Middle East "peace": Calm before the storm?

An uneasy ceasefire has held between USA-Israel and Iran over a month. But the air in the Middle East smells of gunpowder. American fighter jets are not continuously bombing Iran; Iranian missiles are not pounding American bases. But there has been frantic diplomacy to bring two implacable enemies to the table. However, nothing has been resolved.

After a seven-week US air campaign codenamed Operation Epic Fury and Israel’s Roaring Lion, the US launched a naval blockade of Iranian ports from 13 April 2026. Tehran responded with the closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz cutting off 20 per cent of the world's oil supply. By early April, both sides pulled back from full-scale conflict. A two-week ceasefire was reached on 8 April 2026. Then the US extended the ceasefire indefinitely at Pakistan’s request, the White House said.

This unstable quietness is not a durable peace. It is a pause driven by the arithmetic of war: the arithmetic of time, ammunition, and positioning. On both sides of the Hormuz, the calculus is not how to end the war, but how to win the next round.

The hissing lull bears all the hallmarks of a ‘phony calm’ between storms. Both the USA and Iran have not solved the fundamental drivers of the conflict: Iran''s nuclear ambitions, the economic sanctions, the sovereignty of the Strait of Hormuz, and the regional animosity.

However, the unstable calm remains diplomatically useful for both sides. For Washington, a ceasefire, although an unstable one, allows the White House to claim progress ahead of the sensitive Trump-Xi meeting in May 2026. For Tehran, the pause offers a breathing space to recover from destructions. It needs time to assess damage, resetting commands and gear up for any surprise attack.

The driver of the current unstable ceasefire is not diplomacy, it is the depletion in USA’s arsenal. According to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the United States military burned through nearly half of its Patriot interceptor missile stockpile during the seven-week campaign against Iran (Geo News, 22 April 2026. More than half of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors were also used (Middle East Eyes, 22 April 2026), alongside more than 45 per cent of Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs).

The analysis further revealed that more than 20 percent of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs), over 30 percent of SM-3 interceptors, and at least 10 per cent of SM-6 missiles were expended as part of Operation Epic Fury.

CSIS revealed that rebuilding these stockpiles including Tomahawk cruise missiles and JASSMs to pre-operation levels could take between one and four years (The News, 22 April 2026). According to a CNN report, it could take up to six years. "Even before the Iran war, stockpiles were deemed insufficient for a peer competitor fight". "That shortfall is now even more acute."(The News, 22 April 2026).

From Tehran's perspective, the US blockade is not a defensive measure—it is an act of war. Iran' s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, accused the United States of "maximalism" and "shifting goalposts," claiming that the two sides were "inches away" from an agreement in Islamabad before Washington's torpedoed the talks.

US forces have disabled four Iranian-flagged tankers attempting to run through the blockade, firing at the tankers and using 20mm cannons to disable rudders (Al Arabia English, 8 May 2026). Three US Navy destroyers recently attempted to transit the Strait of Hormuz which came under fire from Iran.

Meanwhile, the peace process has become a theater of mutual recrimination. The Islamabad talks, mediated by Pakistan, collapsed despite being, according to Araghchi, "inches away" from signing a memorandum of understanding (Aljazeera, 8 May 2026). Washington demanded-not negotiated, that Iran indefinitely halts its nuclear program, hand over its enriched uranium stockpiles, dismantle its major enrichment facilities, end funding for Hamas and Hezbollah, and open the Strait of Hormuz. For Iran these terms are off the table, not for bargain.

Later Iran refused face to face talks with blockade in place, calling it a violation of the ceasefire (People’s Daily Online, date 24 April 2026). In person meeting in Islamabad ended without any result. It was followed by the US blockade of Iranian ports. The distrust is now calcified. The crucial point is: the United States and Israel are buying time to replenish its arsenals, reposition its fleet, and create favorable conditions for the next phase of blitzkrieg-‘Operation Sledge Hammer’. President Trump has another trouble: he cannot cope with Iran’s diplomacy on the chess board and confronting increasing pressure from Israel and its lobby in the USA to resume attacks against Iran.

While the world anxiously watches the ceasefire, the region itself is preparing to brace a more volatile situation. The conflict has already spilled beyond the US-Iran dyad, drawing in Gulf states-specially UAE, and raising the specter of a wider war. The Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and various Iraqi militias aligned with Tehran are hiding in ‘quietness’ before the next storm.

US blockade and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz have badly affected global energy supplies, driving up fuel prices and rattling international markets. A prolonged blockade—whether enforced by US warships or Iranian Navy—would inflict lasting damage on the global economy, potentially triggering recessions in major oil-importing nations.

And beyond the economics, there is the deeper geopolitical reality. It depleted its advanced missile stockpiles in a seven-week campaign against a second-tier military power. China and Russia are watching, taking careful note of Washington's ammunition vacuum and its disrupted just-in-time resupply chains.

Thus, the current calm is not a settlement. It is a pause—driven by America’s exhaustion, by diplomatic optics, and by the cold arithmetic of ammunition stocks.

The United States will not sign a deal that leaves Iran’s nuclear enrichment, missile programs and the regime intact. Iran will not surrender its strategic depth, nuclear program, its missile forces, or abandon its allies in the region. The fundamental drivers of this conflict have not been resolved—they have merely been deferred to strike a deal.

The ceasefire is not the end of the war. It is a long quiet anxious before the next storm. Beneath the surface, the wars continue—in the Strait of Hormuz, in the military industrial complex in the USA, on the diplomatic chessboard, and in the arsenals being quietly replenished on both sides.
And when the war arithmetic is complete, when the diplomatic calendar is cleared, the cyclone will resume its path. The only questions left are when, and on whose terms.

* Mohammad Abdur Razzak ([email protected]), a retired Commodore of Bangladesh Navy, is a geopolitical analyst.

* The views expressed here are the author's own