Iran-US Deal: Why War Historian Amaresh Misra Calls Tehran the "Clear Winner"

After 110 days of open conflict between Iran, Israel and the United States, a peace framework is due to be signed in Switzerland on June 19 — and in a conversation with Nous Podcast host Bushra Khanam Fahad, war historian Amaresh Misra argued that the emerging deal reads less like a truce between equals and more like an admission of American retreat. Misra, who has spent years studying and writing about modern conflicts, walked through the text of the still-unpublished agreement, its Gulf backdrop, and what he called an unprecedented clause: a UN Security Council resolution in which the United States commits, in writing, never to attack Iran again.

A clause without precedent

The broad contours of the deal, Misra explained, are that the Strait of Hormuz will reopen — under Iranian oversight — and that the American naval blockade will be wound down, with vessels already coordinating passage through the strait, including, he noted, an Indian-linked ship. But the detail he kept returning to was the resolution's closing clause: once a final agreement is reached, it will be converted into a Security Council resolution stating that the US will not commit aggression against Iran. "Show me another Security Council resolution in the world where one country commits not to attack another," Misra said. "This is unprecedented. It has never happened before." For him, the clause alone reveals how urgently Washington wanted an exit from the Strait of Hormuz standoff.

The arrangement is fragile by design. Trump has said that if the 60-day verification window fails to resolve the nuclear question to his and Iran's satisfaction, war could resume. Iran's response, in Misra's telling, is even blunter: Tehran is prepared to strike within days if Israeli forces do not withdraw from southern Lebanon — a condition Iran insisted be written into the deal after Israel bombed Beirut again on June 14, prompting Trump himself to reportedly express anger before approving the agreement that same evening.

Why Trump blinked

Misra situated Trump's retreat in a failed original ambition: to seize Iran's Kharg Island, the country's main oil export terminal, much as Washington has effectively dominated Venezuela's oil sector after unseating its government. Trump himself, Misra noted, admitted as much days earlier, saying America "was not up for it" — domestic resistance to a ground campaign made the plan untenable. That domestic reluctance combined with pressure from Gulf states: Qatar, Misra said, had been separately negotiating with Iran to keep its gas facilities out of the crossfire in exchange for halting its own supply if war broke out, and a Qatari delegation had visited Tehran just a day before the deal was announced. Trump, sensing that Gulf states would strike their own bilateral understandings with Iran one by one, chose to move first.

Underlying all of this, Misra argued, was Israel's military exposure. By his account, over 1,200 Israeli soldiers have been wounded and more than 30 killed since fighting with Hezbollah resumed on March 2 — figures he says imply real casualties running into the hundreds once the ratio of wounded to dead is accounted for. Combined with an election year in which Netanyahu's party trails a rival Zionist opposition bloc in polling, and a New York Times report describing three-to-one Israeli public sentiment against continuing the war, Misra suggested Trump is betting that Israeli public opinion — worn down after nearly three years of war since October 7, 2023 — will eventually force Netanyahu's hand.

Israel outside the deal

Israel was not a direct party to the US-Iran agreement, and its ministers have made their displeasure public. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for the deal to be rejected outright; Israeli media, in Misra's characterization, has openly described it as Trump's biggest defeat to date. Netanyahu's government maintains that a US-Iran understanding does not bind Israeli conduct, and has continued strikes in Lebanon even as the broader deal was being finalized. Iran has stated on record that Washington bears responsibility for Israeli behavior, since Lebanon is explicitly named in the agreement the US itself will sign.

Misra's own reading is that the likeliest near-term scenario is not a full collapse of the framework but a partial one: talks between Washington and Tehran continue on schedule while a separate war erupts between Israel and Iran over Lebanon, with the United States choosing to watch from a distance rather than intervene directly — at least initially. "This is the primary law of war," he said. "War is primary, peace is secondary." Of the $25 billion reportedly owed to Iran under the deal's terms, Misra said roughly half — $12 billion — could be withheld if Israel does not withdraw from Lebanon, meaning the fate of the June 19 signing itself may hinge on developments in the days before it.

