Iran-US Ceasefire: What Would a Sustainable Deal Actually Require? A Former Insider Explains
By TRH World Desk
New Delhi, April 8, 2026 — As delegations prepare to converge on Islamabad for Friday’s landmark peace talks, the immediate ceasefire between the United States and Iran raises a more complex question: what would a durable, long-term settlement between Washington and Tehran actually look like? Few voices carry more institutional insight into that question than Seyed Hossein Mousavian — former Iranian Ambassador to Germany, former Head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, and former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the international community.
In a new interview with Al Arabiya English, Mousavian has sketched a three-pillar framework he believes is the minimum architecture for sustainable peace.
His analysis is notable not just for its substance, but for its context. Mousavian, who served as Foreign Policy Advisor to the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council from 2005 to 2007, speaks from deep inside knowledge of how Tehran calculates its strategic interests. His views represent an informed, if contested, Iranian insider’s perspective on what any agreement must contain.
The Asymmetry of Stakes: Why Iran Fights Differently
Mousavian opens with a blunt framing of the strategic imbalance that has defined this conflict from the beginning. The two sides, he argues, are not playing the same game.
“Is this a case of both sides making maximalist demands? But Iran being maximalist, all they need to do is survive. The US needs to win,” he said.
This asymmetry — survival versus victory — goes a long way toward explaining Tehran’s willingness to absorb extraordinary punishment without capitulating. Since the war began, Iran’s president said 14 million people, including himself, have volunteered to fight — a figure that, even discounted for official inflation, points to the depth of existential sentiment Mousavian is describing.
On the Strait of Hormuz specifically, Mousavian places Iran’s blockade in strategic context. The strait, he argues, was open without incident for nearly five decades after the 1979 revolution — until Tehran concluded the conflict had crossed a threshold. “Iranian reaction about Hormuz happened after the second war,” he said. “Hormuz was open, no problem, for 47 years after revolution. Since Iranians, they really felt this is an existential war for them, then they have decided to go to expanding the conflict.”
This framing matters enormously for negotiators in Islamabad. It suggests the Strait of Hormuz is not, in Iranian strategic thinking, a permanent instrument of coercion — it is a lever activated under existential threat. Remove the existential threat credibly, the logic goes, and the lever becomes unnecessary.
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Pillar One: Mutual Recognition of Regional Interests
Mousavian’s first and most fundamental condition for a sustainable deal cuts against the conventional Western framing of the Iran problem.
“The most important issue between Iran and the US is neither nuclear nor human rights or democracy and so on — it’s about the regional issues,” he said. “Iran and the US, they should agree on one major principle: they both respect the other side’s regional interest, to end regional conflicts as a principal.”
This is a striking reordering of priorities. Washington has consistently led with the nuclear file — and, at various moments, with human rights and democratic governance — as the primary lens through which it engages Iran. Mousavian is arguing that this sequencing is wrong, and that any deal built on it will be structurally unstable. As Mousavian has articulated in his broader analysis, to end 47 years of hostility, the United States must commit to a framework built on mutual respect and non-interference in internal affairs, requiring respect for each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and regional interests to end ongoing confrontations.
In practice, this pillar would require the US to accept Iran as a legitimate regional actor with acknowledged spheres of influence — a concession that will face fierce resistance from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and significant factions within the US foreign policy establishment. It would equally require Tehran to accept American and Israeli security interests in the region as legitimate, rather than as targets for proxy contestation.
Pillar Two: A New Persian Gulf Security Architecture
Mousavian’s second condition is perhaps his most architecturally ambitious: a comprehensive, multilateral security and cooperation structure for the Persian Gulf — replacing the current patchwork of bilateral antagonisms with a formal regional framework.
“Iran and GCC — we have 47 years of difficult situations,” he said. “The best solution is to have a new security and cooperation structure in the Persian Gulf, where eight countries would cooperate maintaining the security and stability of the Persian Gulf.”
The structure he envisions is sweeping in scope: a nuclear weapon freeze or a WMD-free zone across the Persian Gulf; conventional arms control arrangements; and joint management of maritime security, including the Strait of Hormuz. This model — essentially a CSCE-style framework applied to the Gulf — would be unprecedented in the region’s history, but Mousavian has been advocating versions of it in academic and policy circles for years. His 2020 book, “A New Structure for Security, Peace and Cooperation in the Persian Gulf,” published by Rowman & Littlefield, outlines the detailed architecture of exactly such a framework.
The political obstacles are formidable. Saudi Arabia and the other GCC states have historically resisted any multilateral security framework that grants Iran formal parity — precisely the outcome such a structure would legitimize. But Mousavian’s implicit argument is that the alternative — 47 more years of proxy conflict and periodic direct confrontation — is now demonstrably worse.
Pillar Three: The Legal Reality of the Strait of Hormuz
Mousavian’s third condition is the most legally precise and arguably the most immediately relevant to the current ceasefire negotiations. He insists that any arrangement governing the Strait of Hormuz must begin from its actual legal status, which most Western commentary systematically ignores.
“Strait of Hormuz, legally internationally, is in the water territory of Iran and Oman,” he said flatly. “Although this is an international waterway, but legally internationally it is in the water territory of Iran and Oman. In 1974, Iran and Oman signed an agreement that any arrangement should be agreed between them.”
The significance of this point for the Islamabad negotiations cannot be overstated. Iran’s own 10-point framework includes its claim that the Strait of Hormuz would be subject to “regulated passage under the coordination of the Armed Forces of Iran,” thereby conferring upon Iran a unique economic and geopolitical standing. Washington and its allies have characterized this as an outrageous demand. Mousavian is suggesting it is, in fact, consistent with established international legal arrangements predating the Islamic Republic.
His preferred outcome places Hormuz governance not as a bilateral US-Iran issue, but within the broader multilateral Persian Gulf security framework he is proposing — removing it from the realm of coercive leverage and placing it within a rules-based regional structure.
Ambitious, But Not Impossible
Mousavian’s framework is not a wish list — it is a structurally coherent package that tracks Iran’s stated negotiating positions across multiple diplomatic cycles. Its logic is internally consistent: resolve regional power recognition first, build a multilateral security structure second, and govern the Strait within that structure third.
The challenge is that each pillar requires the United States to make concessions that previous administrations have refused, while each equally requires Iran to accept constraints on its regional behaviour that the Revolutionary Guard has historically sabotaged. Whether IRGC field commanders fully comply with even the current two-week ceasefire remains a critical open question — illustrating precisely the gap between what Iranian diplomats can agree to and what Iranian military structures will implement.
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