“I’m the boss,” Donald Trump quipped as he swaggered into the G7 meeting of Western leaders in the French Alps on Wednesday.
Nervous laughter acknowledged the truth in those words.
But part of this bravado rings hollow against the backdrop of the “great deal” with Iran that the US president has claimed will bring peace and security to the entire Middle East.
On his Truth Social platform, Trump described himself as the first US president in history to make peace with Iran. Despite the growing unpopularity of the sprawling war back in the US, he has repeatedly declared victory.
But the 14-point plan reads more like a shopping list of capitulations than an agreement in which the US has made Iran “pay the price”.
There are also gaping holes where some of the trickiest sticking points have not been addressed.
Most glaringly absent are details of who will control the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway that Iran has strangled, causing the biggest disruption to energy supplies in modern history.
Also missing from the plan is any mention of Israel and the future of its military occupation of swathes of Lebanon.
The memorandum of understanding is set to be formally signed in Switzerland on Friday, triggering a 60-day window to negotiate the final terms.
The first article of the deal focuses on “an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon”.
Yet there is no mention of Israel’s ongoing military occupation, and its evacuation orders that cover more than a fifth of Lebanese territory: the most significant obstacle to any hope of ending hostilities there.
The agreement says the US will lift the naval blockade on Iran within a maximum of 30 days and eventually withdraw all its forces from the surrounding region.
The US has also committed to lifting all unilateral US sanctions, both primary and secondary, on Iran, despite the fact that Trump has repeatedly blasted former president Barack Obama for doing that.
This would take place according to a timetable to be agreed as part of the final settlement.
In the interim, until sanctions are lifted, the US Treasury Department has apparently agreed to issue waivers for exports of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products and their derivatives, “as well as all related services, including banking, insurance and transportation”.
That would be huge.
In Article 11, Iran’s frozen and restricted funds and assets, believed to amount to billions of dollars, will also be released and “made fully available” as negotiations progress towards a final agreement.
There is also a $300bn rehabilitation fund to rebuild Iran (although unnamed US officials have since told Reuters that none of the cash would come from US government grants and it was effectively a private investment fund).
In exchange for all this, Iran “reaffirms” that it will never produce nuclear weapons.
Reaffirms is an interesting choice of word. Iran has always denied US claims that it was planning to build a nuclear weapon, so this hardly feels like a major concession.
Article 8 also states that the fate of Iran’s enriched material, or “nuclear dust” as Trump likes to call it, will only be addressed in the final agreement.
That marks a step back from Trump’s previous promises that the material would be immediately destroyed (possibly even in the US).
Meanwhile, Article 9 says that, pending a final agreement: “Iran will maintain the current status quo on its nuclear programme, and the United States will not impose new sanctions and will not deploy additional forces in the region.”
Maintaining the status quo is far from the decisive victory, or the “crushing” of Iran, that Trump has repeatedly boasted about.
The least clear section concerns the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has agreed to make arrangements to restore shipping volumes to pre-war levels within 30 days, including de-mining it.
But despite Trump’s public insistence that Iran will not run the waterway, the deal includes dialogue between Iran and Oman to “define the future administration” of the strait, leaving the option open for Iranian control.
Both sides will be keen to spin the deal as a win for them.
But the essential battlegrounds remain unresolved. And there is a noisy, unpredictable third player in the mix.
Israel is struggling with Lebanon’s inclusion in the ceasefire. Benjamin Netanyahu – on a collision course with his most lucrative ally in the US – has made clear he does not consider himself bound by the agreement.
“The struggle has not ended,” he said in a defiant address on Wednesday, vowing that Israeli troops would remain in southern Lebanon.
With so much yet to be agreed upon – including the formal release of an agreed text – the nagging question still remains.
What has this war, at a cost of billions to the world, actually achieved?
