Amal Saad@amalsaad_lb
Deterrence or Nothing: Iran's Logic of Total War or Total Cease-Fire
Iran’s rejection of a ceasefire is not simply a disagreement over timing or terms, but reflects a challenge to the entire framework through which negotiations with the US have been conducted for decades. The Islamic Republic is refusing to negotiate from a position in which its own capabilities are treated as the problem to be solved or contained, whether its nuclear program, missile arsenal, or its regional alliances and support for the Axis of Resistance, and is instead insisting that the issue at stake is US and Israeli aggression and the regional order that underpins it.
In other words, Tehran seeks to overturn the longstanding US framework that treats negotiations essentially as arms control over Iran and behavioural disciplining and to redefine the negotiating agenda as one concerning the existing regional security order and the conduct of the US and Israel. This amounts to a struggle over agenda-setting power, or the framing of the bargaining space itself. Tehran is refusing to operate within the negotiating parameters Washington has historically imposed and is instead seeking to fundamentally reshape them, moving the objective from ceasefire management to a definitive end to the war, while keeping its political identity as a revolutionary Islamic Republic (and not merely an islamic republic) intact.
Iran is also keen to ensure that the US and Israel's weaponization of diplomacy as a method of warfare becomes very costly for them. Twice now, in June 2025 and again in the current round, the US has used the cover of active diplomacy to strike Iran directly, reinforcing the perception that negotiations have functioned less as a path to conflict resolution than as an instrument of subterfuge. For Iranian officials, this only deepens the view that Iran’s long-practised strategic patience has been met not with good-faith negotiation but with strategic deception.
The Islamic Republic also wants to ensure that negotiations can no longer be used to reproduce the cycle of war itself. Iranian leaders have been explicit about this shift. Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf declared that Tehran is “absolutely not seeking a ceasefire,” arguing that Israel sustains its position through the recurring cycle of “war–negotiation–ceasefire and then war again,” while other senior officials have similarly indicated that Iran will only consider ending the war under conditions that ensure such a conflict cannot be easily resumed. As such, Tehran’s objective is not a temporary suspension of hostilities but a decisive settlement that changes the strategic conditions that have allowed war to recur.
In this context, the conventional assumption in conflict resolution theory that negotiations become possible or "ripe" once both sides reach a mutually hurting stalemate, where neither can win outright and the costs of continued war become intolerable, does not apply here. Iran’s strategic aim is to absorb whatever pain is necessary, for as long as required, to ensure that the outcome of “total war” translates into a deterrence-restoring outcome that yields what might be described as a "total cease-fire": a comprehensive settlement in which the costs of resuming the conflict become prohibitive.
Such an outcome would be qualitatively different from previous arrangements involving Iran and would necessarily extend beyond strictly bilateral understandings with Washington to encompass the broader regional deterrence system that Iran spearheads. In practice, this means that any durable settlement would have to account not only for Iran’s own security but also for the regional alliances that now operate under its security umbrella, including close allies such as Hizbullah who have become integral to its deterrence.
