The strikes have stopped. Nothing has been signed.

For more than a week, the war has been quiet. As of 18 September, it had been eleven days since a strike on Iranian territory was announced, and nine since Iran last fired a ballistic missile or drone at a state hosting American forces.¹ After nearly seven months of fighting that began with joint American and Israeli strikes on 28 February, that is the longest stretch of calm since the summer.

It is not a ceasefire. The last agreement, the memorandum of understanding signed in Islamabad on 17 June, opened a 60-day window for negotiations and expired on 17 August without producing anything.² Nothing has replaced it. What exists now is an absence of attacks, which is a different thing from an agreement not to attack, and which either side can end without breaking a promise.

Two governments are describing this moment in incompatible terms, and both descriptions come from the same few days.

President Trump said on Thursday that he was poised to make a “big decision” on whether to launch a major assault to “annihilate” the Iranian government, and separately that “anything could happen”.³ On the same day, he said the United States was “hopefully” nearing the end of the war.⁷ These are statements of posture rather than descriptions of anything observable, and we have seen no independent reporting of force movements that would corroborate preparations for a major new offensive.

From Tehran, President Masoud Pezeshkian said at the start of the month that if Washington returned to its commitments under the June memorandum, Iran would reciprocate immediately.⁸ That offer is conditional on an agreement that has already lapsed, and it was made after the first exchange of fire in a month. Washington has said it will not hold talks while attacks on ships continue.

Neither government has said the pause is deliberate. It may be a decision. It may equally be resupply, or the approach of the General Assembly, or the fact that both sides have run out of things they want to hit this week.

While the front was quiet, three things moved.

On 17 September the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, chaired by Sara Hossain, reported to the Human Rights Council that there are reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks. The finding concerns two strikes on the first day of the war: one on the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, carried out with Tomahawk missiles, and one on a sports complex in Lamerd. The mission recorded at least 157 people killed at the school, about 120 of them children, and 22 civilians killed at Lamerd. It said imagery of the school showed child-oriented murals, signage and playground areas that made its civilian character apparent.⁶ The White House, State Department and Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment overnight.⁶

The same day, Russia and China vetoed an American resolution to renew the mandate of the UN panel of experts that monitors nuclear sanctions on Iran. The mandate expires on 27 September.⁴ The machinery that is supposed to enforce sanctions has not functioned since the snapback dispute began, and is now close to expiring outright.

And the State Department approved visas for Iran’s core delegation to the General Assembly, including Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.⁴ Trump is due to meet the leaders of the six Gulf Cooperation Council states in New York.⁵ Two governments that have been at war since February will be in the same city this week.

On Friday, the Iranian government staged the largest organised demonstration since the war began. The Associated Press described hundreds of thousands of people in Tehran; state television put the Friday morning crowd at more than 300,000. The Revolutionary Guard commander Hassan Hassanzadeh said more than 600,000 people had registered for a civilian rifle-training scheme called Janfaday-e Iran, and that more than a million were expected. The new head of the Basij militia, Hossein Taeb, said volunteers would be ready for a “full-fledged defense”.⁹

Those enrolment numbers come from the Revolutionary Guard and have not been independently verified. The rally itself was seen by reporters.

The nuclear file is now formally back at the Security Council, referred there after the IAEA Board adopted a resolution on 9 September.¹⁰ The sanctions monitoring panel expires on 27 September. The General Assembly runs through the coming week. And Iran is governed, at least on paper, by a supreme leader who was named on 9 March after his father was killed in the opening strike, who was wounded in that same strike, and who has not been seen in public since.¹¹

Any of those could break the quiet. So could nothing at all: the pause has lasted eleven days, and nobody has explained why.