“A Disastrous Development”: Trita Parsi on Breakdown of U.S.-Iran Ceasefire

July 9, 2026
We speak with political analyst Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, about the latest events in the Middle East. The United States has bombed Iran for multiple days after President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire between the countries to be “over.” Iran says it has retaliated by attacking U.S. military bases and other strategic sites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

Parsi says the renewal of fighting is “a disastrous development” for chances of a long-term peace and a reset in the U.S.-Iran relationship. “Both countries are in dire need of an end to this war.”
 
AMY GOODMAN: The United States bombed Iran for a second consecutive night after President Trump declared the ceasefire over. Blasts were reported in multiple cities, with the U.S. saying it had struck 90 targets across Iran, including sites along the Strait of Hormuz. Blasts were also reported near the Bushehr nuclear power plant. According to the Iranian Health Ministry, at least 14 people have been killed since the U.S. resumed its attacks; another 78 people were wounded.
Meanwhile, Iran says it’s retaliated by attacking U.S. bases in strategic centers in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. In addition, Jordan’s military said it intercepted eight missiles in its airspace. Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bhager Ghalibaf, says the United States, quote, “still hasn’t learned that bullying and breaking promises are no longer cost-free,” unquote.
On Wednesday, President Trump spoke at the NATO summit in Turkey and threatened to strike Iran’s civilian infrastructure, saying, quote, “They really deserve it,” unquote. On the flight back to the United States, Trump spoke more about the U.S. attacks.
 

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We just hit them very hard. And I say we hit them 20 to one. Every time they hit us, we’re going to hit them 20. And we did it last night. They did a little something today, but it was really retribution for last night. They hit, actually, three boats, not two. And when they hit, we hit back much harder. …

We have many ways we can win, but we’ve already won militarily. They have very little. They have very little left. And they want to make a deal so badly. They called a little while ago. They want to make a deal so badly. I just don’t know if they’re worthy of making a deal. I know that they’re going to honor the deal. That’s the problem.

 
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, during a press conference on Wednesday at the NATO summit, Trump mistakenly confused Iran and Japan.
 

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I told this story yesterday. We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan.

 
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump was sitting next to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as he confused Iran and Japan, and then referred to Zelensky as “President Putin.”
We’re joined now by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, his latest piece on Substack headlined “How the US-Iran fight in the Strait of Hormuz can be resolved before it blows up the MOU.” That’s the memo of understanding.
Trita, talk about what’s happened and President Trump saying the ceasefire is over. What does this mean?
 
TRITA PARSI: Well, this is obviously a disastrous development and a huge risk to the survival of the MOU and the entire diplomatic track that could put an end to this war, and also give birth to a completely different relationship between the United States and Iran if it was successful. I’m not entirely sure as to whether this is completely over or not, because at the end of the day, both countries are in dire need of an end to this war. We have seen an exchange of fire before, after which they did return to talks. But this time, obviously, it is worse, because the United States is now escalating beyond just striking southern Iran, has also started striking civilian targets in other parts of Iran. And there’s a significant risk, of course, that there will be massive further Iranian retaliation against this.
What is really frustrating with all of this is that prior to all of this, after the first round of exchange of fire, the two sides were converging towards an understanding on how to handle the strait. The Iranians did not want to see any ships travel through any corridor of the strait without coordinating with them. That’s their interpretation of the MOU. The U.S. has a different interpretation. But they were converging towards an understanding in which, essentially, all ships would have to notify both the Iranians as well as one party in the GCC. And if that were to happen, both sides would essentially walk away, and the strait would be open without any problems. But before they managed to get to that agreement, the Iranian funeral of the former supreme leader took place, and talks were suspended.
In the meantime, additional ships, with their transporters off, traveled through the southern corridor without coordinating with the Iranians. The Iranians gave them several warnings, eventually shot at them. And that’s what then precipitated this exchange of fire that we see right now, in which the U.S. first struck Iran two nights ago, and then again last night. But this has now gone to such a high level that it is much worse than the previous exchange and may very well be the end of the MOU altogether.
 
AMY GOODMAN: The front page of The New York Times says “U.S. Bombs Iran Again As Truce Breaks Down; Trump Mulls Blockade.” Talk about exactly what that would mean, and that clip we just played of him saying he’s going after the civilian infrastructure. We don’t know how many people have died in Iran, but there are a number in these latest attacks. And then, of course, you have Bahrain, Kuwait, perhaps Jordan, is saying that they intercepted Iranian missiles.
 
TRITA PARSI: Yes, we have seen a pattern in which the Iranians do strike back at American bases in the region. I believe that last night they also struck at the base outside of Doha in Qatar, creeping a process back to if the U.S. were to reimpose the blockade of the Persian Gulf, then we will see the Iranians probably not only closing the strait, but also pushing the Houthis to close the Red Sea, as well. And that would not only be a return to war, but that would be a worse situation than what we saw before.
Moreover, if Trump follows through on his threats of targeting energy infrastructure in Iran, that’s when the Iranians are likely to start striking, not just at bases in the GCC countries, but at their energy infrastructure, as well. And that would again make the situation worse than what it was during the war itself.
 
AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to a clip of President Trump describing to reporters the kind of airstrikes and damage he’s considering in Iran, what I was talking about earlier.
 

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Look, we’re not attacking at the highest level. The highest level are bridges, their — which we can knock down. I would say in one day we knock down every single bridge in Iran. There’s not a thing they can do about it. Their electric manufacturing facilities, right? Their electric plants, where they make their electricity, and their — we will — if we have to, we’ll take them out. I don’t want to do that, but if we have to, we’ll take them out. They have desalinization plants. We’ll take them out if we have to. I hate to do that. That’s probably the one I would like not to do least. We attacked Kharg Island last night. We knocked out a piece. I said, “Don’t touch the oil,” because maybe we’ll take over Kharg Island. You know, we may take over Kharg Island. There’s not a thing they can do about it.

 
AMY GOODMAN: So, Trita Parsi, President Trump also referred to the people that are negotiating as “scum.” He was asked by reporters why he is saying that now, given he didn’t say that before. And he boasted about taking out the first level of Iranian negotiators, then the second level of Iranian negotiators, and now he’s on the third level, I think he said.
 
TRITA PARSI: Yeah. First of all, I think it’s important to recognize that a lot of these different things that Trump is threatening are war crimes. Taking out the civilian infrastructure, desalination plants, etc., all of this would constitute war crimes. And, of course, we already have seen plenty of war crimes in this war already.
Again, if the United States were to go in that direction, it’s important to note Trump made similar threats during the war and stopped short of doing it and executing it. And the key reason for that is, if the United States were to do this, the Iranians likely will retaliate against similar targets in the GCC countries. And if you go after the energy infrastructure in the GCC countries, then we’re not just talking about an oil crisis as a result of a bottleneck in the Persian Gulf and in the strait, but a production problem, which would take much longer to recover from and most likely would throw the entire global economy into a recession. And this is the key reason as to why he didn’t do it last time, probably the reason why he won’t do it this time, either.
But the threats themselves, nevertheless, are further undermining the atmosphere that is necessary to be able to make diplomacy work and ultimately lead to a deal. Now, the Iranian attacks against the ship, from the U.S. perspective, is also actions that are undermining that atmosphere. But this is escalating at a speed at this point in which it’s very different from the last escalation, but also one that makes it much more difficult to find an exit ramp from.
 
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask you about a CNN exposé, more about the Minab girls’ school, where over 175 people were killed, overwhelmingly little girls going to school, CNN reporting that military officials knew within days that, quote, “Senior US military commanders bypassed warnings in critical databases that intelligence about potential targets in Iran was severely out of date and approved some strikes” anyway, including the strike on the school. Unnamed sources also cited to CNN that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s previous decision to cut the civilian harm mitigation and response staff at the Pentagon by over 90%, only one full-time staffer was left to work with development strike teams. Can you talk about the ongoing significance of this? Because we’re talking about the U.S. continuing to strike Iran now.
 
TRITA PARSI: Yeah, this is one of the darkest moments of American military history, I would say, in recent history, what happened to the schools in Minab and these young schoolgirls who were all killed. And we’ve seen how that had a profound impact on the Iranians.
This is all part of a larger effort by Secretary of War Hegseth in which he wants to undo the norms around the use of force, what he calls no longer fighting woke wars, essentially taking away most of the guardrails that have been put into place by the United States itself over the course of the last couple of decades after the Second World War to protect civilians in war. Now, there’s a systematic effort, both by the Israelis and by the United States under Peter Hegseth, to undo these norms and make it permissible to do things that, over the course of the last couple of decades, have been considered unlawful in war.
And this is one of the first examples, the results of something like that, in which after cutting so many people who would actually review these things, going through all the type of mechanisms and protocols to make sure that these targets were not going to be civilian, after having undone that, we’ve seen the direct result of it. And it’s important to also understand this happened on the first day of the war. This was not after two weeks, not after two months, in which statistically something atrocious could happen. This happened on the very first day of the war. And I think it is an indication of the direction we will be going in if this is not reversed, if these efforts to undo these norms around the use of force are not undone.
 
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the funeral of Khamenei, how massive it’s been, millions of people going from Iran to Iraq. And if you can talk about the significance, what this means for the future of Iran?
 
TRITA PARSI: One thing I think we saw through these funeral proceedings, particularly the massive crowds that were also showing up in Iraq, is the influence that Iran has in the region, particularly in the Shia community, but not just limited to that. This is something that I think is consistently underestimated in Washington, in which it has not fully appreciated the degree to which Iran is interconnected and has massive influence in many of the neighboring countries, and as a result, any effort to try to completely isolate Iran and cut it off from the rest of the region is not going to work, and has not worked so far. And I think the the funeral proceedings in Iraq, in particular, showed what an impossible task that is and one reason as to why that approach needs to be set aside, because the end result of it has now become clear. That type of an effort of isolating Iran only leads to a war. And we’ve already seen what a disastrous outcome that war would be.
 
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. We’ll link to your piece on Substack headlined “How the US-Iran fight in the Strait of Hormuz can be resolved before it blows up the MOU.”