By Editorial Staff
The more they talked about peace, the more the war revealed itself. After 21 hours in Islamabad, the US Vice-President JD Vance announced failure and blamed Iran. Tehran dismissed an expectation of a deal at the start. Before he quit Islamabad after the top-level meeting between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Vance— the head of the US delegation— declared to journalists on Sunday “The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that’s bad news for Iran much more than it’s bad news for the United States of America.”
He stated that Iran preferred “not to accept our terms” during the talks which started on Saturday. He added that the US needs to see a “fundamental commitment” from Tehran not to develop nuclear weapons. “We need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.”
On paper, there happened a ceasefire. In reality, nothing stopped. What the popular Chinese predictor, Jiang Xueqin, forecast is exactly what followed: when a deal looks too generous and good to be real, you need to pay maximum attention since it usually isn’t meant to work.
Because, according to Xueqin, while leaders and diplomats were announcing negotiations, military preparations were accelerated—more troops, more strikes, more positioning—not a path to peace, but a race against time. He underlines that the illusion wasn’t the failure of the talks, but the belief that they were ever designed to succeed. And in that gap between what is said and implemented, according to him, the war doesn’t pause—they are preparing. Xueqin alerts that official narratives like the one that US is fighting Iran because of Iran’s nuclear weapons program are utterly wrong. You can find more on this in this article.
What Xueqin saw first: the ceasefire that could never work
“The ceasefire is a lie. I want to talk about the ceasefire because I have been getting a lot of questions about this. A lot of people are very excited. They are saying ‘Professor Jiang, the war is over. Trump announced a peace deal. Iran is negotiating in Pakistan. Maybe you were wrong. Maybe America is going to win after all. And my answer is no. The ceasefire is a lie. The war never stopped. And I want exactly to explain why. I want to use our framework— game theory, historical patterns, the structure of how power actually works [for more on the framework, click on the mentioned article above], to show you what is really happening behind the scenes.
Because what you see on the news is not what is actually happening. First, let me describe what Trump actually announced. Because I think when you hear the details, you will understand immediately why something is wrong here. Trump said there will be a two-week pause. America and Iran will meet in Pakistan to negotiate a long-term ceasefire. And this is the important part. He said he would use Iran’s 10-point plan as the framework for the peace talks,” says the Chinese predictor, Jiang Xueqin.
He continues, using Iran’s 10-point plan, to rationalize his challenge against the declared ceasefire. “What is in this 10-point plan? Let me go through it because it is very revealing. Point one: the United States will guarantee never to attack Iran again. Point two: Iran will have complete control of the Strait of Hormuz. Point three: Iran can choose to enrich uranium for its nuclear program. Point four: all sanctions on Iran will be removed— all of them including secondary sanctions against foreign companies that do business with Iran, including all UN Security Council resolutions against Iran, all International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions.
Point five: compensation of and reparation for all damage that the United States and Israel did to Iran. Point six: withdrawal of all US combat forces from the Middle East. Point seven— and this is the most important one— the United States will also agree to end hostilities against all of Iran’s allies including the Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen. Let me ask you a simple question. If you walked into a shop and you wanted to buy something for $ 100 and you said ‘I’ll pay $1 000, and the shop owner said ‘Yes, fine, deal.” What would you think? You would think something is very wrong.”
He continues, explaining why you would judge that a very wrong thing has already emerged. “Nobody accepts a deal that good unless they are not serious about the deal. Unless they are planning something else entirely. That is exactly what is happening here. Trump is using Iran’s own maximum demands as the starting point for negotiations. And what does that tell you. It tells you that Trump is not serious about this peace deal. This is theater. This is a distraction. The question is: what is it distracting us from?
And the answer becomes clear when you look at what is happening on the ground at the same time as Trump is announcing this ceasefire. The USS George Bush, a full aircraft carrier is being sent to the Middle East right now during the ceasefire. More American ground troops are moving into the region. More planes, more artillery, more tanks, the military buildup is accelerating, not stopping. Let me ask you ‘If this is really a peace deal, why is America sending more forces to the region? Why is the miliary buildup continuing? The answer is obvious: America is buying time. It is using the ceasefire to get its forces into position. Once everything is ready, the war will resume.”
Xueqin thinks that a pretext will be created for the United States of America to obtain room to intensify the war. “With a provocation- probably from Israel- that gives America the excuse it needs to escalate. That is reason number the ceasefire is a lie. America is using it as a cover for military preparation.”
He provides other reasons. “Reason number two. This one is more interesting. This is about how Iran has actually structured its military. Because here is the thing- even if Iran wanted to honor the ceasefire, it would be almost impossible for the Iranian leadership to actually enforce it on the battlefield. This is because Iran is using something called the mosaic defense. Let me explain what it is because it is a brilliant strategy, and most people don’t understand it. Iran has 31 provinces. And what they have done is to turn each province into an independent military cell. Each cell has its own strategy, its own weapons, its own command structure.
They do not need orders from Tehran to fight, they operate independently. Think of it like a dead man’s switch. Do you know what a dead man’s switch is? It is a mechanism that activates automatically if the person controlling it is killed or incapacitated. Even if America kills the Ayatollah, destroys the entire central leadership of Iran, these 31 cells keep fighting automatically. Because they do not need orders. They have already been told ‘Fight until we win or fight until we are destroyed.”
