Just a week has passed since Donald Trump’s deal with Iran fell apart and already the President is back to doing what he does best: making extraordinary threats – then chickening out.
If only there had been some way to foresee that a peace treaty signed at the Palace of Versailles might not stand the test of time. It was just last month that Trump chose this grandiose but inauspicious location to sign his ceasefire agreement with Iran – and yet it is already in tatters.
Trump’s deal left almost every major question between the US and Iran unresolved. It did not handle the matter of Iran’s nuclear programme, which had supposedly been Trump’s main motivation for starting his war.
It did not agree the long-term future of the Strait of Hormuz. In practice, it was a 60-day deal to allow further talks to take place – but less than 30 days in, Trump appears to have lost patience with it entirely, and has ripped up his own deal. The “ceasefire”, he declared, was already over, so far as he was concerned.
The consequences of Trump’s impatience have already been deadly. The US has resumed airstrikes against Iran, and – despite repeated claims that the US had wiped out Iran’s offensive capabilities entirely – Iran has launched attacks of its own, against US military bases in the region. Iran has also attacked ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz without its permission, killing at least one person onboard.