"Iran is the clear winner"

Asked whether Trump could ever publicly accept Western media's own verdict — that Iran is the clear winner of this war and Trump and America the clear losers — Misra reached for a historical comparison spanning three centuries. The last time a Muslim-led power decisively defeated a Western force in this region, he argued, was when Aurangzeb's forces routed the East India Company between 1685 and 1690, forcing the company to sue for terms and temporarily leave the Indian subcontinent. Everything since — the breakup of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires, colonization across Asia — has run the other way. "For the first time in over 300 years," Misra said, "a Muslim country has won."

He was careful to frame this as the closing of a first phase rather than a resolved war. Iran, he said, has forced a re-centering of the "axis of resistance" — invoking Gaza, Yemen and Hezbollah's cause alongside its own, in line with a recent statement calling for the unity of resistance fronts across Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Iran. Misra also pointed to quiet backing from Russia and China, describing Trump's own recent, oddly gracious thanks to both countries as tacit acknowledgment of their support for Tehran. He linked this to wider fronts of confrontation: Chinese encirclement in the South China Sea, and Vladimir Putin's statement, days earlier, that war between Russia and Europe is now inevitable as Ukraine's position deteriorates. "The world of simple explanations is over," Misra said. "There are still heroes and villains, but each has adopted many of the other's methods."

Pakistan's balancing act

Misra credited Pakistan with an unusually central mediating role in the negotiations — close simultaneously to China, the US, Iran and Russia, and visible in a rapid exchange of statements between Trump and Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. But he cautioned that this position is temporary rather than settled: Pakistan's leadership, he said, has quietly decided it will preserve its relationship with Washington but will not abandon China, and Trump is aware of this — which is why, in Misra's view, Trump has been careful not to antagonize Islamabad even as a broader US-China confrontation, potentially a trade war or worse, looms as inevitable. Pakistan will eventually be forced to choose, he said, and that choice will define the region's alignments for years.

India's miscalculation

Misra was most pointed on India's position, describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Israel shortly before the war as a serious miscalculation — one he attributed not to Modi alone but to the mindset running India's bureaucracy and strategic establishment. That same establishment, he noted, has also quietly preserved a baseline relationship with Iran, which he credited with sparing India an even worse outcome. But he argued New Delhi now sits, by its own choices, within the broader Israel-US-Europe camp opposing the Iran-Russia-China axis — a bloc position with consequences he believes India's public has yet to reckon with.

He pointed to specifics: Indian-linked vessels were among those targeted during the conflict, three Indian sailors were killed, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's conduct toward India afterward was, in his description, openly disrespectful — met with silence from Modi, who was seen attending cultural events in France rather than responding. Misra went further, describing speculation among BJP contacts that this same alignment carries an echo of British colonial strategy from the 18th century — using internal, sympathetic forces to fracture India from within — and suggested that even Hindu nationalist organizations may resist being used as an instrument for that outcome, citing ongoing resistance to a prospective US-India agricultural trade deal as one example of friction already visible. His conclusion was unsparing: "The 'Viksit Bharat 2047' slogan can never succeed unless India changes its geopolitical priorities."

What the next 60 days decide

Misra expects Trump to use the 60-day window — and likely extend it, as Iran itself anticipates — to buy time through Israel's October elections and the US midterms in November, while a separate Iran-Israel war over Lebanon plays out largely on its own terms within that same window. He was skeptical that Iran's own domestic uranium stockpile — some 11 tons, of which roughly 970 pounds concerns Washington — would become a major point of internal Iranian dissent, noting that Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, run jointly with Russia for civilian energy, was never part of the negotiation. Even if Washington and Tehran later drift back toward confrontation, he argued, the rupture already opened between the US and Israel — the first of its kind since Israel's founding in 1948 — cannot be fully undone. "The seeds Iran has sown will remain," he said, "and eventually there will be a rupture between Israel and America from which the whole world benefits."