The ceasefire announced by Donald Trump does not really end the war in Iran: it suspends it, freezes it and sends it back to a negotiating table that already starts with a strong imbalance. The decisive point is the Strait of Hormuz, because it is there that we understand who has really gained from forty days of bombings and threats.
Trump presented the truce as an American success and linked it to the “safe opening” of the Strait, but a very different reading came from Tehran: transit possible only under coordination with the Iranian armed forces. In other words, Iran does not appear to have emerged from the conflict as a bent country, but as an actor that retains a fundamental strategic leverage on the main energy corridor of the planet. This is why the ceasefire does not resemble a surrender, but a truce built around a compromise yet to be defined.
The feeling is that Tehran has obtained something that it did not have so explicitly before the war: the recognition of its weight in the Strait. It is not a classic victory, but on a strategic level it is worth much more than simple survival.
The role of Pakistan and China
What stopped the spiral was not a UN initiative or a European negotiation, but a mediation led by Pakistan, with China in the background as a factor of pressure on Tehran. Islamabad acted as a conduit between Washington and Iran, keeping contacts alive even when the two capitals did not speak directly.
For Beijing, the stakes are obvious: energy stability and protection of crude oil routes. For this reason, China was interested in pushing for a pause in the fighting, without however exposing itself as a formal mediator. The result is an agreement born outside the traditional venues of multilateral diplomacy, a sign of how weak the old Western channels are today.
On a military level, Iran has suffered heavy damage but the nuclear dossier remains open as does the fate of high-level enriched uranium, the smoking gun that justified the aggression of the USA and Iran. This makes it difficult to talk about a full victory for Washington. The United States struck hard, but did not turn military advantage into a definitive political achievement. On the contrary, the ceasefire leaves Iran with a still strong negotiating card and with a regional position that remains central.
A suspended war
The war isn’t really over, it’s just entered a different phase. The ceasefire is precarious, negotiations are open, the nuclear dossier is not closed and Hormuz remains the real test. The question “who won?” therefore has only a partial answer: militarily no one has achieved a decisive victory, but politically Iran seems to have transformed survival into a strategic advantage.
In other words, Iran emerges from this phase of the war with a more explicit and more recognized ability to influence global oil traffic than before. And this, on a strategic level, weighs heavily. This was immediately seen in the markets. After the announcement of the truce, the price of oil collapsed and the stock markets rebounded, a sign that investors saw the news as an immediate relief. But the relief is not equivalent to a normalization: the physical market for crude oil remains under stress and the damage accumulated in oil supply chains will weigh on it for months.
The markets are celebrating in a Pavlovian way but the central question will be understanding what deal they made on Hormuz. Because if the toll system remains, as I think (50/50 ‘cue for’?), the impact on supply chains, energy and commodities will be structural.
— Gianclaudio Torlizzi (@TCommodity) April 8, 2026
So what should we expect? It will take weeks for fuel prices to stabilize and months for things to return to normal. From the reopening of Hormuz it takes up to 5 weeks for oil and methane tankers to reach Europe: around 800 ships are blocked in the Middle East. But in the Gulf, wells, refineries and export facilities have suffered significant damage which compromises full operations: it will be necessary to verify how much capacity has been lost in the production of jet fuel and diesel and how long it will take to restore it. What is certain is that Qatar had already communicated weeks ago at least three years of repairs to restore its liquefied natural gas export capabilities.