IT took five years of negotiations to end the Vietnam War. The Paris Accords were signed in January 1973 by a beleaguered presidential administration after five years of negotiations that had begun in 1968. The most important breakthroughs along the way occurred in the secret talks held between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho who represented the Viet Cong. There were 68 rounds of these secret talks that Kissinger describes in his memoirs, and the one thing to take away from it is how meticulous, exacting and diabolically complicated these kinds of talks can be.
Of course, there are key differences between then and now. That war dragged on for years, had close to a million combatants (all told) from both sides, tens of thousands of Vietnamese prisoners exchanged for hundreds of American ones, and the talks involved four sides. This war is less than two months in, has seen no ground engagements save for a limited operation, has no prisoners, and only two sides that need to be brought together for an agreement. This makes the diplomacy somewhat less complicated. But even then, it is a good idea to not underestimate the task at hand.
My main concern here is that the Iranians have not yet made a clear demonstration of their leverage in this war, and for that reason, may not be ready to make a deal just yet. Their main leverage is economic, and the real impact of that is yet to be felt. It is possible they want the real impact of their actions to hit the markets first before they feel they are ready, and that would be at least a few weeks if not a few months away. Until then, the status quo suits them fine.
Some early signs of the arrival of the economic catastrophe they are trying to bring about have begun to emerge. Oil inventories around the world are nearing depletion point. Oil on water cargoes, the oil that is en route to any given destination, are also collapsing. The first sign of physical shortages landing on shore in our country came last week when prolonged loadshedding was undertaken around the country due to LNG shortages. But the liquid fuel markets in our country have been kept running due to timely pricing actions by the government, and a little help from our oil-rich friends who have ensured that Pakistan-bound vessels continue getting supplies from ports like Yanbu and Fujairah that are otherwise seeing a crush of buyers.
The Iranians have not yet made a clear demonstration of their leverage in this war.
Bangladesh has had to shut four out of five of its fertiliser plants to divert their gas towards power generation. Lines at pumps are now being reported to be as long as 1.5 kilometres in some cases, and just this week they had their first few fatalities from fights that broke out at these pumps as motorists fought with each other over priority access amid a fuel rationing scheme the government has had to roll out. Sri Lanka has revived its post-default QR code scheme to ration fuel. App-based businesses are now coming up offering people who will wait on your behalf in the 10-12 hour long queues at fuel stations.
In Sri Lanka, soldiers have been deployed in some fuel stations to maintain order. The Philippines have called up 98,000 police personnel for fuel station duty. Thailand is seeing smuggling as fuel suppliers find ways to evade government price caps. Across Asia, the signs of a fuel supply chain breaking down are emerging. Europe is not far behind, where stocks of jet fuel are depleting faster than any other category and panic buying is breaking out in some parts. So far the disruption from the war has mainly affected prices in the oil markets. But we are now transitioning to where the physical shortages of oil will start landing. That is when the crisis really begins.
In addition, the Gulf economies seem to facing difficulties of their own, but due to the opaque nature of governance, they are thus far papering these over. Qatar floated a $3 billion emergency bond recently, most likely to be able to honour the large-scale withdrawals its banking system is seeing. Now the UAE has applied for an emergency swap line from the US Treasury, a step that necessarily belies liquidity difficulties of their own.
If the status quo drags out, these disruptions will grow, and their consequences will fan out beyond just fuel and energy markets to other manufacturing processes that are dependent on petroleum products for their raw materials. The ability of the Trump administration to manipulate oil prices will diminish. And once the real oil price and supply impact cascades through the global economy, the wreckage it will leave behind could make previous crises like 2008 look like a picnic.
This is the moment the Iranians are probably waiting for. They say it in their public pronouncements. They know with time the desperation of Trump will increase much faster than what difficulties the ‘blockade’ is imposing on the Iranians. For their part, they are willing to endure what is coming their way. And their history shows their powers of endurance are considerable. But is Trump willing to endure what is coming his way? Are his voters willing to endure it? That is the question towards which the Iranians seem determined to drive this situation.
Never have I seen America lose a war so decisively and so swiftly. The diplomacy to end this war will find its maturing point only when the American side has realised this reality and internalised its true meaning. Until then it seems Iran’s intransigence will continue. It is no secret now that Trump wants out of this war more desperately than his adversary. But to get the exit he’s looking for, he will need to make strategic concessions just like Kissinger had to make, and prepare for his disorderly exit from the Middle East altogether.
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2026
