Daily Times Editorials 6th August 2026

Hormuz Bargain

US President Donald Trump sounded hopeful when he referred to “all-day negotiation” on Tuesday, producing “a lot of progress” and bringing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz within reach. While Tehran has not confirmed direct negotiations with Washington, it has announced something more concrete: Iran and Oman have reached an understanding on the geographical coordinates of a proposed shipping route through the strait.

The arrangement under discussion could allow Iran to oversee vessels entering the Gulf through an Iranian-administered route, while Oman would supervise outbound traffic. Tehran is seeking fees tied to cargo value while Washington seems to be holding ground on its position that there should be none. Before the war, Hormuz was an international waterway open to commercial shipping without Iranian tolls. If the eventual settlement grants Tehran a recognised supervisory role, it will not merely reopen a shipping lane. It will concede to Tehran a degree of regional leverage that months of American military pressure were supposed to diminish.

Still, that does not make an agreement undesirable. The fighting has neither forced Iranian capitulation nor eliminated its ability to disrupt the waterway. It has also failed to produce a durable settlement of the nuclear dispute. Shipping remains exposed, Gulf economies remain vulnerable, and the Red Sea has developed into another theatre of maritime coercion. A negotiated exit is preferable to another round of strikes whose political purpose becomes less convincing with every escalation.Newspaper Delivery Service

But Washington should describe the bargain honestly. Mr Trump began this war speaking of “unconditional surrender” and even claiming authority over Iran’s future leadership. His administration now describes reopening Hormuz as the immediate phase, with the nuclear file to follow. That is a dramatic narrowing of objectives. It may also be the only realistic course left.

The president’s latest warning-that Iran will be hit “really hard” if it backs away-could yet (very easily and for the umpteenth time) unravel the frenzied diplomacy being carried out by Pakistan along with other regional mediators. Threats may create urgency, but diplomacy cannot be rebuilt every few days beneath a fresh bombing deadline.

Tehran, for its part, cannot demand the benefits of normal commerce while reserving the right to menace ships, impose coercive charges or use the strait as a weapon.

There remains an important distinction between mediation and direct negotiation. Iran and the United States are not confirmed to be sitting across the same table, even as Qatar and Pakistan are working continuously to bridge their positions and create conditions for direct dialogue. Their role is therefore not ceremonial. Pakistan, in particular, should continue facilitating communications as it has been doing for the last 150 days or so–with rolled sleeves, socks pulled up, head down and sans any chest-thumping.Arabs & Middle Easterners

Opening the strait would be an achievement because it reduces the immediate danger. It would not still be peace, which can only happen if both sides immediately take the off-ramp, abandon claims of imminent victory and allow the mediators to turn a narrow maritime compromise into a wider political settlement. *

Counterterrorism Dialogue

The fourth Pakistan-US counterterrorism dialogue was held in Washington two days after a suicide blast carried out by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) outside a Swat police station killed 17 people. Perhaps, the proximity served as a reminder to those standing at the wheel that Pakistan is fighting an active war, one measured in funerals for policemen, soldiers and civilians rather than in the reassuring vocabulary of “shared resolve.”

Still, Washington’s latest statement deserves attention because it put the TTP, Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and its affiliates, Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) and Al Qaeda on a single official ledger. These names have appeared before in American assessments, especially the BLA, which was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation last year. This time, the US has publicly joined Pakistan in describing them as a connected regional security problem.

Just a cursory glance at Pakistan’s security landscape is enough to understand how the TTP aims to hollow out the state’s authority in the northwest while the BLA seeks to make Balochistan’s administration, economic activity and regional connectivity prohibitively costly. Lurking in the shadows, ISIS-K retains its wider transnational ambition. Even if their political genealogies may not be identical, the operational ecology around them often is. Money, weapons, forged identities, online narratives and safe havens rarely respect the borders within which Pakistani security forces are asked to contain them.

The joint statement spoke of stronger border security and the disruption of terrorist facilitation networks. Those words should now acquire a harder meaning. A facilitation trail cannot be allowed to disappear once it crosses a frontier or enters an overseas financial system.

Given America’s reach across international legal, financial and intelligence systems, the BLA’s Foreign Terrorist Organisation designation should mean more than diplomatic sympathy for Pakistan’s losses. It should help expose the intermediaries who move funds, procure equipment and sustain violent networks abroad.

The numbers from July alone can explain why this cannot remain a routine exchange of views. One hundred and twelve security personnel were killed during the month, a 195 per cent increase from June. Security forces also killed 401 militants, the highest monthly figure in more than a decade. There is a sobering lesson in those two figures. A state can inflict heavy losses and still find itself facing a worsening threat when recruiters, bomb-makers, commanders and financiers remain available to replenish the ranks.

Afghanistan remains the hardest part of that equation. Islamabad maintains that TTP fighters enjoy space under Taliban rule. Washington cannot recreate the order it abandoned in 2021, but it can no longer treat Pakistan’s complaints as an argument between two unhappy neighbours. The question is straightforward: why is Afghan territory being used to direct attacks inside Pakistan? *