On the 35th day of the war, Iran's most experienced diplomat published a ceasefire proposal in one of the most read foreign policy journals in the world. Mohammad Javad Zarif — foreign minister from 2013 to 2021, Iran's chief negotiator for the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, former Iranian ambassador to the United Nations — wrote in Foreign Affairs on April 3 that Iran should use its wartime position of strength to make a deal rather than keep fighting. The piece is titled "How Iran Should End the War: A Deal Tehran Could Take." It is written for an international audience and addressed as much to Washington as to Tehran.
The essay arrived on the same day that Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi announced that Iran was drafting a protocol with Oman to oversee maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — not just during the war, but as a permanent peacetime arrangement. Read together, the two developments represent the most concrete signal yet of what Iran believes an end to this conflict could look like, and what it intends to extract from any settlement.
What Zarif Proposed
Zarif's core argument is that Iran has won the war in the sense that matters most: it has not been toppled, has maintained leadership continuity, and has demonstrated that American and Israeli military power cannot force regime change through bombing alone. Having established that, he argues, Iran should now "declare victory and make a deal" rather than continue fighting until the destruction becomes catastrophic.
His proposed deal has four elements, each stated explicitly in the Foreign Affairs essay:
1. Nuclear limits. Iran should offer "to place limits on its nuclear program" as part of a settlement. Zarif does not specify what those limits would look like, but his framing echoes the structure of the 2015 JCPOA, which he negotiated — caps on enrichment levels, centrifuge counts, and stockpile volumes in exchange for sanctions relief.
2. Hormuz reopening. Iran should offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as part of a settlement. The strait has been substantially closed to commercial traffic since February 28, when the war began, causing the largest sustained global energy shock in decades.
3. Full sanctions relief. In exchange for the nuclear limits and Hormuz reopening, Zarif proposes "an end to all sanctions" — a significantly broader ask than the partial relief that was on the table in pre-war negotiations. He argues this is a deal Washington "wouldn't take before but might accept now," given the political and economic costs of the war to the United States.
4. A mutual nonaggression pact. Zarif proposes that Iran and the United States pledge in writing not to strike each other in the future — a formal commitment that would require congressional ratification or at minimum executive agreement, and that would represent an unprecedented bilateral security understanding between the two countries.
Zarif also suggests that Iran could offer to engage in economic cooperation with the United States, framing it as a win for both peoples. He proposes that Washington commit to financing the reconstruction of damage caused by the 2025 and 2026 wars. And he notes that Iran, the United States, and Persian Gulf countries "might all partner on projects involving energy and advanced technologies" as part of a longer-term normalization.
The Political Context Inside Iran
Zarif is explicit in his essay about the political difficulty of what he is proposing. He writes that "a large portion of the Iranian population views as heresy any talk of ending this war through diplomacy instead of through continued resistance and pressure against embattled aggressors." He describes crowds gathering nightly across Iran shouting "No capitulation, no compromise, fight with America."
He is not a current officeholder. He served as foreign minister under President Hassan Rouhani and was not retained by the current government. His essay is an argument being made from outside formal Iranian power structures — addressed to decision-makers in Tehran, but not written on their behalf.
That said, Zarif is not politically irrelevant. He is the best-known Iranian diplomat internationally, the person most associated with the possibility of a U.S.-Iran deal in Western foreign policy circles, and someone whose views on Iranian diplomacy are closely watched by analysts, Gulf states, and European governments. His willingness to publish a specific ceasefire framework publicly suggests that at minimum he believes the moment is ripe for diplomacy, and that the argument needs to be made loudly enough to shift the internal Iranian conversation.
His characterization of the historical record of U.S. betrayal is blunt and worth noting, because it reflects how any future deal would need to be structured. He describes Iran providing assistance to the U.S. against al-Qaeda after September 11 and being included in the "axis of evil" in return. He describes Iran's verified compliance with the 2015 JCPOA and Trump's withdrawal from it. He describes Biden's failure to restore the deal despite campaign promises. He describes the pre-war negotiations where Iran sent experienced diplomats and the U.S. sent, in Zarif's characterization, "two real estate developer confidants" who were "completely illiterate on both geopolitics and nuclear technicalities." His argument for a deal coexists with his account of why Iran has every reason to distrust the United States — and why any new agreement would need to be structured differently to be credible.
