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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has laid out terms for ending the war with the United States and Israel in what analysts say is a possible sign of de-escalation from Tehran as the US-Israel war on Iran entered its 13th day on Thursday.

In a post on Wednesday on social site X, Pezeshkian said he had spoken to his counterparts in Russia and Pakistan, and that he had confirmed “Iran’s commitment to peace”.

“The only way to end this war – ignited by the Zionist regime & US – is recognizing Iran’s legitimate rights, payment of reparations, and firm int’l guarantees against future aggression,” Pezeshkian wrote.

This is a rare posture from Tehran, which has maintained a defiant stance and initially rejected any possibility of negotiations or a ceasefire when war broke out nearly two weeks ago.

Pezeshkian’s statement comes as pressure mounts on the US to halt what has become a very costly mission. Analysts say speculation from Washington that Iran would quickly submit after the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were misguided.

Tehran is likely going to determine the end of this war, not the US or Israel, because of its ability to inflict economic pain broadly, they say.

Amid a military pummelling by the US and Israel, Iran has launched heavy retaliatory strikes at US assets and other critical infrastructure in Gulf countries, upsetting global supplies. It has also adopted what analysts call “asymmetric” tactics – such as disrupting the critical Strait of Hormuz and threatening US banking-linked entities – to inflict as much economic pain on the region and wider world as it can.

This is what we know about Pezeshkian’s stance and what the pressures are on both sides to draw the conflict to a close, quickly.

What has the war cost so far?

Economically, both sides have weaponised energy. Israel first targeted Iran’s oil facilities in Tehran on March 8, prompting an outcry from global health experts over the potential risk of air and water pollution.

Iran has, meanwhile, tightened its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz shipping route – the only route to open sea for oil producers in the Gulf – with its military promising on Wednesday that it has the capabilities to wage a long war that could “destroy” the world economy.

Attacks on ships in the strait, through which about 20 percent of global oil and gas traffic normally passes, have effectively closed the route.

Oil prices rocketed above $100 per barrel late last week, up from around $65 before the war, with ordinary buyers feeling the increases at pumps in the US, Europe and parts of Africa.

On Wednesday, Iran upped the ante, saying it would not allow “a litre of oil” to pass through the strait and warned the world to expect a $200-per-barrel price tag.

“We don’t know how quickly it’ll revert back,” Freya Beamish, chief economist at GlobalData TS Lombard, told Al Jazeera. “We do think it’ll revert back to $80 in due course, but the ball is to some degree in Iran’s court,” she said, adding that because Iran needs oil revenue, the price hikes are expected to be time-limited.

The International Energy Agency agreed on Wednesday to release 400 million barrels from the emergency reserves of several member states but it is not yet clear what impact that will have, nor how quickly this quantity of oil can be released.

Tehran has also been accused of directly attacking oil facilities in neighbouring countries this week. Iraq shut all its oil port operations on Thursday after explosive-laden Iranian “drone” boats appeared to have attacked two fuel tankers in Iraqi waters, setting them ablaze and killing one crew member.

A drone was filmed striking Oman’s Salalah oil port on Wednesday, although Tehran has denied involvement.

What are Iranian officials saying about ending the war?

There has been conflicting messaging from the Iranian leadership.

Iran’s elite army unit and parallel armed force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), continues to show defiance, issuing threats and launching attacks on Israel and US military assets and infrastructure in neighbouring Gulf countries.

However, the political leadership has appeared more inclined towards diplomacy, analysts say. On Wednesday, President Pezeshkian said that ending the war would take the US and Israel recognising Iran’s rights, paying Iran reparations – although it’s unclear how much is being asked for – and providing strong guarantees that a future war will not be waged.

In a video recording last week, he also apologised to neighbouring countries for the strikes and promised that Iran would stop hitting its neighbours as long as they do not allow the US to launch attacks from their territory.

“I personally apologise to the neighbouring countries that were affected by Iran’s actions,” the president said, adding that Tehran was not looking for confrontations with its neighbours.

However, it is not known how much sway the political leadership has over the IRGC. Hours after the president’s apology last week, air defence sirens went off in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain, as strikes continued on the Gulf.

So, what is Iran’s actual position?

“Iran wants to go to the end to make sure that the United States and Israel never attack Iran again … so this has to be the final battle,” Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas explained.

