Pedro Abramovay & Julia Sakr-Tierney
From the moment it was announced, the ceasefire between the United States, Israel, and Iran has been marked by a different form of confrontation: peace on the precipice of war and war on the brink of resolution. The memorandum of understanding signed by the US and Iran in June was supposed to kick off 60 days of negotiations, culminating in a comprehensive peace. Instead, it has been followed by continued fighting, including US and Iranian strikes on the Strait of Hormuz and the seizure of Yemen’s Red Sea coast by the Houthis, which threatens to disrupt shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb. Tens of thousands of air strikes have failed to force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says it will lift the siege in exchange for an end to four decades of sanctions.
The US is doing the opposite: maximising already maximal sanctions. But Iran is no closer to capitulation, underscoring America’s inability to manage the aftermath of its own fury. Across the region, force is looking less like strength than instability. In Gaza, war is not a means of securing a political objective; it is the objective. With the Gaza Doctrine of disproportionate force and destruction, Israel is waging war not only on Hamas, but on the international legal order itself. Israel has also deployed that doctrine in southern Lebanon, where airstrikes have continued uninterrupted, despite two ceasefires and a peace agreement that makes a farce of Lebanese sovereignty. It is often argued that, under US President Donald Trump, an unmasked might-makes-right approach has overtaken US foreign policy, exemplified by the extraordinary rendition of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the war against Iran. The US has abandoned even the hypocritical tribute it once paid to international laws and institutions.
Whereas US President George W. Bush’s administration made its case for invading Iraq before the United Nations Security Council, Trump’s administration is acting on the basis of pure coercion, without any pretence of consultation (except in lockstep with Israel). But this amounts less to a rupture than an escalation. From extrajudicial executions by drones to indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay, the US spent a generation systematically abrogating the post-war “rules-based” international order it once authored, not merely narrowing the rules’ universal premises but making them essentially disposable. The path to the Trump Doctrine of global dominance was paved by the previous administration’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
Nonetheless, the open embrace of coercive militarism has made a difference, though not the one Trump expected. Far from bolstering US dominance, this approach has eroded it. When the distinction between war and peace dissolves into a ceasefire that is neither, and months of bombardment fail to deliver anything like victory, force looks less like strength and more like pointless destruction. Perpetual war makes any world order impossible. The application of raw power will trigger resistance; war crimes will lead to international opprobrium. While coercion will render sovereignty conditional, it cannot ensure continued domination. The question, then, is what comes next. Coercive militarism has provoked a period of profound instability. But its failure could usher in more balanced relations among states: a new multilateralism grounded in sovereignty and reinforced by regional and global mechanisms that promote universal rights, mutual restraint, and collective decision-making regarding shared resources, norms, and values. Such a multilateralism is undoubtedly aspirational. But every country, including the US, has an interest in building it.
The UN would not be irrelevant in this new system. But with the UN issuing only one resolution on the Iran war (criticizing Iranian retaliation but not the US-Israeli attacks that instigated it) diplomacy needs different defenders. Regional initiatives are particularly important, and their promise is already becoming apparent. Consider the US-Iran MoU. The negotiations were mediated by an unlikely coalition led by Pakistan and Qatar with support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. This represents a major shift from negotiations for the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal Iran concluded with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Germany, and the European Union. The difference is all the more notable, given that in 2010, the countries that would go on to sign the JCPOA swiftly dismissed a nuclear-fuel swap that Brazil and Turkey negotiated with Iran. As then-Brazilian Foreign Minister Amorim lamented, “traditional centers of power [would] not share gladly their privileged status.”
Another example is the informal consultative framework among Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey aimed at building a more stable regional security architecture shaped by shared norms, including a commitment to forsake the use of force. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have also formalized a mutual defence agreement, known as the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, that does not identify an adversary and leaves open the possibility of others joining. While its significance is being tested by the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, the broader trend is undeniable: the emergence of a more pluralistic regional order, in which countries take more responsibility for their own security, rather than allowing the US to impose its will.
Like the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait is now effectively closed, owing to the asymmetrical force unleashed in response to US escalation. What we are witnessing in the Middle East is not only extreme violence, but also extreme overreach. But the war that is catalysing the disintegration of a US-led multilateral order is also opening space for a more sustainable multilateralism rooted in rights, restraint, dignity, diplomacy, and respect for sovereignty.
Pedro Abramovay is Vice President of Programs at the Open Society Foundations.Julia Sakr-Tierney is Special Adviser at the Open Society Foundations.
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