SummaryThe failure to implement the first clause of the memorandum, according to the Iranian point of view, did not prevent Iran from remaining silent on the continued Israeli violations and the US failure to restrain its Israeli ally. Tehran's priority was and remains controlling the global trade chokepoint, and therefore the focus shifted from the first clause of the memorandum to its fifth clause.

Iran and the United States are rapidly heading toward an open war with no return. For more than a week, the two countries have been exchanging strikes. Specifically, the US is striking from positions of its fleet around Iran and bases deployed in Europe, Turkey, and Central Asia, hitting selected targets in Iran. Iran responds by intensifying its aggression against the Gulf Arab states in particular, something it started from the first day of the war last February, forgetting Israel, the 'historical enemy,' which was behind the Khomeinist Iranian theorizing for half a century about the need to build the axis of resistance and its offshoots.

Israel has completely escaped Iranian attacks during the current round of war, even at the level of media discourse, and it appears to be the only party benefiting from the memorandum of understanding.

The Iranian leadership dealt with the memorandum of understanding based on its own interpretation of its clauses. It considered that the fifth clause of this memorandum gives it the right to control the Strait of Hormuz, which differs from the US administration's interpretation, and thus the war was renewed.

Iran did not make the first clause of the agreement with America a point of explosion, although it tried to suggest to its proxies in Lebanon and the region that this clause imposes a ceasefire in Lebanon, and in other digressive interpretations, forces Israel to withdraw from that country.

The failure to implement the first clause of the memorandum, according to the Iranian point of view, did not prevent Iran from remaining silent on the continued Israeli violations and the US failure to restrain its Israeli ally. Tehran's priority was and remains controlling the global trade strait, and therefore the focus shifted from the first clause of the memorandum to its fifth clause.

Another reason behind this offensive option is Iran's monitoring of US policy moves in recent weeks and its displeasure with them. Tehran has followed the US support for Lebanese authorities in their endeavor to separate Lebanon from Iranian interests, and its work to achieve Israeli withdrawal and impose state sovereignty over all Lebanese territory.

The mullahs' regime anxiously watched Iraq moving toward abolishing militias and affirming state authority against the militia and corruption system. It noted that its Iraqi demonstration at the funeral of Ali Khamenei did not change the course of events.

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Iran monitored these transformations carefully and cautiously. On the eve of the NATO summit in Turkey days ago, it had to endure the scene of another meeting between President Donald Trump and the Syrian president, which destroyed the Iranian bridge to the Mediterranean.

The meeting between Trump and President Ahmad al-Shara was too much for Iran's leaders to bear, who are afflicted by the curse of being expelled from West Asia.

Iran's seizure of the Strait of Hormuz came as a response to all the above, and an attempt to impose an Iranian interpretation of the fifth clause of the memorandum of understanding in an effort to pressure Trump into retreating within a new negotiation that the memorandum itself requires, and which could go beyond the text's requirements to include the first clause and restore the regime's dominance in its surroundings and over the negotiation process in general.

Iran anxiously watched Turkey's roles and Trump's interest in the Turkish president, and did not hide its anger at the transformations in Iraq and Lebanon. In a position published by the Revolutionary Guards news agency (Tasnim) regarding the policies of the Iraqi and Lebanese presidents, it saw that 'while Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi records his bias toward Washington, and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun undergoes the test of American pressure, the most important equation remains the resilience of Hezbollah and the resistance, and the Iraqi factions' refusal to disarm, which confirms that the region is not a marketplace, and that the axis of resistance is still able to impose its equations despite all bets.'

This analysis and its conclusions, and other similar ones, prevailed in Iranian political literature, and included Turkey. In conclusion, Tehran is returning to square one, the square of tension and using proxies, which is what Mojtaba Khamenei said in his latest message against the 'Great Satan.'

Tehran threatens a war that includes the Red Sea, and the Houthis were reactivated again during the past week. As rumored, the other militias in Lebanon and Iraq could be thrown back into a battle with a predetermined outcome: sabotage against the state and Arab neighbors in Iraq, and something similar in Lebanon culminating in the expansion of Israeli occupation.

However, Iran is not only risking ending prospects for peace projects in the region, but it is also eliminating potential and available mediators. Iranian wars make Pakistani mediation embarrassing in the face of escalating Persian aggression against the Gulf states and in Yemen. Likewise, it realistically eliminates Qatari and Omani mediation. Which country would continue its mediator role while being subjected to continuous aggression?

Add to that that the existing mediations were established and sponsored from the beginning by a group of the region's most prominent countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan. So what mediations will we talk about if these countries withdraw their sponsorship?

The prospects for a settlement do not seem available in this climate, and perhaps for the reasons that controlled the production of this very climate, the war broke out and continues until further notice.