Three Deals, No Agreement: Why the US-Iran Ceasefire Collapsed in Twelve Hours

Twelve hours. That is about how long the ceasefire—announced at the very last minute, just ahead of a self-imposed deadline—lasted before it began to fall apart. At the time of recording, the war between the United States and Iran has not fully reignited. But the trajectory is not promising. And if Washington and Tehran cannot even hold a two-week pause together, the odds of anything more durable are not something to take to the bank.

What has made the past 24 hours so chaotic is that both sides appear to have very different ideas of what they actually agreed to. Multiple competing versions of the deal are circulating, with no single signed document for anyone to point to. And caught in the middle once again is Lebanon, whose government and population have watched Iran, Israel, and the United States argue over the country’s fate with almost no say in the matter themselves.

The ceasefire is barely a day old, and it is already coming apart at the seams—not over a single disputed point, but over the fact that the parties involved appear to have agreed to fundamentally different deals.

Key Takeaways

A US-Iran ceasefire announced Monday night began unraveling within roughly twelve hours, with no unified signed document and at least two—possibly three—competing versions of Iran’s proposal in circulation.
The central fracture is Lebanon. Pakistan’s prime minister said it was included; Netanyahu said the deal “does not include Lebanon,” and Trump publicly backed him, saying Hezbollah “will get taken care of, too.”
Israel launched its largest assault yet on Hezbollah, codenamed “Operation Eternal Darkness”—roughly 50 fighter jets and sustained strikes that reportedly killed over 250 Lebanese and wounded as many as 800 in a single day.
Tehran has all but re-closed the Strait of Hormuz, warning that vessels transiting without permission could be destroyed; per Lloyd’s List, only two or three crossings occurred in 24 hours, none of them oil tankers.
The shooting did not actually stop: Iranian drones and missiles struck five of the six Gulf monarchies, including a hit near Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline—the line built specifically to bypass Hormuz.
High-level US-Iran talks are set for Saturday in Islamabad—the most senior direct meeting since 1979—with Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner for Washington and Ghalibaf and Aragchi for Tehran.
Both delegations have boxed themselves into positions where the concessions needed for a deal are precisely the ones they can least afford to make publicly.

Three Deals, No Agreement

What the world got on Monday night was not a single ceasefire so much as a buffet—three different countries each separately picking the parts they liked and leaving the unappetizing bits untouched.

The spark was a post on X from Pakistan’s prime minister, made before Trump’s self-imposed deadline, declaring that the United States and Iran had “agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.” For a very brief moment, it looked like this might hold—at least for the two weeks the ceasefire called for. It was never going to end the war itself, but it could have bought time to negotiate.

The cracks emerged fast. In the hours after the announcement, Iran kept launching attacks on its neighbors, and the strikes did not let up through most of Wednesday. But the single biggest hang-up was not, directly, about Iran at all. It came down to Lebanon—and whether or not it was covered.

Lebanon and the Missing Document

Pakistan’s prime minister made clear in his announcement that Lebanon was included. But that wording did not appear to rest on any single signed document agreed by both Iran and the United States. Then the situation hardened on the ground. Israel launched nearly 50 fighter jets, followed by sustained strikes through the afternoon—the largest attacks on Hezbollah positions across Lebanon. In a single day, it appears that over 250 Lebanese were killed.

Netanyahu’s statement was unambiguous: the US-Iran ceasefire “does not include Lebanon.” Israel, he said, has “more goals to complete” against Hezbollah, with no intention of letting up. Amid the confusion—no formalized agreement was ever released—President Trump publicly backed him: “Because of Hezbollah, they were not included in the deal… That’ll get taken care of, too.”

This is where things really began to fall apart. Tehran was forced to choose between its own security at home and defending its allies in Lebanon—and chose the latter, reportedly threatening to collapse the whole ceasefire by once again closing the Strait of Hormuz if Lebanon was not included.

The Competing Proposals

Watch on WarFronts

Watch the full video analysis on the WarFronts YouTube channel, presented by Simon Whistler.

Parliament speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf—repeatedly cited as leading the Iranian negotiations—went on the record claiming that three of the conditions Iran had outlined were already being broken. Those conditions are worth understanding, because they reveal how far apart the two sides actually are, and how hastily the deal was assembled.

Back in late March, the US sent Iran a 15-point plan through Pakistani channels. It was maximalist: limits on Iran’s missile program, full dismantlement of the nuclear program—terms Tehran found wholly unacceptable. Iran’s reply was its own maximalist, 10-point plan that went just as far in the other direction: full sanctions relief, recognition of Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, and reparations for war damages.

