Schrödinger’s Ceasefire

By Nick Catoggio

Wednesday, April 08, 2026

 

Everyone thinks they know what a taco is, but drill down on specifics and you might be surprised by how opinions differ.

 

For instance, is a taco a sandwich? That question is so contentious that it’s been litigated in court.

 

The same goes for what happened last night when the president announced a two-week ceasefire shortly before his civilization-ending attack on Iran was set to begin. Do the terms of that ceasefire constitute a TACO—i.e. Trump chickening out—or a meaningful victory for the United States?

 

A strange opinion horseshoe formed on social media as political junkies went about making sense of the deal.

 

Most war supporters and Trump apologists received it as a win, pointing to the president’s claim that the ceasefire was “subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.” If the hostage crisis in the strait truly is over, Trump’s hair-raising threat to obliterate Iran’s civilian infrastructure would seem to have served its purpose.

 

It’s not a TACO if the Khomeinists are the ones who chickened out.

 

War opponents and Trump critics objected, reminding everyone that not only has the president failed to accomplish his core goals—regime change and denuclearization—but that his own statement about the ceasefire came with an alarming caveat. “We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” Trump said. If Iran is the side that blinked, why would the U.S. treat its demands as a starting point for peace talks?

 

Interestingly, the most crazed Iran hawks shared that skepticism. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Trump-whisperer Mark Levin sounded palpably disappointed that military operations to level the country had been postponed, if not canceled altogether. That’s the horseshoe to which I referred—progressives and various Never Trumpers on one end and, uh, Lindsey Graham on the other, all momentarily united in smelling a TACO in the oven.

 

Me, though? My take on the deal is: What deal?

 

From what I can tell, there’s no agreement between the two sides on anything except—maybe—to stop shooting for two weeks, and as of this morning even that part of it wasn’t being honored by Iran. The deal exists, yet seems to have no actual content.

 

As one observer put it, it’s Schrödinger’s ceasefire.

 

TACO? TBD.

 

Does the president know what he agreed to?

 

I’m not asking that sarcastically. Iran’s government released two statements about the ceasefire last night, one of which Trump touted on Truth Social and the other he called a “fraud.” But both appear to be authentic.

 

The one he promoted came from Iran’s foreign minister. It was brief and vague, as diplomatic communiques meant for global consumption tend to be. “If attacks against Iran are halted, our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations,” the minister announced. But then came this: “For a period of two weeks, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations.”

 

That implied that the strait will reopen, but it left unsaid what the price of “coordination” with Iran might be. If tankers are compelled to pay a de facto toll—aka ransom—to transit the waterway without being blown up, the regime will have a revenue stream that it didn’t have before the war began. That’s not a victory for the United States.

 

According to a “regional official” who spoke to the Associated Press, that is indeed the plan. Supposedly the ceasefire will allow both Iran and Oman to impose “fees” on ships passing through the strait, with the Iranians expected to charge $1 per barrel of oil to be paid in cryptocurrency. “Very Large” carriers can hold 2 million barrels or more.

 

The second statement purportedly came from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and was more triumphalist in tone than the foreign minister’s. Trump flipped his wig when CNN read it on the air, dubbing it a fraud and “ordering”(!) the network to “immediately withdraw this Statement with full apologies for their, as usual, terrible ‘reporting.’” (His capo at the Federal Communications Commission was peeved about it, too.) True to postliberal form, he promised to investigate whether the network had committed a crime by publicizing it.

 

But the statement seems to be legit. The network says it obtained the document from known Iranian spokespersons, and the text circulated through other media channels last night.

 

It’s not clear whether Trump sincerely believes it’s a fraud, having perhaps been misled by deputies who were afraid to tell him the truth, or is knowingly lying to Americans in hopes that they won’t take note of it. Either way, I can understand why he’s eager to discredit it. Here’s the key part, in which the Supreme National Security Council summarizes the 10 Iranian demands that the president is calling a “workable basis” for negotiations:

 

In this plan, the United States has, in principle, committed to non-aggression; the continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz; acceptance of enrichment; the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions; the termination of all United Nations Security Council and Board of Governors resolutions; compensation to Iran; the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region; and the cessation of war on all fronts, including against the heroic Islamic resistance in Lebanon.

 

That matches reports in Iranian media. “An absolute disaster,” Mark Levin called the 10 points, and you can see why: U.S. agreement to any one of them would leave the regime considerably better off long-term than it was six weeks ago, a major strategic defeat for America notwithstanding our many tactical victories since February 28.

 

It was a matter of hours before the president began publicly rejecting some of those 10 demands, including the most hotly disputed one. “There will be no enrichment of Uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) Nuclear ‘Dust,’” he announced this morning. There’s no evidence that the regime has agreed to any such thing.

 

Nor does there seem to be any agreement about “the heroic resistance in Lebanon.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios that Hezbollah’s fate isn’t part of the ceasefire; oh yes it is, the Iranians insisted, and reportedly closed the strait again today to protest continued Israeli attacks on their Lebanese proxy.

 

In what way is any of this a “workable basis” for talks?

 

There’s no deal here. To all appearances, the only meeting of the minds that occurred between the two sides was on the narrow point that ending Iranian civilization would be a bad idea. We’re in the same place we’ve been for the past six weeks, struggling to reconcile the parties’ irreconcilable demands, except now with a fragile ceasefire in place that will hopefully compel both to choose painful compromise over a resumption of hostilities.

 

Is a TACO a TACO if it’s not filled with anything (yet)?

 

Endgame?

 

Some hawks and Trumpers reacted to news of a ceasefire last night by accusing opponents of hypocrisy. Just watch, they said. The same people who accused the president of plotting genocide this morning will now mock him for wimping out instead of going through with it.

