{"id":68,"date":"2026-04-09T22:51:40","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/09\/can-the-middle-east-ceasefire-hold\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T22:51:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:51:40","slug":"can-the-middle-east-ceasefire-hold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/09\/can-the-middle-east-ceasefire-hold\/","title":{"rendered":"Can the Middle East ceasefire hold?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the text from The Conversation UK\u2019s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up here<\/a> to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s still not clear who will turn up in Islamabad tomorrow for the first round of talks aimed at turning the 14-day ceasefire in the Iran war into a permanent end to the crisis. Indeed, it\u2019s not at all certain that the ceasefire will still even exist by then.<\/p>\n

To anyone following events, there seemed little, if any, gap between reports that Pakistan had brokered a truce between the warring parties and news that Israel was continuing to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. But from then the story followed a depressingly familiar path. Iran \u2013 backed by Pakistan \u2013 claimed that the ceasefire also covered Lebanon. Israel said that it didn\u2019t and it would continue to pound Hezbollah targets there.<\/p>\n

For his part, the US president, Donald Trump, said that as far as he was concerned, Israel\u2019s assault on Lebanon was a \u201cseparate skirmish\u201d, albeit one of considerable brutality in which 1,400 people were either killed or wounded.<\/p>\n

We asked Scott Lucas, of the Clinton Institute at University College Dublin for his take<\/a> on some of the most important issues which may affect the talks.<\/p>\n

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\n Why is Israel continuing to attack Lebanon, despite the ceasefire? Expert Q&A<\/a>
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The ceasefire was always going to be fragile, even without Israel\u2019s intervention. There\u2019s clearly no goodwill or trust between the warring parties. Trump was less than two hours away from launching an attack on Iran\u2019s civilian infrastructure, including its power plants and its bridges \u2013 a bombardment so monumental that, as he put it: \u201cA whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tehran, for its part, was spitting defiance back at Washington, while calling on its people to form human chains across bridges and around power plants. <\/p>\n

Nicholas Wheeler, an international relations expert at the University of Birmingham who has been investigating the role of trust in diplomacy, believes there\u2019s a big difference between a mutual lack of trust between warring parties, and active distrust. In the former situation there is the potential for trust to develop. But in this case \u2013 as Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi noted recently, the US has now twice attacked Iran during ongoing negotiations, so \u2013 he says \u2013 there is \u201czero trust\u201d<\/a> in the US from Tehran\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s failure to bring the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to heel over Israel\u2019s continuing bombardment of Lebanon can only make matters worse.<\/p>\n

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\n Iran ceasefire: trust will be vital but it\u2019s in short supply right now<\/a>
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And so Iran has not opened the Strait of Hormuz, which was America\u2019s most important demand. We must wait to see what events, both in the Middle East and at the negotiations in Islamabad, will bring. The ceasefire had allowed both Tehran and Washington to declare a victory \u2013 which certainly seemed to be something in which the Trump administration placed a great deal of value. Both the US president and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, were trumpeting that line on Wednesday \u2013 Hegseth going so far as to say that the Iranian military was rendered completely ineffective and that the country\u2019s leadership \u201cbegged\u201d for a ceasefire.<\/p>\n

Iran also declared victory. And Bamo Nouri and Inderjeet Parmeer of City St George\u2019s, University of London, believe that Tehran has more reason to do so<\/a>. For one thing, the Islamic Republic has demonstrated resilience in the face of the might of US and Israeli firepower that aimed to destroy it. It has shown that it can use its control of Hormuz to thrown global energy markets into considerable disarray. And, under the terms of the ceasefire accepted by the US president, it is Iran\u2019s ten-point plan which will form the basis of negotiations.<\/p>\n

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\n Middle East conflict: this ceasefire may have made Iran stronger<\/a>
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Changing world order<\/h2>\n

The US president, meanwhile, has repeated his criticisms of America\u2019s Nato allies and, according to German news magazine Der Speigel, has issued what European diplomats are calling \u201can ultimatum\u201d for European member states to send military assistance to the Strait of Hormuz within days.<\/p>\n

Trump has been highly critical of Nato as a whole \u2013 and several of its member states specifically \u2013 because he believes they haven\u2019t done enough to help the US and Israel against Iran. On April 1, he raised the possibility of the US quitting Nato altogether. <\/p>\n

But he\u2019s unlikely to pull America out of its transatlantic alliance, writes Paul Whiteley<\/a>, who gives us three reasons why it\u2019s either not in the US president\u2019s interests or America\u2019s to turn his back on the alliance it has led for nearly eight decades.<\/p>\n

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\n Three reasons Donald Trump won\u2019t pull the US out of Nato<\/a>
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The emergence of Pakistan as a key interlocutor in all this will have come as something of a surprise to many. But the country has emerged, along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, as part of an important power bloc with influence in the Middle East, writes Natasha Lindstaedt<\/a>, professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex.<\/p>\n

Lindstaedt argues that these countries want an end to the dominant roles played by both Israel and Iran in the region. The war in Gaza has appalled the Islamic world and put paid to any hopes \u2013 certainly for the near future \u2013 of any normalisation of relations of the sort envisaged by Donald Trump\u2019s Abraham Accords. And all are also tired of the force for tensions and destabilisation that Iran has represented for nearly five decades.<\/p>\n

As Lindstaedt points out, they\u2019re a powerful bunch: Pakistan has nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia has loads of oil, Egypt controls access to the Suez Canal and Turkey is a member of Nato: \u201cTaken together, they represent the most politically and militarily influential Muslim-majority countries in the world,\u201d she concludes.<\/p>\n

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\n Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia emerge as a new regional power bloc amid Iran war<\/a>
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Meanwhile in Hungary<\/h2>\n

Hungarians head to the polls on Sunday for elections which will determine who is to be the country\u2019s next prime minister. The long-time incumbent, Viktor Orb\u00e1n, faces a stiff challenge from his former political ally, P\u00e9ter Magyar. Polls show he is seriously up against it.<\/p>\n

So the US president dispatched J.D. Vance to campaign alongside the prime minister in a bid to mobilise the country\u2019s far-right eurosceptics. Zsofia Bocskay, of Central European University, sets the scene<\/a> for what she believes could be a turning point for Hungarian politics.<\/p>\n

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\n Hungary election: how a new opponent has forced Viktor Orb\u00e1n into the first genuinely competitive race in 16 years<\/a>
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Birmingham University\u2019s Stefan Wolff<\/a>, meanwhile, believes that the fall in support for Orb\u00e1n despite all the help from Washington, reflects a Europe-wide disenchantment with Trump, especially in light of the US president\u2019s apparently warm relationship with Vladimir Putin, a leader many feel poses a very real threat to their security. <\/p>\n

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\n Read more:
\n Hungarian election exposes tensions at the heart of Donald Trump\u2019s plans to boost the far-right in Europe<\/a>
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Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter<\/a> from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we\u2019ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the text from The Conversation UK\u2019s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up here to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox. It\u2019s still not clear who will turn up in Islamabad tomorrow for the first round of talks aimed at turning the 14-day ceasefire in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}