Public commitments have locked the US and Iran into a zero-sum conflict, where backing down is politically costly, and de-escalation is difficult
With the Islamabad Talks collapsing a couple of weeks ago, the US-Iran war has entered a dangerous phase. The sticking points are as expected: the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme. President Trump has enforced a full naval blockade of the Strait. Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, declared that American negotiators “failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation.” Iran has shown limited interest in talks until the blockade is lifted, dashing hopes of a second round of negotiations. Neither side appears willing to concede. While Trump seems keen on striking a deal, he needs to present the deal as a comprehensive victory to his base.
The underlying logic behind this impasse deserves attention because it explains not just why these talks failed but why de-escalation is so difficult.
In his seminal 1994 paper on audience costs, the political scientist James Fearon showed that when leaders make publicly observable commitments in a crisis, the domestic cost of backing down escalates with each round. The mechanism is straightforward: public commitment raises expectations; unmet expectations carry electoral costs. The more precise and publicly visible the commitment, the higher the audience cost of retreat.
Iran acquired its leverage over the Strait during the war, choking tanker traffic only after the US-Israeli strikes began, and has discovered that controlling the world’s most important oil chokepoint gives it a bargaining chip disproportionate to its military capabilities.
Both sides of the current conflict have committed to objectives that are binary and verifiable. The Strait is either open or it isn’t. On uranium, regardless of what Iran does in reality, in public, it has only two choices: halt weapons-grade uranium or not. These issues are not open to \reinterpretation. Iran acquired its leverage over the Strait during the war, choking tanker traffic only after the US-Israeli strikes began, and has discovered that controlling the world’s most important oil chokepoint gives it a bargaining chip disproportionate to its military capabilities. Surrendering it now would mean giving up the single most valuable asset the war has produced. For Trump, however, conceding Iranian control over Hormuz would constitute a visible defeat on an issue he has made central.
Fearon’s theory further suggests that democracies find it harder to back down compared to autocracies precisely because the costs of concessions are significantly higher for them. With midterm elections looming large, the domestic cost of conceding a defeat on Hormuz is enormous for Trump. At the same time, the Iranian regime is fighting for survival, and thus, any concession by the regime could make it vulnerable at home.
Thus, this is a zero-sum trap. Only one side can win on Hormuz or uranium enrichment. As the historian Niall Ferguson recently observed, “Wars are remarkably easy to start, much harder to stop.” The reason, often, is precisely this: once the objectives of a war become sufficiently well-defined and publicly committed to, de-escalation becomes existentially threatening for whoever concedes.
Pakistan never acknowledged the full extent of its involvement in the first place, preserving a layer of deniability that made concession unnecessary.
The 2025 India-Pakistan conflict is a striking contrast. After the Pahalgam terror attack, India launched Operation Sindoor, striking targets deep inside Pakistani territory. The conflict de-escalated rapidly. Crucially, both sides claimed victory. India released footage and satellite imagery of successful strikes well inside Pakistan, furnishing undeniable evidence of offensive capability. Pakistan, in turn, claimed to have downed multiple Indian Rafale jets, a claim widely disputed, but which its domestic audience largely accepted. This de-escalation was possible only because neither side set binary and verifiable objectives. India’s stated goal, punishing the perpetrators of the terror attack, was sufficiently imprecise that any significant military action could satisfy it. Pakistan never acknowledged the full extent of its involvement in the first place, preserving a layer of deniability that made concession unnecessary.
This pattern has a historical precedent. Henry Kissinger coined the term “constructive ambiguity” during the Sinai disengagement talks after the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel. The idea is simple but counterintuitive: when two sides cannot agree on precise terms, the negotiator deliberately drafts language that is open to interpretation. Each side can then present the agreement to its domestic audience as consistent with its own position. The text of the agreement says one thing; the narrative each side constructs around it says another. This does not resolve the underlying dispute, but it buys time, eases tensions, and creates space for further negotiations.
The crucial insight, then, is this: when war objectives are vague, the space for mutual face-saving expands; when they are precise and binary, the conflict collapses into a zero-sum game, constructive ambiguity is no longer possible, and one side’s victory is the other’s political extinction. Vagueness is not a failure of strategic communication. It is, under certain conditions, the precondition for peace.
The idea is simple but counterintuitive: when two sides cannot agree on precise terms, the negotiator deliberately drafts language that is open to interpretation.
This is the trap the US and Iran now find themselves in. Trump is not a leader who concedes defeat. And the Iranian regime, already governing through brute force after crushing nationwide protests in January, will likely face increased chances of being toppled through domestic movements if it surrenders both its nuclear programme and its leverage over Hormuz. With both sides locked into well-publicised, objectively verifiable positions, the game has only two moves: fight or find a back-channel formula so creative that it allows both sides to redefine what victory means. The precedents for such creativity exist. Kissinger demonstrated as much 50 years ago. Whether the current actors possess the strategic imagination to replicate it is the question on which the fate of the global economy now depends.
Aditya Kuvalekar is a faculty member in Economics at the University of Essex, UK, and the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
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Aditya Kuvalekar is a faculty in Economics at University of Essex UK. He works on microeconomics.
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