As the deadline neared—on Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s infrastructure—Tehran reportedly sent a revised version. That version has not been publicly released, so its exact contents are unknown. But it was apparently enough for Washington to sign on to a two-week ceasefire and prepare for real negotiations, describing it as “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” This was diplomacy by frantic late-night deadline submission, and the quality showed.

Lost in Translation

While the rest of the world tried to clarify who was even covered by the ceasefire, Iran took a victory lap—casting the deal as proof of its military endurance against American aggression and publicizing a version of the plan that was essentially the original maximalist proposal already set aside.

The White House was not having it. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt slammed the plan as “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable, and completely discarded,” saying it had been “literally thrown in the garbage” by Trump’s team. The result is that, at time of recording, there are at least two—and quite possibly three—versions of Iran’s proposal in circulation.

Tehran backed its rhetoric with action. It has more or less re-closed the Strait to maritime traffic, which had only barely begun to trickle through overnight before grinding to a halt as demands over Lebanon tightened. Per Lloyd’s List, there have been two or three crossings in the past 24 hours—not one of them an oil tanker. Iran has issued radio warnings that any vessel transiting without permission could be destroyed.

Was the Ambiguity an Accident?

So, back to square one? At the time of writing, the US has not formally re-entered the war—though that is heavily subject to change. From Washington’s perspective, the entire point of the ceasefire was to get traffic flowing again while negotiations resumed. If Iran holds this posture another day, it is difficult to see how the peace survives. Trump has already threatened to restart the war if Iran does not comply with what he calls the “real agreement.”

There is a real question of whether the Lebanon ambiguity was more than an accident. The New York Times reported that the White House had seen and signed off on at least one of the Pakistani prime minister’s public statements before he posted it—the one requesting Trump extend his deadline, not the ceasefire announcement itself. If Washington was approving Islamabad’s messaging in real time, the idea that Pakistan went rogue by including Lebanon becomes a harder sell. CNN separately cited an Israeli source saying Jerusalem had “worked overnight with the US to ensure it wouldn’t accept the Iranian demand to have Lebanon be part of the ceasefire.”

Still, much remains unclear. Iran’s own foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, did not even mention Lebanon in his initial ceasefire statement—an odd omission given the emphasis Tehran has since placed on it. Vice President JD Vance chalked the dispute up to a genuine misunderstanding, while maintaining that Lebanon was never part of the agreement. Whether it was a trap or a miscommunication, the effect was the same: nobody was on the same page, and that confusion could now reignite the entire war.

Caught in the Middle

Whether Lebanon actually was part of the ceasefire is impossible to say with certainty—it comes down to “he said, she said, and then he bombed Beirut.” But technicalities aside, the mood in Lebanon, at first, felt like inclusion. Hezbollah stopped shooting. Some displaced families took it as permission to head home, though the Lebanese Armed Forces urged them not to.

That was the right call. With over 250 killed, reportedly as many as 800 wounded by nightfall, and bodies still being pulled from rubble in Beirut’s southern suburbs, what came next was given the Israeli code name “Operation Eternal Darkness.”

Absent throughout has been the Lebanese government, again relegated to the sidelines as Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel decide the country’s future. President Joseph Aoun condemned the strikes as “barbaric.” Prime Minister Nawaf Salam reportedly said Lebanon would not accept anyone negotiating on its behalf, and the Foreign Ministry echoed it with a pointed line: Lebanon “speaks with one voice—its own.”

That message was aimed in two directions at once: at Iran, which folded Lebanon into its demands not out of concern for ordinary Lebanese but to salvage its proxy forces, and at the US and Israel, who are deciding Lebanon’s status without Beirut at the table. Notably, Aoun has repeatedly offered to negotiate with Israel directly—a major shift given Lebanon’s longstanding refusal to even sit down with Jerusalem.

Why Iran Cannot Walk Away From Hezbollah

Israeli officials have told reporters for weeks that they see a window to degrade Hezbollah before any broader framework forces them to stop. While they speak of establishing a semi-permanent “buffer zone” in the south, the chance to strike Hezbollah-dominated areas of Beirut will not last indefinitely.

For Tehran, Hezbollah is not someone else’s fight—or at least Iran cannot afford to let it become one. The group is the last functioning piece of a regional security architecture the Islamic Republic spent decades and billions of dollars constructing, and which for years served as the crown jewel of its defense strategy against Israel. Things have not played out the way Tehran imagined, but it is unwilling to let Hezbollah be fully destroyed in Lebanon.

That is the bind Iran carries into Islamabad: wanting a ceasefire, but seemingly unwilling to accept one that writes off one of its last remaining allies. Whether anyone at the table Saturday can square that circle remains to be seen.

Two Weeks to Nowhere

Saturday morning, if all goes to plan, will feature the highest-level direct meeting between American and Iranian officials since 1979. Representing Washington: Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner. Representing Tehran: Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi.

