran's targeting of several Arab Gulf states and Jordan sent everyone back to square one — and perhaps beyond it. The question thus imposes itself: was what emerged from Switzerland a memorandum of understanding, or a memorandum of misunderstanding?

In international relations, agreements are not measured by what is written on paper but by what happens on the ground. If drones are still speaking, missiles are still being launched, and commercial vessels are still being turned into targets, then diplomatic language becomes nothing more than a thin cover that cannot withstand the first real test.

The problem is not that agreements collapse — history is full of agreements that did not survive more than days or weeks. The problem is that the parties may have gone to the negotiating table carrying different definitions of what the agreement itself means.

One party sees the understanding as a temporary ceasefire to reorganise its position; another sees it as the start of a new phase; a third regards it merely as a means of buying time. When readings diverge, a collision becomes a matter of time and nothing more.

Iran, over many long years, has demonstrated its mastery of using negotiation as part of managing the conflict rather than as an alternative to it. It negotiates when it sees that negotiation serves its interests, and escalates when it believes escalation gives it additional leverage.

Any agreement not accompanied by clear oversight and accountability mechanisms therefore remains vulnerable to collapse at the first turning point. The United States, for its part, finds itself each time facing the same equation: it wants to avoid a broad war, yet it cannot ignore any targeting of international shipping or of its military and economic interests.

American responses thus tend to come under the banner of restoring deterrence rather than declaring all-out war — but the problem is that restoring deterrence is read by the Iranians as American inability to decide the battle conclusively.

The most dangerous aspect of the current scene is that the Strait of Hormuz has once again become the headline of the crisis, after the world had come to believe that the core of the problem lay in Iran's nuclear programme, its ballistic missiles, and its network of regional proxies. It is as though the file has shifted from debating the causes of the crisis to managing its consequences, and from treating the disease to dealing only with its symptoms.

This shift is not accidental. When the conversation comes to focus on maritime security, oil prices, and the safety of ships, the other issues recede into the background and Tehran gains new room for political manoeuvre. It is a battle over the redefinition of priorities, and it is no less important than any military confrontation.

Nor is the matter any longer confined to an exchange of military messages. Recent satellite imagery has revealed reconstruction work and resumed activity at a number of Iranian nuclear facilities that sustained damage during earlier strikes.

If these indicators prove accurate, they raise fundamental questions about the extent of Tehran's commitment to the spirit of what was agreed in Switzerland, because any understanding aimed at reducing tension cannot coexist with steps that suggest a return to the very starting point that originally triggered the crisis.

Rebuilding nuclear facilities — even if presented with technical or defensive justifications — creates the impression that the nuclear programme's trajectory continues, and that the negotiations were nothing more than a brief pause between two rounds of conflict rather than the beginning of a new phase of confidence-building.

The question that should preoccupy everyone today is not who fired the first missile, nor who responded with the next strike, but rather: is there still genuine political will to save the negotiating track?

For the continued parallel transmission of military and diplomatic messages means that one of the two parties — or both — has yet to decide between war and peace. Was Switzerland, then, witness to the birth of a memorandum of understanding? Or was it merely a stop at which a memorandum of misunderstanding was written, one that reality wasted no time in tearing apart with the first wave in the waters of the Strait of Hormuz?