Why the Cease-Fire With Iran Keeps Crumbling

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**Rachel Abrams** (0:29)
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.
On Monday, the US and Iran exchanged attacks and increasingly fiery rhetoric for the third day in a row, leaving both sides on the verge of a full-blown return to the war. Today, my colleague, David Sanger, explains what brought us to this point and what this new phase tells us about how difficult it will be for the war to end. It's Tuesday, July 14th. David Sanger, welcome back to The Daily.

**David Sanger** (1:14)
Good to be with you, Rachel.

**Rachel Abrams** (1:15)
David, the last time we had you on the show, Iran and the United States had just reached what felt like at the time to be quite a shaky ceasefire. We knew that the agreement had been pretty rushed, and since then, it feels like everything has basically just fallen apart. The US just announced a blockade of Iranian ports. It's going into effect Tuesday afternoon.
So I guess my first question is, is the agreement that we last talked to you about even still in effect?

**David Sanger** (1:43)
There's not much of it left.
We all suspected, Rachel, that this agreement had the seeds of its own destruction built in. But I think even the most cynical about how the Iranians and the Americans would interpret it differently, did not expect it to fall apart quite as quickly as it did. And I think if you're trying to figure out why that's happened, it basically lies in the fact that it was so hastily pieced together. It was so hastily announced when Vice President Vance was sent over to sign a document he wouldn't even shake hands with the Iranians and they wouldn't shake hands with him. It was bound to fail.

**Rachel Abrams** (2:29)
Right, you had basically told us, I think, that this agreement essentially kicked the can down the road on a lot of really big important issues between the United States and Iran that both sides needed to hash out.

**David Sanger** (2:39)
That's right, Rachel. And we were all pretty focused at the time on what needed to be accomplished in this 60-day-long negotiation. The first issue, of course, was the nuclear program on which the 14-point statement only said that Iran would blend down its nuclear material, essentially dilute it, so that it couldn't be used for weapons. But it left unclear who was going to ultimately have possession of that nuclear material, or whether there would be negotiations to limit Iran's missile program, or whether there would be any language in a permanent agreement that would benefit the protesters who have taken to the streets.
But while we were looking at all of that, Rachel, the fact of the matter is we never even got to that negotiation. There were some brief discussions, but what overwhelmed the entire thing was poor wording on the question of what it even meant to open the Strait of Hormuz.

**Rachel Abrams** (3:42)
I want to talk about that poor wording for a second. What specifically did both sides agree to vis-a-vis the Strait?

**David Sanger** (3:48)
Well, Rachel, the controversy really focuses on the meaning of the fifth paragraph of this very short agreement.

**Rachel Abrams** (3:57)
Do you want to read us?

**David Sanger** (3:58)
Yeah, I'll just read it to you. It says, Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. It's a single sentence. Seems pretty clear, but there are some wiggle words in it.
It's best efforts for safe passage. And the interpretation that the American side was pushing was that this commits the Iranians to opening up the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which has three different channels, one near Iran, one in the middle of the Strait, one closer to Oman, and the traffic would essentially be restored to what it was before the war started on February 28th.
But the fact of the matter is, Rachel, that never happened. The Iranians immediately said, yes, we'll reopen the Strait, but we're only going to open up one channel. It's the channel closest to Iran, the one that takes you through Iranian territorial waters.