 

I had two thoughts about that, one of which is that there’s some truth to it. Trump is such an insufferably obnoxious bully in all things, and so eager to taunt his own enemies, that it’s hard to resist rubbing his face in a show of “weakness” even when he’s prudently de-escalating. A face-saving deal-without-a-deal was obviously a better outcome than the war-crimes jamboree he seemed to be planning, and so it’s churlish—if understandable—to chant “TACO TACO TACO!” at him for pursuing it.

 

Churlish, and maybe potentially dangerous. If it’s true that the president is getting crazier as he ages, Nate Silver’s admonition against tormenting when he loses face is good advice. “Trump could feel like he’d be humiliated or would lose credibility if he didn’t follow through” the next time he makes a veiled nuclear threat, Silver wrote. “And having a reputation for chickening out might make those impulses worse.” Americans chose to be led by a wild animal, and wild animals are impulsive. One must be careful not to antagonize them when handling them.

 

My other thought was that Trump apologists who believe his interest in ending Iran’s civilization was either a bluff or a threat that’s now been abandoned are misjudging him. As usual.

 

Repeatedly during his 10 years atop the GOP, the president has said things his fans insist were misunderstood or taken out of context—only to have him clarify that he meant what he said, leaving them out on a limb and forced to pivot to defending him on the merits. Given how fragile this deal-without-a-deal appears and how incompatible the two sides’ demands are, we may be headed for another iteration of that. It seems as likely as not that the ceasefire will fall apart and the “Infrastructure Day” carpet-bombing will come to pass after all, albeit a few weeks behind schedule.

 

So if I were a war supporter, I’d tread lightly in told-you-so-ing the “TACO” chanters for having assumed the worst about his intentions. The nightmare scenario is still on the table, especially once Levin and Graham get in his ear.

 

I admit to a degree of hypocrisy here. My biggest failure as a political observer since coming to The Dispatch was in not anticipating how ruthlessly Trump would behave toward foreign adversaries (like, uh, Denmark) in his second term, and it’s really no excuse that no one else anticipated it either. Spending every day calling someone a fascist, as I have, and then being surprised when he starts threatening the world militarily is like spending every day calling someone a clown and then being surprised when he starts making balloon animals.

 

It kind of goes with the territory, right?

 

I should have foreseen it but did not. All I can do is warn hawks who are, even now, underestimating Trump’s capacity to do something wildly destructive simply to avoid humiliation—ahem—to not misjudge how bad this might still get. If anything, the ceasefire has raised the stakes: Should Iran embarrass the president by closing the strait again after he ate a sh-t sandwich by reluctantly agreeing to climb down, his impulse to punish them might be unrestrainable.

 

Or perhaps, as this crisis wears on, he’ll prefer a different sort of sinister outcome.

 

This morning Jonathan Karl of ABC News posted something on Twitter so outlandish that at first blush I assumed it had come from a parody account. He reported that he’d spoken to the president and asked whether the U.S. will tolerate Iran charging a toll on tankers using the strait. Not only will we tolerate it, Trump responded, we might get in on the action. “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture,” he said. “It’s a way of securing it—also securing it from lots of other people. … It’s a beautiful thing.”

 

Imagine: A joint hostage-taking venture between the United States and Iran’s terror regime, splitting the proceeds of de facto piracy after centuries of America defending free access to international waterways. Once again I feel embarrassed for not predicting that the president might behave in a completely predictable way: Why wouldn’t a born mafioso look at a lucrative extortion racket and start scheming about how to get in on it instead of how to end it?

 

My guess is that the joint venture ultimately won’t come to pass, not because Trump has some moral qualm about partnering with the Khomeinists but vice versa. Some characters are so seedy that even homicidal Islamist fanatics won’t work with them.

 

Winner and loser.

 

To ask who “won” Schrödinger’s ceasefire is to ask an unanswerable question, then. There’s no way to measure whether the terms are more favorable to one side or the other because there are no agreed-upon terms. We’ll have a better idea in two weeks.

 

But if you can’t wait that long, consider a few things.

 

The president planned to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age last night and relented without having gotten any tangible concession in return. That feels like a win for Iran.

 

The fact that, after six weeks, the linchpin of negotiations isn’t whether the regime will remain in power or denuclearize but whether it will return to the status quo ante in the strait also feels like a win for Iran.

 

The mere fact that we’re negotiating at all feels like a win for Iran, frankly. The core right-wing complaint against Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with the Khomeinists was that a regime of “Death to America” fundamentalists cannot be trusted to honor its commitments. Only maximum pressure, and perhaps eventually war, could keep the bomb out of the mullahs’ hands.

 

Trump tore up the nuclear deal, then tried maximum pressure, then tried war—twice. Now he’s desperate for diplomacy, which of course depends on … trusting the Khomeinists to honor their commitments. Not a win for America.

 

And then there’s this: By including a ceasefire in Lebanon in its demands and doubling down on it today, the regime is cannily driving a wedge between the U.S. and Israel.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contradicted Iran when he told reporters today that the agreement doesn’t cover Hezbollah. My guess is that Trump won’t be as much of a stickler about that as Bibi is, though: If the price of preserving his latest big beautiful deal is to get Israel to back off a regional proxy that doesn’t directly threaten the United States, he’ll be inclined to do it.

 

A ceasefire that leaves the U.S. and Israel at loggerheads over whether and where the war should continue also feels like a win for Iran.

 

A qualified win, to be sure. You can’t take the sort of beating the Iranians have over the last six weeks and then do an end-zone dance, as supporters of this war would eagerly remind us. But insofar as the bad guys have proved that they’re more resilient than everyone hoped and that the stability of the global economy going forward will depend on keeping them happy, that seems like a bad outcome for Uncle Sam.