Peace, Pause, or Prelude? What History Teaches Us About America’s New Agreement with Iran

When Fair Game sat down to record this episode in the days following the June 17 announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, the headlines were filled with words like breakthrough, cease-fire, and path to peace. Politicians were claiming victory. Diplomats were urging patience. Pundits were already declaring winners and losers.

Dr. Gary Kellner wasn’t ready to do any of that.

As both a historian and a student of international affairs, his instinct was simpler: stay tuned.

Not because he knew how this agreement would end, but because history has taught him that the first draft of any peace agreement is almost never the final version. Documents can be signed in a single afternoon. Trust is built over years. And the difference between ending a war and securing a lasting peace has often determined whether future generations inherit stability—or another conflict.

At the time we recorded this conversation, many of the questions surrounding the agreement had no answers. Today, several weeks later, some of those questions have become even more important. New developments have added fresh context, but the central issue remains exactly what it was on June 17.

History has seen moments like this before.

Again and again, nations have celebrated agreements that promised to change the future, only to discover that the hardest work was still ahead. Some became the foundation for lasting peace. Others merely postponed the next crisis.

Before we know whether this Memorandum of Understanding represents a diplomatic breakthrough or simply another pause in a much longer struggle, it’s worth asking the same question history always asks:

Has peace been secured? Or has violence merely been postponed?

In June, diplomats emerged from closed-door negotiations smiling for the cameras. Signatures were placed on carefully prepared documents, and political leaders declared that a crisis had been averted and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran was signed. The agreement was presented as a framework to end hostilities, reopen critical shipping lanes, and begin negotiations toward a broader settlement.

The announcement was greeted with cautious optimism in some quarters and immediate skepticism in others.

Those critics came from nearly every corner of the political landscape. Some argued the agreement offered too much while demanding too little. Others believed it represented the only realistic path away from another prolonged conflict in the Middle East. Even within President Donald Trump’s own MAGA coalition, many questioned whether the document protected American interests and those of our allies, especially the State of Israel which faces a unique level of threat from Iran. or merely postponed a larger confrontation.

The debate was understandable.

Unlike a formal treaty, a memorandum of understanding is not designed to answer every question. It establishes direction rather than destination. It identifies goals rather than guarantees outcomes. Its language is often deliberately flexible, allowing both sides to claim progress while postponing the most difficult disagreements until another day.

That flexibility, however, can also become its greatest weakness.

Western diplomats and security analysts quickly pointed to provisions they considered remarkably vague. The agreement spoke of creating a path toward lasting peace but left many of the most consequential questions unresolved. How would compliance be verified? What specific actions would constitute a violation? What penalties would exist for breaking the agreement? Who would enforce them? Even the ambitious sixty-day timetable for resolving disputes that had frustrated negotiators for decades struck many observers as aspirational rather than realistic

Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy summarized one of the central concerns. In his view, the agreement appeared structured primarily to bring Iran back to negotiations. Several of its immediate benefits were tangible, while many of Iran’s most significant obligations remained dependent upon future discussions. Whether one agrees with that assessment or not, it reflected a broader concern shared by many foreign-policy specialists: that undefined commitments often benefit the party most willing to interpret ambiguity in its own favor.

Three weeks after this agreement was announced and this episode recorded, events in the region have changed dramatically.

Military operations have resumed. Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has again become a flashpoint. The sixty-day negotiating window envisioned by the Memorandum of Understanding has been overtaken by renewed confrontation, even as diplomats continue searching for a path back to negotiations.  

Does that mean the agreement failed?

Perhaps.

Or perhaps it simply demonstrates something historians have observed for centuries: peace agreements are rarely tested when everyone agrees. They are tested the first time someone believes violating them offers a greater advantage than honoring them.

History’s Long Record of Temporary Peace

If there is one lesson history teaches with relentless consistency, it is this:

Ending a war is not the same thing as ending the reasons for war.

That distinction remains just as important today as it was nearly four centuries ago.

The guns may fall silent. The headlines may declare victory. Diplomats may shake hands beneath crystal chandeliers. Yet beneath the ceremony, the grievances, ambitions, fears, and competing visions that ignited the conflict often remain untouched.

History is filled with agreements that promised peace. Some delivered it. Many simply bought time.

The First World War was heralded as the “war to end all wars,” the Treaty of Versailles which England and France forced on Germany and its allies, has often been characterized as “the peace to end all peace,” a momentary pause before the Second World War engulfed the globe and added 60 million dead to the butcher’s bill of 20^th century wars.

On September 30, 1938, as Europe teetered on the edge of war, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepped off an airplane waving a signed agreement negotiated with Adolf Hitler. Standing before cheering crowds, he declared that it represented “peace in our time.”

Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler read the same document through entirely different lenses.

For Britain, Munich represented the end of a crisis. For Hitler, it represented the beginning of the next campaign. Less than six months later, he absorbed Czechoslovakia into the German Reich. Within 334 days, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Europe plunged into World War II.

The Munich Agreement has since become one of history’s enduring reminders that a signed document cannot satisfy the hunger of a leader whose ambitions extend beyond the promises he has made. Chamberlain believed he had secured peace. Hitler believed he had secured time.

Both men signed the same agreement. Only one understood how it would be used.

The lesson was not that diplomacy is futile. The lesson was that diplomacy cannot succeed if one side views negotiation as strategy rather than settlement.

History repeated the lesson after World War II.