Indeed, the IRGC sees this as an existential war, but the timing of Pezeshkian’s statement about ending the conflict also shows Tehran is pressured economically, politically and militarily, Zeidon Alkinani of Qatar’s Georgetown University told Al Jazeera.

“These differences and divisions [between IRGC and political leaders] always existed even prior to this war but we may notice it now more, given the fact that the IRGC believes that it has the right to take the front seat in leading this regional war, which is why a lot of the statements and positions are contradicting with the official ones from Pezeshkian,” he said.

The IRGC reports directly to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and not to the country’s political leadership. That council is led by Ali Larijani, a top politician and close aide to the late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who analysts describe as a “hardliner”.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Larijani responded to threats from Trump about attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, saying: “Iranian people do not fear your hollow threats; for those greater than you have failed to erase it … So beware lest you be the ones to vanish.”

The newly elected supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was once in the IRGC and was put forward by the unit as the next ayatollah after his father was killed on the first day of the war, analysts say. He is thus not expected to follow the reformist, diplomatic ideals of President Pezeshkian and other political leaders which his father managed to marry with the IRGC militarised stance, they say.

What do the US and Israel say about ending the war?

There have also been conflicting messages from the Trump administration and Israel regarding when the war mission on Iran, codenamed Operation Epic Fury, is likely to end.

Trump told US publication Axios on Wednesday that the war on Iran would end “soon” because there’s “practically nothing left to target”.

“Anytime I want it to end, it will end,” he added. He had said earlier on Monday that “we’re way ahead of our schedule” and that the US had achieved its goals, even as speculation mounts about a possible US ground mission.

On the other hand, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the war would go on “without any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign”.

Analysts say Trump’s stance that the conflict will be quick reflects increasing pressure on his administration ahead of upcoming mid-term elections in November.

Trump’s advisers privately told him this week to find a quick end to the war and avoid political backlash, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal. That came as polls from Quinnipiac University and The Washington Post suggested that most Americans are opposed to the war in Iran.

In his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised to lower prices, and inflation had stabilised at 2.4 percent ahead of the war, according to government data released on Wednesday. Analysts speculate the conflict will likely push it back up.

The US spent more than $11.3bn in the first six days of the war, Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a classified briefing on Tuesday, Reuters reported this week – nearly $2bn a day.

The Washington-based think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), estimated that the war cost Washington $3.7bn in its first 100 hours alone, or nearly $900m a day, largely due to its expenditure on costly munitions.

“It’s quite ironic that [Trump] chose a war that would make affordability worse, not better,” Rebecca Christie, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank, told Al Jazeera’s Counting the Cost.

“Every time the US loses even one object, air defence or a plane or something like that, that represents an awful lot of money that could have been used on some of these issues that have an impact on people’s day-to-day lives in the United States.”

SAN DIEGO — Light rain slicked the pavement in San Diego’s East Village neighborhood on a recent morning, forcing some homeless people to scatter while others huddled under tents or slept through the drizzle.

I was on foot with Dr. Aaron Meyer, a psychiatrist frustrated by California’s most visible crisis: The failure to provide help for many of the people who need it most, despite all the programs rolled out over the years, and all the billions of dollars spent.

We see them in parks, on sidewalks and in other public spaces in obvious distress, and we’ve heard the never-ending conversations and political promises of better days. The problem goes well beyond homelessness: Thousands of severely ill people live with exasperated family members who wear themselves out trying to get help for loved ones.

“We have a history of services that have ended up prioritizing less severe people rather than the most severe,” said Meyer, a UC San Diego associate clinical professor of psychiatry who was speaking on his own behalf, as a university rep.

In searching for answers, Meyer teamed with lawyer Ann Marie Council, a former San Diego deputy city attorney who once worked in drug court. She was struck by the number of clients spun through the system countless times without getting treatment for addiction or mental illness.

“I was really sick and tired of watching people go to jail when they weren’t getting the help they needed,” said Council, who retired from public service and started Quarter Turn Strategies, a nonprofit focused on practical solutions to fractured public services.

It turns out the doctor and the lawyer make a pretty good team. In their research, they came upon a tool that could address chronic severe mental illness and addiction, and it was hiding in plain sight: in a book of California statutes, namely Section 5200 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code.

The state law governing involuntary commitments and conservatorships for people with severe mental illness is known as the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, and it includes the commonly used Section 5150 for those deemed “gravely disabled.” The process begins with a 72-hour hold that can lead to a longer commitment, but often does not.

