The ceasefire survives but trembles because of Hormuz and Netanyahu

Special envoy to Dubai (United Arab Emirates)The navy of the ayatollah regime on Thursday disseminated a map from another era: on paper, and in black and white. According to the Iranian agency ISNA, the document shows the approximate location of the naval mines that the Revolutionary Guard has installed in the precious waters of the Strait of Hormuz during the five weeks of war. The paper recommends alternative routes for oil tankers and other commercial vessels to safely cross the strait, avoiding the bombs.

The landscape shown by other maps – modern ones, which track the state of global maritime traffic in real-time – continued to be one of paralysis: twenty-four hours after the agreement for a truce in Iran that was supposed to lead to the reopening of Hormuz, traffic in the strait was minimal and the vast majority of vessels continued to wait on one side or the other. Tehran, which on Wednesday was already threatening to re-seal the strait in response to the brutal Israeli siege against Lebanon, continues to be the one controlling Hormuz. To impose its control, it has resorted to a practice of piracy: charging tolls to ships wishing to cross it.

The alternative is worse: any ship that crosses Hormuz without permission "will be destroyed", warned the ayatollahs, who feel like winners of the war. The threat has not pleased Washington.

The figures are revealing. Only one oil tanker and five bulk cargo ships have crossed Hormuz in the last 24 hours. Before February 28, the night the war began,

about 140 ships crossed daily through the strait, vital for the entire global economy to function.The main maritime analysis companies warn that, in the best of cases, it will take time to recover normal navigation conditions. The company Kpler forecasts that between 10 and 15 ships will pass on average these days, due to "current security conditions and pressures from Tehran." The majority of vessels are opting for a stance: wait and see. Other analyses, the economic ones, agree in stating that the economic impact of the war, which has choked the world, will last for months or years. The IMF sounded pessimistic on Thursday: "Even our most optimistic scenario implies a reduction in growth," said the president, the Bulgarian Kristalina Georgieva.

The fragile ceasefire agreement survives, but it trembles. It trembles a lot. Although Washington and Tehran seem to be presenting themselves in Islamabad on Saturday to face each other and negotiate the future of the war, on Thursday the threats of re-bombing each other continued.

"We have our finger on the trigger," said Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on X, referring to Tel Aviv's siege of Beirut and other Lebanese towns. "The Zionist regime's new attack on Lebanon is a flagrant violation of the initial truce agreement. It is a dangerous sign of deception and lack of adherence to potential agreements. The continuation of these actions will make negotiation insignificant. We have our finger on the trigger. Iran will never leave Lebanese brothers and sisters alone," the leader assured.

"We will start a bigger, better, and stronger battle than ever before," Trump threatened in the early morning. The president has decided to maintain the deployment of soldiers in the Middle East until the "real agreement" for a ceasefire with Tehran "is fully complied with." He will attack with more virulence if Tehran does not respect the reopening of Hormuz. In the same message on Truth Social – the official platform for war threats – the Republican added a disturbing note: US troops are "preparing and resting" awaiting "their next conquest." In Cuba and Greenland, the note must be read with some vertigo.

The price of oil rose again due to the tremors of the truce. The stock markets also suffered. Benjamin Netanyahu, very interested in the war continuing, insisted that his army will continue to attack Hezbollah "as long as necessary." On Thursday afternoon, he again demanded the evacuation of Beirut's suburbs in the face of the threat of more bombs arriving.

The prime minister considers that his crusade against the Lebanese is not part of the pact that his friend Trump negotiated with Tehran, whom he convinced to set the Middle East on fire in a meeting at the White House, but an announcement has surprised the world in the middle of the afternoon. Netanyahu has assured that he will initiate talks with Lebanon to achieve the disarmament of Hezbollah, but also to "establish peaceful relations" between Israel and Lebanon. The role of the United States, which sees how Israel's front in Lebanon could blow up the ceasefire with Iran, seems to have been key in Netanyahu's announcement: according to the American media Axios, the first meeting between Lebanon and Israel will be at the United States Department of State.

The petromonarchies, stunned

The other focus of instability during the first hours of the truce were Tehran's attacks against the Gulf countries. Despite the pact with Trump, the ayatollahs repeated on Wednesday what they have been doing every day since February 28: sending missiles and drones against the cities on the other side of the sea. On Thursday, the picture changed. The United Arab Emirates, the most attacked country in the region by Iranian bombs, emphasized on social media that, for the first time in five weeks, their impeccable air defenses had not had to be activated to intercept any enemy missile or drone. None of the petromonarchies wanted this war, and they made it known to the White House, until the last moment.

But the bewilderment at the coming horizon has not disappeared. Among the Arab kingdoms of the Persian Gulf, two questions abound. The first: why is the strait not completely open if it was the condition for the truce? The second, more worrying: does Trump's pact mean that Iran will act as if the passage, through which 25% of the world's oil and 20% of liquefied gas pass, were theirs?

The petromonarchies fear that Trump is now only prioritizing escaping a war that has never gone as calculated from Washington. In this scenario, the interests of the American allies in the region, punished from the first day by Tehran, do not seem to have entered into the calculations of the Republican. An Iranian control of Hormuz leaves the Gulf capitals under the constant threat of disruptions and economic blackmail by the ayatollahs.

There is a third question that also worries the region and should sound familiar to Europeans: Have the United States ceased to be a reliable partner? Their security depends, in large part, on Washington's friends. Trump has disrupted the codes of friendship and traditional alliances. Some kingdoms have begun to seek alternatives. The Middle East, like the world, is being remodeled.