The U.S.-Iran memorandum reopens Hormuz, unlocks Iran’s economy, and pivots America toward China. But Israel’s defiance and Lebanon’s powder keg threaten to derail it all. Join us on Telegram , Twitter , and VK . Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su Change underway For more than forty years, the confrontation between the United States and Iran has been one of the cornerstones of the global geopolitical order: proxy conflicts, unprecedented sanctions regimes, recurring energy crises, military operations, diplomatic pressure campaigns, and constant tension in the Strait of Hormuz have fueled one of the rivalries that have shaped the contemporary era. Precisely for this reason, the Islamabad Memorandum—signed digitally in mid-June 2026 and formalized by Donald Trump’s signature on the sidelines of the G7, following a meeting originally scheduled for June 19 in Geneva but which was canceled—could be worth far more than a mere bilateral agreement, effectively marking the end of an entire historical era.
It is best to start with the facts. The text, about two pages long and divided into fourteen points, proclaims the immediate and definitive cessation of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon , and commits the parties to reaching a final agreement within a maximum of sixty days, with ratification to be enshrined in a binding resolution of the United Nations Security Council. On the economic front, it provides for the lifting of the naval blockade within thirty days, U.S. Treasury exemptions on the export of Iranian crude oil and petroleum products, the unfreezing of frozen assets—Tehran cites $24 billion, half of which is to be released quickly—and a $300 billion development package arranged by Washington and its allies. It is within this framework that the systemic consequences must be understood.
The first likely outcome is Iran’s return to major international economic circuits—a goal sought for many years, given that Tehran has been subject to one of the most extensive sanctions regimes in modern history, designed to curtail its energy export capacity and access to the global financial system. The easing of restrictions would pave the way for an increase in oil exports, the return of foreign capital, the reopening of international banking channels, the recovery of frozen reserves, and the modernization of long-underfunded energy and industrial infrastructure.
The structural reality is well known: Iran possesses some of the largest hydrocarbon reserves on the planet. Its full return to global markets would not be a marginal event, but rather a factor capable of influencing price determination and the balance of global energy supply. However, a note of analytical caution is warranted, as the document makes exemptions contingent on maintaining the status quo and the gradual implementation of commitments, while some of the economic provisions remain a point of contention between the two capitals. Normalization, in other words, is a conditional process, not an automatic one. New measure regarding the Strait of Hormuz The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most critical arteries of the global economy: a considerable share of the oil and gas traded globally passes through it every day. For decades, the threat of its closure has acted as a structural multiplier of instability in the markets, translating every regional tension into a risk premium on energy prices. The memorandum addresses precisely this critical point, authorizing the reopening of the Strait and the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade.
Strengthening the agreement would lower the risk of military incidents, enhance the safety of commercial shipping, mitigate speculative pressure on prices, and encourage investments in logistics. Here, however, lies one of the agreement’s most telling ambiguities. Free passage is guaranteed for only sixty days; after that period, Tehran aims to charge for the security, insurance, and environmental protection “services” provided in cooperation with Oman, while Washington expects a toll-free reopening “in the long term.” Behind this technical phrasing lies a recognition of strategic value: Iranian (and Omani) sovereignty over the Strait. Stability in Hormuz would therefore not be merely a bilateral achievement, but a public good for the entire global economic system —at the cost, however, of redefining who governs and sets the rates for that transit.
Much of the regional balance of power in recent decades has been built on the rivalry between Washington and Tehran, an axis around which alliances, militias, and crisis scenarios have polarized. A de-escalation of that rivalry would trigger a chain reaction of reconfigurations: the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran could strengthen, the Emirates could accelerate their regional economic plans, Iraq and Syria could enjoy a degree of stability previously denied them, while the likelihood of direct regional conflicts would decrease.
The underlying shift would be a transition from a logic of permanent war to one of economic competition. This is a paradigm shift rather than a change in individual issues, through which the region would gradually cease to be perceived as an arena of military containment and redefine itself as a space for infrastructural and commercial integration. The conditional remains necessary, since each of these trajectories depends on the agreement holding up in the sixty days following its signing, but the idea makes sense and could truly signify a drastic and structural change.
