The United States and Iran have agreed to a very tenuous ceasefire that appears to be holding less than 24 hours after its implementation, though hurdles have already emerged.
Vice President JD Vance characterized the deal as a “fragile truce” on Wednesday, and within the first day, it has already been tested.
Since President Donald Trump announced the two-week ceasefire, which is contingent upon Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz for shipping transit, Iran carried out attacks on multiple Gulf States, while Israel carried out significant attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the sides disputed over whether that was a violation of the agreement.
Who’s in charge?
Israel assassinated several senior Iranian leaders, including the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the opening round of strikes back on Feb. 28. The list of slain Iranian leaders includes the national security secretary, Ali Larijani; commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basij unit, Gholamreza Soleimani; and top Iranian intelligence official Esmaeil Khatib, and many others.
Iran’s Assembly of Experts selected Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, to succeed his father as the country’s supreme leader. U.S. officials believe he was hurt in the strikes that killed his father, and he has seemingly gone into hiding, leaving his condition a mystery. Mojtaba Khamenei is believed to be more of a hard-liner within the Guard than his father.
Both President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth maintain that the new leaders represent regime change, though it remains unclear whether the successors of the regime maintain the stances and ideology of their predecessors.
“The new Iranian regime understood that a deal was far better than the fate that awaited them,” Hegseth said on Wednesday. “This new regime just happened to look at what happened to their predecessors.”
“There’s obviously been some turnover at the highest echelons, but that turnover doesn’t represent a massive change beyond the fact that some of them are more hardline and extreme,” Brian Carter, a fellow with the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s still the same, largely speaking, the same generation that has led Iran for the past almost 50 years.”
It’s also unclear whether Iran’s new leaders are genuinely willing to end their nuclear program and support for their proxy forces across the region, allow ships to go through the Strait of Hormuz without getting paid, and whether they will try to rebuild their military arsenal and infrastructure.
“I think what we’ve seen here is an elevation of the IRGC [the Guard],” Spencer Faragasso, a senior fellow with the Institute for Science and International Security, told the Washington Examiner. “And the IRGC influence on the state has absolutely increased. They seem to be largely in control of the war effort, directing it, leading it, fighting it, coordinating it, in whichever capacity they can. And essentially, their role in the future of the country seems to be increasing.”
Iran’s conventional military capabilities
The U.S military struck more than 13,000 targets during the war, and Israel hit thousands of targets as well, yet Iran maintains some semblance of their capabilities.
Iran’s primary source of military firepower during this war has been firing ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones at targets across the region. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia reported Iran had launched projectiles at them in the hours after the ceasefire commenced.
“CENTCOM forces destroyed approximately 80% of Iran’s air defense systems, striking more than 1,500 air defense targets, more than 450 ballistic missile storage facilities, 800 one-way attack drones storage facilities,” Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during Wednesday’s briefing. “All of these systems are gone.”
He did not disclose how many remaining missile or one-way attack drone facilities remain intact.
“The Iranian Navy now lies mostly at the bottom of the Arabian Gulf, and we assess that we’ve sunk more than 90% of their regular fleet, including all of the major surface combatants,” Caine said. “150 ships are at the bottom of the ocean, and half of the IRGC Navy, small attack boats.”
The chairman also said the U.S. struck roughly 90% of Iran’s weapons factories, and “every factory that produced Shaheed one-way attack drones, was struck” as well as “every factory that produces the guidance systems that go into those drones was struck.”
At the same time, however, ships are largely still avoiding the strait, while Iran was able to shoot down two U.S. aircraft last Friday, which prompted a frantic but ultimately successful rescue mission over the weekend.
It’s unclear if Iran will try to rebuild those capabilities and, if so, how long it would take them.
As of April 8, 381 U.S. service members have been injured during the war, while 344 of them have returned to duty, CENTCOM spokesman CAPT. Tim Hawkins told the Washington Examiner. Three service members fit the military’s “severely wounded” designation.
Iran’s nuclear capabilities
Long before this war, Trump has been adament that that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon or a pathway to gaining one, and that objective prompted the 12-day war last June between the U.S., Israel, and Iran.
“What we’ve seen during this war is more of a cleanup operation to target other things that weren’t hit during the June 2025 war,” Faragasso said.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe told lawmakers last month Iran “currently possess[es] at least 440 kilograms,” or more than 950 pounds “of highly enriched uranium at 60% weapons grade that would be capable of putting together 10 nuclear weapons,” believed to be buried under the rubble at the targeted nuclear facilities.
On Thursday, hours after the ceasefire began, Trump said the U.S. could be involved in retrieving the deeply buried enriched uranium, while the Iranian Supreme National Security Council claimed the U.S. “accepted enrichment” as a part of the ceasefire deal.
“There will be no enrichment of Uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) Nuclear ‘Dust,'” Trump said. “It is now, and has been, under very exacting Satellite Surveillance (Space Force!). Nothing has been touched from the date of attack.”
Faragasso argued the only way to definitively defeat Iran’s nuclear program would be through negotiations that would include giving international inspectors unfettered access to Iran’s nuclear sites.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz
Since the outset of the war, Iran has largely shut down shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway that’s closure sent energy and oil prices through the roof.
The president said the ceasefire agreement was contingent on Iran reopening the strait, which led oil prices to fall at a historic pace on Wednesday, marking one of the biggest single-day drops in decades.
However, it’s still elevated from where it was before the war and will likely remain that way for months.
Prior to the war, West Texas Intermediate oil was roughly $67, and Brent oil was $72.47 a barrel, reaching $112.95 on April 7 and $118 on March 31 at their respective high points, and are now both hovering around $96 a barrel.
“I think this war is taught from the lesson that if you drive up shipping prices, and you drive up oil prices, and you cause economic pain for the United States, the United States will give up,” Carter said. “And I think that’s a big problem, and I think other countries are will take lessons from those well.”
Following a major Israeli attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon on Thursday, Iranian officials indicated they would shut down the strait again, though White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said those reports were both “completely unacceptable” and “false.”
“That is completely unacceptable,” she said. “And again, this is a case of what they’re saying publicly is different privately, we have seen an uptick of traffic in the street today, and I will reiterate the President’s expectation and demand that the Strait of Hormuz is reopened immediately, safely. That is his expectation.”
The war has also demonstrated that the president can be swayed by economic pressure, which is a lever that Iran could decide to pull at any point in the future of its choosing by cutting off the strait again.
“Iran, at the end of the day, doesn’t have to do much to paralyze the flow of tankers through the strait, they can use fear, and the fear of the threat of being attacked could be enough, and that’s what we’ve seen,” Faragasso said. “We’ve seen, in the grand scheme of things, that relatively low number of tankers actually be struck, but the fact that any were struck was clearly enough to halt traffic.”
Iran wants to charge vessels a fee to travel through the strait, which is a venture Trump said on Thursday could possibly be done jointly.