The Hormuz Protocol: A Permanent Power Play
Separate from the Zarif essay, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told reporters Thursday that Iran was drafting a peacetime protocol with Oman to jointly oversee maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — even after any war settlement. The New York Times reported the announcement Friday, noting that Gharibabadi described a mechanism that would allow Iran and Oman to "oversee transit through the Strait of Hormuz" without restricting it.
Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi elaborated in a television appearance on Qatari media on April 1. He described the strait as lying within "our territorial waters" and said that "ensuring maritime security and environmental protection would require a joint mechanism between the coastal states," according to reporting by houseofsaud.com and The Guardian. He was not describing a temporary wartime position. He was describing a post-war governance model that would give Iran and Oman formal joint authority over the world's most important oil chokepoint — permanently.
The Institute for the Study of War, in its April 1 special report on Iran, flagged this directly. ISW noted that "senior officials in Tehran have signaled that they seek to use the Strait of Hormuz and energy flows around it as points of leverage that Iran can use after the war to extract concessions and secure strategic aims." ISW also noted that Iran "will not accept a ceasefire or halt disruptions to international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz unless the United States and Israel cease all attacks on Iran."
In other words: the Hormuz closure is not just a wartime weapon. It is a negotiating asset that Tehran intends to convert into a permanent governance role, one that would give Iran ongoing leverage over global energy markets even after a settlement is reached.
What Washington Has Said
The Trump administration has not responded to Zarif's essay as of publication time. Trump has simultaneously claimed that Iran's leadership asked the U.S. for a ceasefire — a claim Iran's government has denied — and threatened to bomb Iran "back to the stone ages." He has said the war could end in "two to three weeks." The administration has also repeatedly stated that it would not accept any deal that leaves Iran with nuclear enrichment capability.
The gap between Zarif's proposed terms and Washington's stated position is substantial. Zarif offers "limits" on nuclear activity — not elimination of the enrichment program. Trump's public position, as stated repeatedly by both him and Hegseth, is that Iran cannot possess any nuclear capability, enriched material included. Zarif's ask of "full sanctions relief" goes beyond what was on offer in 2015 and well beyond what any Trump administration official has indicated a willingness to grant.
On the other hand, Trump's political incentive to claim a deal — particularly one that brings down energy prices before the midterms — is real and has been noted by multiple analysts. Zarif acknowledges this directly in the essay, writing that a deal "could turn his huge miscalculation into an opportunity to claim a lasting victory for peace."
Why This Matters Now
Zarif's essay is the most detailed public statement of Iranian diplomatic terms since the war began. It is not a government offer — it is a former diplomat's argument addressed to his own government and to the world. But it names specific elements: nuclear limits, Hormuz reopening, full sanctions relief, nonaggression, economic partnership, reconstruction financing. That specificity is itself significant, because it shifts the conversation from vague ceasefire talk to concrete terms that analysts, allies, and governments can evaluate and respond to.
The Hormuz peacetime protocol announcement is more operationally concrete. It is not a proposal — it is a statement of intent by a sitting deputy foreign minister. Iran is drafting, right now, an arrangement that would formalize its joint control over the strait with Oman after any war ends. If that protocol becomes a finished instrument and is accepted by Oman, it would represent a permanent structural change to the geopolitics of global energy — one that no military campaign has yet stopped Iran from pursuing.
Two things happened in Iran's diplomatic lane on April 3, 2026. A former foreign minister told the world what a deal could look like. A sitting deputy foreign minister announced that Iran is already drafting the post-war governance structure for the world's most important oil corridor. Neither is a ceasefire. Both are signals about the terms on which Iran believes this war will eventually end.