Ending the war requires accepting Iran in the Middle East

The hardest question about ending the war with Iran belongs in Washington. What place can Iran occupy after the fighting stops? A country left economically excluded, unable to rebuild and exposed to renewed attack has little reason to regard a ceasefire as a durable ending. The war cannot be politically settled while Iranian recovery remains an unacceptable outcome.

The latest diplomacy leaves that question unresolved. Tehran has received US feedback, through Qatar, on a seven-day trust-building proposal. Yet on 1 October, the US Treasury expanded sanctions against Iran’s automotive and rail sectors, alongside manufacturing and steel networks. Talks about ending the confrontation are proceeding alongside measures that further restrict Iran’s capacity to sustain its economy.

Behind this tension lies a conflict over political existence. Iran’s civilisational understanding of statehood draws on historical continuity, territorial integrity and independence.

The Islamic Republic connects these claims to a revolutionary and religious account of its purpose. Ali Khamenei’s 2019 Second Phase statement, with its emphasis on building an Islamic civilisation, expressed that connection explicitly. Security, within this understanding, includes the capacity to continue a political project.

Israel also brings historical and theological claims to its modern statehood. Netanyahu has described it as the Middle East’s sole true democracy. In his September UN address, he invoked the Jewish people’s three-thousand-year history and biblical attachment to the land while anticipating the Iranian government’s fall.

The conflict therefore involves competing accounts of political legitimacy, each connecting present security to a larger historical narrative.

Different understandings of statehood do not make war inevitable. The contradiction arises when Israeli security is defined through the dismantling of Iran’s capacity to remain an independent regional power. Under that definition, even Iranian reconstruction can appear threatening because recovery restores the resources through which Iran can act. Iran’s continued existence and Israel’s preferred regional order then become politically incompatible.

This gives the war its ontological dimension. For Iran, survival involves retaining the ability to decide its future and sustain its place in the region. For Netanyahu’s government, an Iran capable of recovering may signify the return of an existential threat. Military operations can damage Iranian capabilities. They cannot resolve this dispute over what Iran is allowed to become after the bombing.

The June 2025 war and the present confrontation make a distinction between surviving an attack and securing a durable ending especially consequential.

If the pause leaves the mechanisms of exclusion intact, relinquishing leverage means accepting greater vulnerability before the next crisis. From Tehran’s perspective, an ending must change the conditions that make another attack possible.

This is why Iran’s place in the regional economy matters. Oil exports, payment channels, investment and transport links provide the means to reconstruct infrastructure and plan beyond emergency survival. Temporary permissions can be withdrawn. A durable economic place allows Iran to recover without making every stage of recovery dependent on its adversaries’ approval.

Economic participation also gives political recognition a material form. When neighbouring countries trade with Iran, invest in shared infrastructure and incorporate it into regional transport networks, their own development acquires a stake in its stability. Iran becomes a participant in shaping regional arrangements, rather than remaining indefinitely the object around which other states organise their security.

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Netanyahu’s opposition to the 2015 nuclear agreement already contained this problem. He argued that lifting sanctions and strengthening Iran’s economy would provide greater resources for aggression. That was his assessment, not proof that Iranian prosperity necessarily produces war.

Its strategic implication is nevertheless clear: economic recovery itself can become a reason to preserve pressure.

A settlement built on permanent Iranian weakness would therefore contain the grounds for renewed confrontation. Iran needs the capacity to rebuild. An Israeli government that treats this capacity as intolerable would retain an incentive to obstruct it. More accurate weapons or more sophisticated surveillance cannot reconcile these positions.

Washington must confront that contradiction because the costs of the war reach beyond Israel’s objectives. Energy markets, shipping through Hormuz and the security of American partners make indefinite confrontation costly. An American exit requires persuading Israel to accept the survival of an independent Iran with an economic future in the region. It also requires Washington to accept that outcome itself.

Trump’s interview with TIME, published on 1 October, exposes the difficulty. Explaining why he had continued the campaign, he said he did not want Iran to return “in some different form”. An ending that depends on preventing Iranian reconstitution keeps the political purpose of the war open even after military objectives are declared achieved.

The tension also appears in the 2025 US National Security Strategy. It advocates accepting Middle Eastern countries’ historical forms of government while prioritising Israel’s security and the expansion of the Abraham Accords. The practical question is whether such acceptance extends to Iran, or whether Iran must remain the exception against which the region’s political and economic integration is organised.

Other regional states have a decisive role here. Their political acceptance of Iran need not involve adopting its institutions or sharing its revolutionary commitments. It means recognising that Iran’s historical and political form has a legitimate place alongside their own. Regional stability requires room for different states to pursue development without making one state’s permanent exclusion the condition of another’s security.

The 2023 Saudi-Iranian agreement offers a limited precedent. Brokered by China, it connected restored diplomatic relations to sovereignty and non-interference, and reaffirmed earlier economic cooperation commitments. It did not dissolve rivalry. It demonstrated that accommodation could begin by recognising the existing states as counterparts, without requiring either to abandon its political identity.

For an ending to endure, that recognition needs practical expression in trade, financial access and regional projects. Neighbouring governments can make Iranian reconstruction part of their own vision of regional development. This would give political acceptance consequences that diplomatic declarations alone cannot provide.

The final decision still weighs heavily on Washington. Can it distinguish Israel’s security from support for Iran’s political and economic exclusion? Can it accept a regional order that an independent Iran helps shape? The war ends politically when Iranian survival includes a credible future. Military technology cannot make that choice.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.