US and Iran Step Back from War

On 2 August 2026, US President Donald Trump announced that he had cancelled a planned military strike against Iran. The strikes had been prepared and were reportedly just hours from being carried out when Trump said he received a request from Iran and "other Middle Eastern countries" to hold off and allow time for peace negotiations. According to Trump, the outline of a deal had already been agreed.

The announcement came after months of rising tension between the United States and Iran. The two countries have been adversaries for decades, but the situation had escalated sharply in recent months, with both sides exchanging threats, building up military forces in the region, and coming closer to direct conflict than at any point since the US assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

For people watching from around the world, the news brought a mixture of relief and anxiety. Relief that a military strike had been avoided — at least for now. Anxiety about what might happen next. The Middle East is one of the most strategically important regions on Earth. A war between the United States and Iran would affect oil prices, global trade, and the safety of millions of people across the region.

The situation also raised important questions about how decisions about war and peace are made. A military strike that could have killed hundreds of people and triggered a wider conflict was apparently called off at the last minute because of a phone call. The speed and unpredictability of modern diplomacy — where a single decision can prevent or start a war — is both remarkable and deeply unsettling.

The conflict between the United States and Iran has deep historical roots that stretch back more than 70 years.

In 1953, the US and British intelligence services helped overthrow Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and replaced him with the Shah — a monarch friendly to Western interests, particularly oil. For 26 years, the Shah ruled Iran with the support of the United States, while many ordinary Iranians lived under an authoritarian regime that suppressed political opposition.

In 1979, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah and established an Islamic republic. The new government was deeply hostile to the United States, which it blamed for decades of interference. Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. The relationship between the two countries has never recovered.

Since then, the US and Iran have been locked in a cycle of hostility. The US has imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran, restricting its ability to trade with the rest of the world. Iran has developed a nuclear programme that the US and its allies fear is aimed at building nuclear weapons — a claim Iran denies. Both countries have supported opposing sides in conflicts across the Middle East, including in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon.

Understanding this history helps explain why the current tensions feel so dangerous. This is not a new disagreement — it is a conflict with decades of accumulated mistrust, grievance, and hostility on both sides. Finding a path to peace requires addressing not just the current crisis but the deep wounds of the past.

If the cancelled strikes had gone ahead and led to a wider war, the consequences would have been felt far beyond the Middle East.

Iran controls one side of the Strait of Hormuz — a narrow waterway through which approximately 20% of the world's oil supply passes every day. If Iran closed the strait or attacked oil tankers passing through it — as it has threatened to do in the past — global oil prices would spike immediately, driving up the cost of petrol, food, transport, and manufacturing in every country on Earth. The economic impact would be felt from Bangkok to Berlin.

A war would also destabilise the wider region. Iran has allies and proxy forces across the Middle East — in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. A direct US attack on Iran could trigger retaliatory attacks by these groups against US allies and military bases across the region. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states would all be drawn into the conflict.

The humanitarian cost would be enormous. Iran has a population of more than 88 million people. Modern military strikes, even those described as "precision" attacks, inevitably cause civilian casualties. The experience of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria has shown that the human cost of military intervention is always far higher than predicted, and that the consequences can last for decades.

For all of these reasons, the cancellation of the strikes was welcomed by governments around the world. But the underlying tensions remain. The situation between the US and Iran is not resolved — it is paused. And the question of whether diplomacy can succeed where decades of hostility have failed remains unanswered.

The US-Iran crisis raises a question that is as old as human civilisation: when is war justified, and when should countries choose diplomacy instead?

Throughout history, leaders have used many arguments to justify going to war — self-defence, protecting allies, preventing a greater threat, spreading democracy, or punishing aggression. Some of these wars have been widely supported. Others have been deeply controversial. The Iraq War of 2003, which was justified by claims about weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be false, severely damaged public trust in the arguments governments make for military action.

The United Nations was created after the Second World War with the specific goal of preventing future wars through diplomacy, negotiation, and international law. The UN Charter states that countries should only use military force in self-defence or with the approval of the Security Council. In practice, powerful countries have frequently ignored these rules when they found them inconvenient.

For ordinary people, wars are rarely a choice. They are something that happens to them — decided by leaders they may not have voted for, fought for reasons they may not understand, and paid for with their taxes, their homes, and sometimes their lives. The people most affected by the US-Iran crisis — ordinary Iranians and the millions of people living near potential conflict zones — had no say in the decisions being made about their futures.

This week, those decisions went in the direction of peace rather than war. Whether they continue to do so depends on choices that are still being made — in Washington, in Tehran, and in capitals around the world. Understanding these choices, and having the knowledge to form your own opinion about them, is one of the most important things you can do as a citizen of the world.