Will the ceasefire hold?

by Kenneth R. Timmerman

 The Iranian regime seems not to have taken the measure of Donald Trump, even after over a month of war.  The Iranians appear to believe he is just another John Kerry or Barack Obama or Joe Biden, who can be intimidated into making every concession they can imagine.

Kerry showed us again on Thursday night, in an interview with his former staffer Jen Psaki on MSNBC, just how bad he was as Secretary of State.

While berating Trump for rushed negotiations with the Iranians before going to war, he reminded us that “we took four years” to get to the failed 2015 nuclear agreement, the JCPOA, as if the foot-dragging and unending concessions were a virtue.

The Iranians need to understand that J.D. Vance, who is leading the U.S. negotiating team, is their best shot at getting any sort of deal with the United States that leaves the regime intact.

As he was departing for Islamabad, Pakistan, on Friday, Vance told reporters he was hoping for a “positive outcome” to the talks.  But he also warned Iran not to try to play him.

My money is on the Iranian team ignoring that warning.

Since Iran’s leaders began negotiating with the International Atomic Energy Agency in the late 1990s, they have lied, cheated, and delayed.  And when they got caught cheating, they just smirked and cheated some more.

The United States has three non-negotiables going into these talks: Iran cannot enrich uranium, Iran must give up its stockpile of 1,000 lb of highly enriched uranium, and Iran must open the international waterways in the Strait of Hormuz without tolls and without impediment.

From the confused and contradictory statements made by different Iranian regime leaders over the past few days, it’s unclear if they are ready to concede any of these three points.

Since the ceasefire, they have continued to extort international shipping companies by requiring that they coordinate with the IRGC navy and take a new route through the Strait that passes behind Larak Island, close to the Iranian coastline.

This allows them to charge tolls for safe passage, on the phony pretext that ships are transiting Iranian territorial waters, not the international passage of the Strait.

President Trump made clear that this is a non-starter.  In a post on Truth Social on Thursday evening, he wrote: 

There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait — they better not be and, if they are, they better stop now! 

At best, ten to twelve ships have transited the Strait each day since the ceasefire, instead of the hundred or more that normally make the journey.  Most of them are small oil tankers, LNG ships, or bulk carriers.

It’s unclear if a supertanker loaded with two million barrels of oil or a SuperMax container ship could even negotiate the sharp turn required to go around Larak Island.

And now, Iranian negotiator Mohammad Baqr Ghalibaf is claiming that he won’t even come to the table unless the U.S. makes two brand new concessions: a ceasefire in Lebanon and the unfreezing of Iranian assets.

The Iranians need to understand that while these talks go on, the United States continues to send troops, ships, and material to the region.  As the president has said, it’s a good time for our pilots and war-fighters to rest up so they can deliver a knock-out blow in two weeks’ time (or less) if the talks fail.

We’re hearing that IRGC commanders are trying to instruct the regime’s negotiating team to refuse any discussion of their ballistic missile arsenal.  They seem already to have forgotten that they rained down twice the number of missiles and drones on the UAE alone than they did on Israel, and also targeted oil and gas infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.

You would think those countries would get a say in negotiating a total halt to the regime’s ballistic missile and drone programs, but as of now, they remain on the sidelines.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/will_the_ceasefire_hold.html