The war has not ended. It has merely paused, briefly, uneasily, under the sort of arrangement that looks like diplomacy from a distance and like strategic exhaustion from close range. Washington and Tehran are now considering a further two-week extension of the ceasefire, not because the core disputes have been resolved, but because they plainly have not. The original truce has bought time, nothing more. Behind the public language about dialogue and progress, the same hard questions remain intact: who controls Hormuz, what becomes of Iran’s nuclear programme, how far the United States is willing to press its military advantage, and whether any of the parties still trust the others enough to sign something durable. That is the first point to understand. The ceasefire is not peace. It is an interval between two forms of pressure. On one side, the United States is keeping its naval blockade in place, trying to squeeze Iranian exports and force Tehran into a broader concession. On the other hand, Iran is still holding the Strait of Hormuz shut to most traffic, reducing flows to a trickle and preserving its own leverage over the global energy system. Each side calls this a restraint. In reality, both are still engaged in economic warfare, merely without the full resumption of open bombardment. The result is a strange and dangerous equilibrium. Fighting has largely stopped between the United States and Iran since 8 April, yet the structure of confrontation remains fully in place. The Americans are reinforcing their military posture, reportedly with thousands of additional troops and the deployment of the USS George H.W. Bush strike group. Tehran, for its part, is signalling that any continuation of the blockade could itself constitute a breach of the ceasefire. The message is blunt enough: this truce survives only so long as neither side decides to test the other too aggressively.

Pakistan remains the essential intermediary in this theatre of managed mistrust. Islamabad hosted the first round of talks, watched JD Vance leave without a deal, and is still shuttling between the parties in search of a formula neither side truly likes but both may temporarily tolerate. That says much about the state of the negotiations. They are still alive, but alive in the way a patient is on support. The market, predictably, is trying to interpret this as good news. Oil has stabilised below its recent extremes, with Brent slipping below 95 dollars a barrel after approaching 120 at the height of panic. But that should not be mistaken for resolution. Prices are lower because traders are pricing time, not certainty. The physical reality remains grim: transit through Hormuz is still heavily impaired, double pressure is being applied from both sides, and the disruption to energy flows has not been unwound. That matters far beyond the Gulf. If the stand-off drags on, even without a formal return to war, the world economy remains exposed to a prolonged period of higher energy costs, tighter shipping conditions and continuing stress across supply chains. Oil and gas are only the first layer. Fertilisers sit right behind them. The longer the Strait remains constrained, the greater the risk that shortages and delays spill into agricultural inputs, food production and ultimately inflation. That is why the United Nations is already preparing a possible corridor for fertiliser shipments. It understands what too many politicians still pretend not to see: energy shocks do not remain neatly confined to the energy sector.

The diplomatic picture is made even murkier by the wider regional war. Israel may have paused attacks on Iran alongside the United States, but it continues its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. That means one front is formally frozen while another remains active, which is precisely the sort of inconsistency that ruins peace processes before they begin. Tehran can hardly be expected to treat the broader situation as stable while its principal regional ally remains under pressure. Washington, meanwhile, insists that the Lebanon track is separate. This is convenient, but not especially convincing. Then there is the nuclear issue, which remains the true core of the impasse. Trump is again oscillating between triumphalism and threat, declaring the war nearly won while insisting Iran must never be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon. Tehran, as ever, repeats that its programme is peaceful while hinting that levels and forms of enrichment may still be negotiable. That is diplomatic language for: we may bend, but we will not kneel. And hanging over all of this is a more embarrassing fact for Washington: nobody seems entirely sure where Iran’s uranium now is, or what exactly survived the strikes. Since IAEA inspectors still do not have access, much of the current posture rests less on verified control than on political assertion. That is not a comfortable basis for either war or peace.

So what comes next? Most likely, more talks, more manoeuvring, more threats dressed up as negotiating positions, and another effort to stretch this temporary ceasefire without settling the underlying conflict. The United States wants a large agreement, not a cosmetic one. Iran wants guarantees, respect for its sovereignty, and above all, proof that any future deal will not simply be torn up by the next turn in Washington’s politics. On that last point, one can see why trust is not abundant. For the world economy, the risk is therefore not only a dramatic collapse of the ceasefire, though that remains possible. The more subtle danger is a drawn-out half-war: no full peace, no full normalisation, no reliable reopening of Hormuz, no return to cheap energy, and a lingering inflationary pressure that central banks, importers and poorer economies will all be forced to absorb in different ways. That is often how modern crises metastasise. Not through one single explosion, but through a long period in which nothing is resolved and everything stays expensive. This is where we are now. Not at peace. Not quite at war. Suspended in that narrow corridor where diplomacy survives only because escalation has become too costly, and yet compromise still looks politically intolerable. A ceasefire can stop the shooting. It cannot, by itself, reopen the world.