How two ceasefires and opening of Hormuz could boost Iran talks

"The issue is very complicated," she says. "It has to do with border demarcation, the disarmament of Hezbollah and the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanese territory."

Israel and Lebanon have technically been in a state of war since 1948 and the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.

But far from strengthening Iran's position across the region, Khatib argues that this week's direct talks in Washington between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors have started the process of removing Lebanon from Iran's hands.

"The regional balance of power is shifting away from Iran," she says. "Now it's no longer going to be able to use Lebanon as a bargaining chip."

But much still depends on what happens in the other diplomatic process, between the US and Iran.

Reducing what America and Israel see as Iran's malign behaviour across the Middle East will be on Washington's agenda, if and when a second widely anticipated round of talks in Islamabad goes ahead.

For Israel in particular, it is vital that Iran's support for Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen is curtailed, ending decades in which Iran's "Axis of Resistance" has been able to threaten and harass the Jewish state.

Iran will not give up what it regards as a vital tool of regional influence lightly.

But that's just one of the formidable challenges that lies ahead.

The others - the fate of Iran's nuclear programme and the future of the Strait of Hormuz - are going to take some negotiating.

Trump, as always, is doing his best to sound like he's in control, saying a deal with Iran is "very close", that the war is going "swimmingly", telling reporters that Iran has already agreed to hand over around 440kg (970lb) of highly enriched uranium (the president is fond of calling it "nuclear dust") thought to be buried under the rubble of a facility in Isfahan bombed last year.

Iran has not commented publicly about this bold claim, but an unnamed official, quoted by the judiciary-run Mizan News Agency, said "there have never been any negotiations regarding any kind of nuclear materials to America".

But any deal on the nuclear file will also need a pledge from Iran never to build a nuclear weapon, as well as agreement on how long it would be willing to suspend enrichment.

Then there's Iran's other weapon, always in the country's armoury but only recently deployed: its closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran says it wants a new set of protocols to govern maritime traffic through the narrow waterway, replacing its current chokehold with a legal framework that would recognise what it regards as its sovereign right, along with Oman, to control what moves in and out of the Gulf.

In the meantime, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, welcoming the ceasefire in Lebanon, says the Strait is "completely open for the remaining period of the ceasefire" – in other words, for the next week.

There is a caveat: vessels will be expected to use what Aragchi called "the co-ordinated route as already announced by the Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Republic of Iran".

This appears to refer to new routes, running much closer to the Iranian mainland, north of the two traffic separation lanes in use before the war.

How quickly this eases the bottleneck of vessels trapped inside the Gulf remains to be seen.

Trump says, in his typically full-throated way, that the strait is "FULLY OPEN AND READY FOR FULL PASSAGE," and the markets appear to have responded positively. But captains may well be looking over their shoulders, and Trump says the US blockade of Iranian ports remains in place for now.

Despite these positive developments, it's safe to say that there's a lot of ground for negotiators to cover.

The last major deal with Iran, 2015's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), took around 20 months to negotiate and only addressed the nuclear issue. Trump pulled America out of the deal in 2018, leading it to crumble.

Trump loves to project the image of a rapid deal-maker, rarely looking back to see what, if anything, his deals actually achieved.

For all the hoopla surrounding his two summits with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, in 2018-19, the meetings in fact achieved very little. Pyongyang continues to develop its nuclear programme.

But after the tumultuous events of the past six weeks, some kind of diplomatic process is now well under way and will have received a boost following the ceasefire in Lebanon.

Is it enough to prevent an eventual return to war? Not even Trump knows that.