The Korean Armistice Agreement, signed July 27, 1953, succeeded in ending active combat after three brutal years of fighting. Millions had died. Entire cities lay in ruins. Families had been divided overnight.

Yet technically, the Korean War never ended.

No formal peace treaty followed. Instead, an armistice froze the conflict where it stood, creating the Demilitarized Zone that still separates North and South Korea today. More than seventy years later, soldiers continue to face one another across the same narrow strip of land.

The shooting stopped.  The conflict is frozen.

The Middle East has experienced similar moments of extraordinary hope.

When the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn in 1993, the images seemed almost unimaginable. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands as President Bill Clinton stood smiling between them. Around the world, many believed a permanent peace had finally become possible.

The accords achieved remarkable breakthroughs. They established mutual recognition between longtime enemies and created a framework for future negotiations.

But they deliberately postponed the hardest questions.

Jerusalem. Final borders. Israeli settlements. The status of Palestinian refugees. Security guarantees.

Those issues were left for later negotiations. Later never came.

The Dayton Accords of 1995 offer another perspective. They successfully ended the Bosnian War and halted one of Europe’s bloodiest conflicts since World War II. In that sense, Dayton was an undeniable success.

Yet it also institutionalized many of the ethnic and political divisions that had fueled the war in the first place. Bosnia has remained at peace, but its government continues to struggle under a system that reflects compromise more than resolution.

Each of these agreements reminds us that peace exists in different forms when it exists at all

There is the peace that silences the sounds of the guns. And there is the peace that changes hearts, incentives, institutions, and history itself.

They are not the same.

Which brings us back to June 17.

When the United States and Iran announced their Memorandum of Understanding, the document immediately entered this long historical tradition. It promised an opportunity to move beyond military confrontation. It opened the door to further negotiations. It created hope that diplomacy might succeed where force had reached its limits.

But like so many agreements before it, it also left the most difficult questions waiting just beyond the signatures.

And history has a habit of asking whether those unanswered questions eventually become tomorrow’s crisis.

The Iran Agreement Through the Lens of History

If history has taught us these lessons, why do nations continue signing agreements that leave so many important questions unresolved?

The answer is surprisingly simple.

Because the alternative is often far worse.

Wars rarely end when every issue has been settled. They end when the cost of continuing exceeds the hope of winning. By the time negotiators sit across the table from one another, trust has usually been exhausted, emotions remain raw, and both sides are convinced they have legitimate grievances. Expecting complete agreement under those circumstances is unrealistic. Instead, diplomacy often begins with a document that creates space rather than certainty.

After World War II, former enemies rebuilt relationships that had once seemed impossible. The United States, Germany, and Japan transformed from bitter adversaries into close allies—not because one treaty magically erased decades of conflict, but because years of consistent actions gradually created confidence where none had existed before.

Trust was not negotiated. It was earned.

Yet beneath the surface, neither side had changed its intentions. Each interpreted the agreement as an opportunity to strengthen its own position while preparing for the next confrontation. In those cases, peace became less a destination than a strategic pause.

That distinction may be the single most important lesson history has to offer.

A document cannot create trust where trust does not exist. It can establish procedures. It can define expectations. It can open channels of communication.

But no collection of signatures can substitute for the willingness of both parties to keep their word when circumstances change.

Perhaps that is why historians often read peace agreements differently than politicians.

Politicians are understandably focused on today’s achievement. Historians are already asking what future generations will say about it. Will this agreement be remembered as the beginning of something enduring? Or will it become another chapter in the long history of treaties that succeeded in stopping violence but failed to settle the conflict itself?

Those questions cannot be answered on the day the ink dries. Only time—and the choices made after the signing ceremony—can answer them.

And that brings us back to the June 17 Memorandum of Understanding.

Three weeks after this agreement was announced…

History Has Already Begun Rendering Its Verdict

When this episode of Fair Game was recorded in mid-June, none of us knew what the next several weeks would bring.

Today, we know considerably more.

Military operations have resumed. Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains under enormous pressure. Diplomatic negotiations continue behind the scenes, but the optimism surrounding the original Memorandum of Understanding has largely wilted in the heat of summer.

On July 16, the United States launched another wave of strikes against Iranian military targets, while Iran continued missile and drone attacks throughout the region.

This does not necessarily mean diplomacy has failed. History reminds us that negotiations often continue even while fighting resumes. But it does illustrate how quickly an agreement moves from theory to reality.

The true test of any peace accord is never the day it is signed.

The true test begins the first day someone has a reason to break it.

Reflections

The longest cease-fire in modern history didn’t produce peace—it produced a border.

The Korean Armistice created the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), yet it has become one of the most heavily militarized places on Earth. Ironically, the “demilitarized” zone is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of troops, extensive fortifications, and minefields. It is a reminder that a cease-fire can freeze a conflict for generations without resolving it.

One of history’s most successful peace agreements succeeded because it accepted disagreement.

The Peace of Westphalia, signed on October 24, 1648, didn’t force Europe’s nations to think alike. Instead, it established rules that allowed them to live alongside one another despite their differences. Modern diplomacy—and the concept of national sovereignty—traces much of its foundation to that single agreement.

More wars end with exhaustion than with victory.

Historians have long observed that many conflicts don’t end because one side completely wins. They end because both sides conclude that the cost of continuing has become greater than the benefit of fighting. That is why peace agreements so often leave difficult issues unresolved: they reflect a decision to stop fighting, not necessarily a decision to stop disagreeing.