There is also the long-standing elephant in the room. Since Mojtaba Khamenei was elected Supreme Leader, he has not been seen or heard from since the war broke out on February 28th. Written statements attributed to him have been released, but they did more to fuel theories that he was unconscious or dead than to dispel them.

Now there may be clarification: Axios reported that Mojtaba was personally involved with Iran’s negotiators on Monday night—the strongest sign yet that he is alive and functional enough to weigh in at critical moments. The IRGC appears to be running significant portions of the country’s security operations in the meantime, but whatever emerges from Islamabad will likely need his blessing—and the fact that he may have signed off on the ceasefire suggests there is some hope.

That is about where the good news ends. These are two sides that cannot even agree on what was actually agreed a day earlier, which does not bode well for far more complicated discussions ahead.

The Issues That Will Not Bend

The goal is to convert the two-week pause into something durable—but the list of issues required to get there is staggering, and on virtually every one, the distance between the sides has not meaningfully narrowed since before the war started.

The nuclear question will be the centerpiece. Tehran’s position is that enrichment is a sovereign right. Leavitt let slip that the US has received indicators that “they will turn over the enriched uranium”—almost certainly referring only to stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, not the country’s entire collection. Iran responded that any handover would be on the table only if all 10 of its original conditions were met.

The rest of each side’s wish list is no easier. Washington wants curbs on Iran’s missile and drone programs. Tehran wants recognition of its right to enrich uranium and a withdrawal of US combat forces from all bases and positions in the region. They are talking past each other.

A War That Never Actually Stopped

Just making it to the weekend looks like a battle. In the hours after the ceasefire announcement, Iranian drones and missiles hit five of the six Gulf monarchies, with only Oman spared. Kuwait faced 28 drone attacks. The UAE took 35 drones and 17 ballistic missiles, with a fire breaking out at Abu Dhabi’s Habshan gas complex—one of the country’s most critical processing facilities.

Most concerning of all was Saudi Arabia, where a strike on the kingdom’s east-west oil pipeline—built specifically to bypass the Strait of Hormuz—hit a pumping station along the route. Bloomberg has since reported the damage was limited and oil is still flowing, but it was far too close for comfort. That pipeline has been carrying roughly five million barrels a day.

Whether these were deliberate violations or holdovers from a very decentralized IRGC acting independently of any central command remains unclear. Either way, the message is not great—and that backdrop, an active shooting war that did not stop when the ceasefire started, is what makes the structural problem in Islamabad so acute.

The Bind on Both Sides

Both delegations have boxed themselves into positions where the concessions that would produce an agreement are the ones they can least afford to make publicly. Iran cannot concede on Hormuz without admitting the blockade was leverage rather than principle. Trump faces his own version of the same trap: he sold the ceasefire as proof his maximum-pressure approach worked, and accepting an outcome that wins even fewer concessions from Tehran than Obama’s 2015 JCPOA did would be hard to celebrate.

At home, Trump has seemed eager to close this whole thing out—and that cuts both ways. It gives him reason to push hard in Islamabad, but he also needs to take something away from the campaign to sell it as a win. So far, his claims of “total and complete victory” are not especially convincing.

Saturday will tell us whether there is a deal to be had here, or whether the next two weeks are merely a countdown to the war exploding back into the open.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long did the ceasefire last before it began to fall apart?

About twelve hours. The ceasefire was announced Monday night, and within roughly half a day it had begun to come apart—chiefly because the parties appeared to have agreed to fundamentally different deals, with no single signed document to point to.

Why is Lebanon at the center of the dispute?

Pakistan’s prime minister announced the ceasefire covered Lebanon, but no signed agreement confirmed that. Netanyahu stated the deal “does not include Lebanon,” and Trump backed him. Israel then launched its largest assault yet on Hezbollah—killing over 250 Lebanese in a day—while Tehran threatened to collapse the ceasefire unless Lebanon was included.

What happened with the Strait of Hormuz?

Iran has more or less re-closed the Strait to maritime traffic, tightening its posture over the Lebanon dispute. According to Lloyd’s List, only two or three crossings occurred in 24 hours, none of them oil tankers. Iran issued radio warnings that any vessel transiting without permission could be destroyed.

What are the competing ceasefire proposals?

In late March the US sent a maximalist 15-point plan demanding missile limits and full nuclear dismantlement. Iran countered with a maximalist 10-point plan seeking full sanctions relief, recognized control of Hormuz, and war reparations. Iran later sent a revised, unreleased version that Washington called “a workable basis on which to negotiate.”

Who is attending the Islamabad talks, and why are they significant?

The Saturday talks would be the highest-level direct US-Iran meeting since 1979. The US side includes Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner; Iran is represented by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi.