Each day brings a fresh turn in the tortured negotiations between US President Donald Trump and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Each time an agreement on one point is close, Trump picks up the phone to call his partner-in-crime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - and Trump then retreats from it.
This is what has happened to two points on which Iranian negotiators thought they had an agreement. According to Hassan Ahmadian, an Iranian affairs analyst, the two key elements of a 30-60 day ceasefire being proposed were that the truce would cover Lebanon, and that some Iranian assets would be unfrozen.
But however tortuous the path, and even if this deal fails and Trump decides to attack Iran for a third time, it is brutally clear that the US has just lost another war in the Middle East - its sixth in 25 years.
Iran has all the cards, chiefly the Strait of Hormuz, but also the deterrence its drones and missiles have achieved over its Gulf neighbours - and other cards still it has yet to play, like the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea. Trump has none.