Section 5200 outlines a far more thorough evaluation and care plan than 5150. The 5200 process can be initiated by anybody concerned about someone who is gravely disabled or a danger to themselves or others (with misdemeanor penalties for abuse of the reporting privilege).

Dr. Susan Partovi, who has practiced street medicine in Los Angeles for many years, has a term for the 72-hour hold under 5150:

“We call it the 72-second hold,” she said.

I’ve written previously about Partovi’s moral outrage over the number of severely ill people who either are not deemed “gravely disabled” or who spin repeatedly through three-day holds and return to the same self-destructive routines. I’ve also heard her talk about who among her clients is likely to die next.

Partovi is a member of Grave Disability Workgroup of California, which has endorsed a research paper on 5200, “The Lost Legal Pathway to Mental Health Care,” co-written by Meyer and Council and released a few weeks ago by Quarter Turn. It detailed the frustrations of families, outreach workers and first responders and concluded that 5200 could help break down some of the bureaucratic barriers to life-changing mental health care.

In San Diego, as Meyer and I passed a woman trying to erect a tent in the rain and a person asleep on a littered patch of weeds, I asked him to explain the difference between 5150 and 5200.

Under a 5150 commitment, he said, a person is often brought to an emergency room for an assessment by someone who is not necessarily a behavioral health specialist. A decision is then made about whether the person meets the legal criteria for an involuntary hold.

“If they don’t, then they’re released, and there’s no requirement for any care coordination,” Meyer said. Under 5200, a full medical evaluation is required with a multidisciplinary team, “and it also requires a coordinated care plan on discharge,” raising “the hope of leading to something substantive.”

In their research, Meyer and Council found that 5200 is not known to be in use in any of the state’s 58 counties, with public officials either unaware of it or under the impression that it’s an unnecessary tool given other initiatives over the decades, and cost of implementation could be a problem.

Meyer argues that the state spends billions without addressing glaring needs, and 5200 could cost less than roller-coastering people through hospitals, courts, jails and prisons without putting them on a healthier track.

Meyer said he’s gotten pushback from civil libertarians and disability rights groups, both of which have long opposed coerced treatment and argued instead for a host of greater resources in housing and preventive healthcare, and for more outreach that can lead to voluntary treatment.

I understand the pitfalls of forced treatment, having been on a 20-year journey with someone who initially resisted help and objected to medication. It’s true that forced treatment doesn’t always get the desired outcome, and can backfire if it makes the person more resistant to treatment.

But some people can become too sick to make a decision in their own best interest, which is why we’ve seen so many of them at death’s door, living in squalor and desperation, tortured by psychosis or chewed up by killer drugs.

Care Courts, which were meant to help address this, have not yet had the anticipated impact, and some families have felt let down. Meyer and Council say that although those courts can implement 5200, that isn’t happening yet.

The fact that 5200 is little known and never used “is another example of systems failure,” said former state senator and Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg.

Steinberg said although 5200 isn’t a one-step answer to homelessness or untreated severe mental and addiction illness, it’s worth implementing given the existing “set of systems that are not responsive to people who are the sickest of the sick.”

Jon Sherin, former head of L.A. County’s mental health department, called 5200 “one of the most powerful tools” available and said he tried to implement it several years ago but faced some of the same resistance described by Meyer.

“If you used it thoughtfully and had capacity, you could actually have a massive impact,” said Sherin, who urged those running for governor to “bring 5200 into the limelight and guarantee resources to counties.”

The same can be said about the race for Los Angeles mayor. Despite some progress, homelessness is still a public catastrophe, and gravely ill people are a haunting representation of policy failures.

Supporters of 5200 include Bay Area resident Teresa Pasquini, a mental health reform advocate whose brother and son have both dealt with severe mental illness. Pasquini, whose causes include “Moms on a Mission” and “Housing that Heals,” told me her son, now in his 40s, has been through the 5150 turnstile 40 times.

Pasquini said people in her circumstances have been accused of wanting to shed their troubles by having their kids locked away. All she really wants, she said, is for him to be housed and safe and given proper care.

“We need all the tools we can get … and we need 5200,” Pasquini said. “I’ve watched my son walk out the front door in handcuffs over 40 times. Treatment is not a bad word.”

steve.lopez@latimes.com