When President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran shortly before his own deadline for Tehran to comply with U.S. demands or be wiped off the Earth, he didn’t simply say hostilities had halted.

He said the United States had favorably received a 10-point proposal from Iran and billed the two weeks not as a temporary end to fighting, but a chance to simply formalize a deal the countries had been negotiating since before the U.S. and Israel attacked at the end of February.

“Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran,” Trump said in a Truth Social post after the ceasefire was struck.

That was April 7.

Since then, even after meeting in person for talks, the two sides seem to have agreed on very little. A delegation led by Vice President JD Vance traveled to Islamabad to meet with top Iranian officials for daylong talks and came away no closer to a deal, he said.

That 10-point plan — the one Trump called “a workable basis on which to negotiate” — was dismissed by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt as “fundamentally unserious, unacceptable and completely discarded.” She said the president literally threw it in the garbage.

More recently, however, Trump said the war is “very close to being over,” going so far as to call the Iranian negotiators “pretty reasonable.”

Now, after thousands of deaths, more than a month of regional instability and a hit to the global economy, it’s unclear how much of what’s on the table even differs from the lead-up to the war.

Here’s a closer look at some of the points of contention that could determine whether the ceasefire holds:

The Strait of Hormuz

Trump called the ceasefire contingent on Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow trade route at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about 20% of the global oil and gas supply passes. He even floated the strange possibility of Washington and Tehran jointly collecting tolls on tankers that use the lane.

But the U.S. military began a blockade of Iranian ports after peace talks in Pakistan broke down. Hundreds of ships trying to pass through remain stranded.

Iranian officials are demanding that ships each pay a toll of up to $2 million to pass safely through the strait, which could generate up to $100 billion a year. The revenue would benefit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which operates Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal.

Before the blockade, Iran said it would only reopen the strait once a series of conditions were met, including some that may be beyond Trump’s control, such as whether Israel withdraws from Lebanon.

Control of the strait is arguably Iran’s greatest strategic advantage. After it was attacked, Iran effectively closed the tightly curved passage by striking ships that tried to sail past, sending the price of oil and other goods skyrocketing. Trump’s threat to destroy an entire civilization was meant to force Tehran to allow tankers to once again pass through, even though he has insisted over the course of the conflict that he would leave other nations to cope with the closure since the U.S. sources relatively little energy from that route.

Nuclear enrichment

The U.S. has demanded Iran completely stop its uranium enrichment, and of the shifting reasons the Trump administration has provided for why it went to war alongside Israel, this one eventually became the most consistent. During the recent negotiations, Iran rejected the U.S. proposal to suspend all nuclear activity for 20 years.

Before the war, Iran was working toward enriching its nuclear fuel to the point that it could be considered weapons-grade, well beyond the level agreed upon by several countries in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement during his first term in 2018, calling it a bad deal. Tehran responded by ramping up enrichment despite international pressure to stop.

In its ceasefire proposal, Iran emphasized its right to enrichment. Without a return to something like the 2015 arrangement, this could be the single biggest sticking point.

Sanctions

Iran has been burdened with its own economic crisis even before the war started. Iran’s national currency, the rial, fell to a record low in December, leading shopkeepers in Tehran to take to the streets in protest. U.S. sanctions on Iran, some of which have existed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, have further strained an already struggling economy. Iran has called on the U.S. to lift primary and secondary sanctions, which not only directly affected Iran, but also prevent third parties from conducting trade with the country.

The most crippling U.S. sanctions are on Iranian oil.

“We are, and will be, talking Tariff and Sanctions relief with Iran,” Trump said before peace talks in Pakistan began.

Lebanon

Iran has demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region, an unlikely scenario considering the positive relationship between the U.S. and Gulf Arab countries that host its military bases. More immediately pressing is the issue of Lebanon.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has emerged as a the primary diplomatic intermediary in the war, said all parties agreed to “an immediate ceasefire everywhere including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.” Israel and the U.S disagreed.

Lebanon was dragged into the war after the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah mounted an attack against Israel in retaliation for killing Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Not even 24 hours after the ceasefire was announced, Israel struck central Beirut in what Israel called the largest coordinated military strike in the war, with more than 100 Hezbollah targets hit within 10 minutes in Beirut, southern Lebanon and other areas.

Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon could jeopardize the fragile agreement, with Iran threatening to pull back. Following the attack, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, “The U.S. must choose — ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both. The world sees the massacres in Lebanon,” adding that “the ball is in the U.S. court.”

Amid the backlash, Trump said he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale back the assault on Lebanon. Soon after, Netanyahu said he instructed the Israeli Cabinet to begin direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible.

Lebanese and Israeli officials also met for rare direct talks hosted at the U.S. State Department – the first high-level engagement between the two countries since 1993. At the start of the talks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio downplayed expectations, saying “this is a process, not an event.”

Still, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, left the talks optimistically, saying that Lebanon “made it very clear that they will no longer be occupied by Hezbollah.”

Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh told reporters after the meeting that she underscored the need to enforce the ceasefire as well as the 2024 truce between Israel and Hezbollah. “I emphasized the integrity of our territory and the full sovereignty of the state over all Lebanese land,” she said.

What’s next?

The first round of direct talks between the U.S. and Iran in Islamabad collapsed, with Vance saying Iran had rejected the “final and best offer” from the U.S. Vance said the talks stalled because Trump was holding out for a “grand bargain” instead of a “small deal.”

But American and Iranian officials will likely meet again next week for the second round of talks since the war began, mostly likely again in Pakistan, two senior Pakistani officials told MS NOW, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the discussions.

Eager to be seen as peacemaker, Sharif has volunteered to continue facilitating.

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From MS Now.