A deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is set for signature on Friday, and Donald Trump is already congratulating himself on being the first US president to have made peace with Iran since the country’s 1979 revolution. That’s wrong. He is the first to have taken America to war with Iran, and therefore the first to have needed a truce to stop one. The peace his predecessors sought and failed to achieve has yet to come.
None of this would be cause for criticism if the decision to attack the Islamic Republic were to leave the US in a substantially better negotiating position than it enjoyed before the start of hostilities. We can’t be sure of the terms of the so-called Memorandum of Understanding, because they haven’t been published. But the fact that the Iranians are gloating, while Israelis are horrified, strongly suggests that isn’t the case.