And this is perhaps the least debated and most overlooked aspect. Entire political, media, and ideological apparatuses have built their identities on the assumption that the United States and Iran are destined for permanent hostility. A solid agreement would challenge those narrative constructs, forcing a reconsideration of the frameworks of the “Middle Eastern Cold War,” the usual divisions between regional blocs, and many of the interpretive frameworks employed by both the mainstream media and a segment of the alternative media.
The history of international relations teaches us that when reality changes, narratives are often the last to adapt—and the first to suffer. Trump’s rhetoric —which has rebranded the text as “my deal” and “a wall against nuclear weapons,” setting it against the Obama-era agreement—is itself an attempt to rewrite the narrative framework rather than the substantive content of the nuclear dossier, which is still entirely up for negotiation.
This is the most sensitive point of the entire process, and potentially its main point of contention. For years, regional strategy has been based on containing Iran, and Israel has been its forward pivot. Washington’s recognition of Tehran as a stable negotiating partner is already producing significant strategic divergences, and Israel does not approve—so much so that the Israeli press has already referred to it in numerous articles as a “terrible deal.” Netanyahu and Defense Minister Katz have warned that the pact is not binding on the Jewish state and that Israeli forces will remain indefinitely in the security zones in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, having already resumed blanket attacks in the south of the country.
The real flashpoint lies on Lebanese soil, in fact. Although Iran considers the cessation of hostilities along the Blue Line an integral part of the agreement, that theater remains a powder keg with its own dynamics. If the real risk was that, over the next sixty days, a unilateral action would trigger a chain reaction capable of derailing the entire agreement, then on June 19, precisely that happened, and the signing in Geneva was called off. Managing the Israeli variable will, in all likelihood, be the decisive factor between success and failure across the entire negotiation front. Israel, after all, was the first to attack Iran, and also the first country to withdraw from the scene following the damage it sustained. But it is still there and continues to sow destruction everywhere. Toward other objectives If we view all this from a broader perspective, the United States may wish to reduce its operational burden in the Middle East in order to redirect resources and attention toward the region it considers truly decisive: the Indo-Pacific, the South China Sea, Taiwan, and the economic and technological competition with China. In the Middle East, they emerge as “losers” in the media, but they are not losers in reality, because they achieved what they wanted and managed to secure a deal that is favorable to them as well.
The memorandum is not the end goal, but a tool. It is a way to free up military, financial, and diplomatic capital from a grueling theater of operations and reposition it where the hegemonic contest of the century is being fought. The clause obligating Washington to withdraw its forces from the vicinity of Iran within thirty days of the signing of the final agreement must also be interpreted in this context of strategic reallocation. The American leadership, after all, is always capable of emerging with its head held high in any situation, resorting to communicative and political acrobatics to ensure it always stands on the winner’s podium. But that matters little now. In a war that ends with a peace agreement, it is the people who win.
Let us also consider that the normalization of relations with Iran would have significant repercussions on continental trade corridors—a factor that is extremely positive for the dollar itself. Iran’s geographical location as a crossroads between the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India, Russia, and Europe—free from sanctions and blockades—would transform Iran into one of the largest and most important logistics hubs of the 21st century, reactivating routes such as the North-South International Transport Corridor and reconnecting segments previously hampered by sanctions. In other words, a jackpot for everyone. It is no coincidence that China, Russia, India, and numerous emerging countries are watching the negotiations with the utmost attention; for each of them, a connected Iran alters energy, infrastructure, and security calculations. It is here that the bilateral agreement takes on a multipolar significance, intertwining with the slow reconfiguration of a Euro-Asian architecture that serves as an alternative to the usual maritime axes. The new international phase In historical terms, this would be a transformation of the utmost importance. Perhaps the first geographically significant one in this emerging multipolar world. Replacing the paradigm of armed deterrence with that of the negotiated resolution of disputes would, to all intents and purposes, be an exercise in a new form of international relations.
The most serious analytical error, however, would be to interpret the Islamabad Memorandum as a mere bilateral agreement between the United States and Iran. Should it solidify into a stable agreement, its consequences would extend far beyond the Middle East, affecting global energy flows, regional balances, the very role of sanctions as a foreign policy tool, U.S. military priorities, Iran’s geopolitical weight, and the Euro-Asian trade architecture.
This is also what a multipolar world means: it means that everything you do has an effect on the entire world.
Whether the memorandum will hold up and lead to a final agreement is still uncertain. What we do know, however, is that the world will be profoundly different from the one we have known over the past forty years.