He encourages to reflect more upon this situation. “Now think about what this means for a ceasefire. If Iran’s political leadership in Tehran says ‘Ok, we’ve agreed to a ceasefire.’ They then have to go and tell 31 independent military cells, spread across the entire country to stop fighting. And these cells are IRGC commanders, these are soldiers who have been fighting for months, who do not trust the Americans, who do not trust the Israelis- they are not going to obey a ceasefire order just because some politicians in Tehran said so.
They will say ‘No’ We don’t trust this. We keep fighting. It means that for Iran to actually implement a ceasefire, the political leadership would have to physically force its own military to stop. And that would be essentially a civil war within Iran. The government fighting its own army to make them put down their weapons. That is not going to happen. The mosaic defense was designed specifically so that this cannot happen. It was designed so that the war cannot be stopped by killing leadership or making a political deal.”
The war that can only end in total ruin of Iran or US retreat.
Xueqin underscores that, because of the mosaic defense, the only two ways in which the war will end is that Iran will be completely ruined or America will be defeated and then leave. “There is no middle ground. There is no ceasefire that works. This is actually genius. It means America cannot just win by killing leaders or bombing Tehran. America cannot win by making deals. The only way America can win is total destruction of Iran, and America does not have the political will, the manufacturing capacity or the number of soldiers to do that. So, America is trapped.”
“Let me give you reason number three, and this one is the most revealing because it shows you that even the people signing this deal do not believe in it. The ink was barely dry on the ceasefire announcement, when Israel launched 100 strikes across Lebanon in ten minutes, [with] more than 25o people killed in ten minutes during a ceasefire. Now, Iran’s position was always that this peace deal includes its allies- that Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen are part of the agreement. Iran cannot sign a deal that leaves its allies to be destroyed. That is a fundamental condition.”
Xueqin adds “After Israel bombed Lebanon, what did America say? JD Vance, the Vice-President, said ‘Oh, this is a legitimate misunderstanding. We thought Hezbollah was not part of the deal. The Iranians thought it was’ A misunderstanding. You announce a major ceasefire that is supposed to end a war and you did not even agree on who is covered by the ceasefire. Does that sound a serious peace negotiation to you? Of course, not. Israel bombed Lebanon immediately to send Iran a message.
We are going to keep destroying your allies, no matter what you sign. And America stood back and called it a misunderstanding. This tells you everything. The ceasefire is not designed to work. It is designed to create the situation where Iran breaks the ceasefire, because it has to defend Hezbollah, and then America can say ‘Well, Iran broke the deal. Now we resume the war. And it’s their fault. It’s a trap that has been used before.”
To clarify how the announced ceasefire will act as a trap like before, he says “Just like with the JCPOA- the nuclear deal- which Trump tore up. Just like during the first twelve-day war, when America was secretly plotting Iran while pretending to negotiate. The pattern is always the same: make a deal, break the deal, blame Iran, escalate.
I want you to go deeper because the more important question is not just ‘Is the ceasefire real? The answer is clearly ‘No.’ The more important question is ‘Why?’ What is the actual purpose of this theater? What is really going on? And to answer that, we need to go back to something I have talked about before. The idea that political systems can lose control over wars, and I think is what is happening right now on both sides.”
To elucidate what is occurring on both sides, starting with the US side, he points out “Think about it this way. When America started this war, there was a plan. Bomb Iran. Destroy its nuclear program. Decapitate the leadership. Force a surrender. That was the plan. But wars never go according to plan. Iran fought back harder than expected. The Strait of Hormuz closed. The global economy started to feel the pressure. Oil prices went up. American bases got hit. An aircraft carrier had to leave. The war spiraled. And now you have two groups inside the American government who want completely different things.
You have the military- the Pentagon, secretary Hegseth- who want to escalate. They want to send ground troops. They want to take the Strait of Hormuz. They want to finish the job. And then you have Trump who is watching the stock market, his approval ratings, who understands that a ground invasion of Iran is political suicide. Trump wants an exit. Trump wants to look like a winner without actually winning. So, what you get is a confused ceasefire that exists only in Trump press releases while the military continues doing what the military does.”
On the Iran side, he stresses “You have a similar problem. The political leadership- the people who would negotiate in Pakistan understand that this war is causing enormous economic damage, not just to the world economy. To Iran itself. Cities are being bombed. Infrastructure is being destroyed. The Iranian economy is under enormous strain. The political leadership knows that if this war drags on for years, even Iran will break eventually. But the military- the IRGC commanders in those 31 cells are not going to stop. They believe they are winning.
They believe the Americans are running out of interceptors, political will, money. Why would they stop now when they are winning? What you have is a split, a schism between the political leadership of Iran that wants to negotiate and the military leadership of Iran that wants to keep fighting. And this split- fissure is actually dangerous. Because it means Iran is no longer operating as one coherent unit. And over time, as this split deepens, Iran would become less effective on the battlefield. Not because America is winning, but because Iran is becoming divided against itself.”