Since the outbreak of the war, Trump has announced on around fifty occasions that a deal with Iran was imminent. On at least two occasions, international mediators such as Pakistan have confirmed that a deal had been reached.

Yet, on both occasions, there was something odd about this agreement.

To begin with, the moderate wing of the Pasdaran was quick to point out that the agreement contained terms far more humiliating for the US than the press had admitted.
For its part, the hardline wing of the Pasdaran rejected it outright, thundering that the Islamic ‘Republic’ had not in fact signed it and that the very idea of signing it would have been an act of treason. The most contentious issues – starting with uranium enrichment and the fate of already-enriched uranium – were deferred to vague future talks, with potentially any outcome.

The skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah showed no sign of stopping, ships in the Strait of Hormuz continued to pass through sporadically, every now and then a drone would crash into a target, and the general impression was that the war was far from over.

Anyone who felt a sense of déjà vu in the face of all this need not look too far back in their memories: last year, too, the ‘peace plan for Gaza’ had worked – or rather, had failed to work – in exactly the same way.
Admittedly, the fiercest phase of the hostilities has ceased, but neither Hamas nor Israel has laid down its arms, no international mission has even attempted to make them do so, the occupied territories remain occupied, and the billionaire ‘Board of Peace’ has served only to provide vivid proof that Trump feels more affinity with Belarus than with France.

In fact, what Trump passed off as historic agreements were never anything more than temporary truces, which each side hoped would allow them to catch their breath and prepare to strike the enemy at a more opportune moment.

Faced with this blatant deception, the most serious and decent-minded people have, understandably, been outraged.
How dare that scoundrel Trump take words once held in such high regard as ‘peace’ and ‘dialogue’ and use them with a meaning that is different, if not the exact opposite, of what they should mean?
How dare he, with his compulsive social media posts, raise the hopes of millions of people suffering under the bombs, only to dash those very hopes half a day later by threatening to ‘strike hard’ or even to ‘wipe out a civilisation’?

Since when is it acceptable to tout as a peace agreement something that, in fact, is not one?

Kant had warned us

In fact, it has been so since the dawn of time. As is often the case, digital media and the politics of constant performance have acted as catalysts for a trend that had existed long before, simply making it more apparent.

When Immanuel Kant wrote his short treatise For Perpetual Peace in 1795, he was already well aware that only a peace that eliminates any pretext for future wars between the two contending parties deserves the name ‘peace ’.
A ‘peace’ which, on the contrary, is concluded ‘with the secret reservation of retaining grounds for a future war’ is deceptive, and we have a duty to regard it for what it is: merely a truce.

The Baltic philosopher’s little book was a brilliant piece of work. In its first section, under the (exaggerated and comical) pretence of teaching his readers how to achieve world peace, he focused with ruthless analytical precision on a series of illogical or deceitful behaviours that men adopt when waging war, and which, once adopted, make it easier for the next war to break out.

In addition to false peace treaties – which, by failing to resolve the issue that caused the war in the first place, merely buy time to reorganise and resume the attack – Kant cites other examples.

A sadly topical example is that of ‘dishonourable stratagems’ (in his day, poisoning, treachery or the violation of terms of surrender), which make it impossible to trust the opposing side again even after the war has ended.
Another example is the use of mercenaries: when men are treated as commodities to be bought and sold, rather than as members of a people who, as such, constitute a moral entity, wars become not only illegitimate but also easier to start.

Kant was also opposed to public debt incurred to fund military campaigns, to standing armies, and to foreign invasions aimed at changing the form of government of another state in the absence of a pre-existing civil war.
Many living leaders would be up in arms, from Putin to Bush, but in 1795 Kant had before his eyes the great crusade of the European monarchies united against revolutionary France.

The conflict would only come to an end at Waterloo, twenty years and a million deaths later, with the (at least partial) removal of the problem that had sparked the war in the first place: the very existence of revolutionary France, which, first through emulation and then through cannon fire, threatened to export its innovations from the Argentine pampas to the Russian steppes.

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Well, even in our own time, just as in Kant’s, wars are bound to continue until whatever the aggressor perceives as an existential threat is eliminated.

Take Putin: he cannot bear the sight of an independent and democratic Ukraine before the eyes of the Russian people.
And, as the sham Minsk agreements have shown, he will not stop until he has destroyed independent Ukraine – or until independent Ukraine has destroyed him. That is why the charade of talks in Alaska, Turkey or on Saturn can lead nowhere and will never lead anywhere.

The terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, along with their financiers and supporters, cannot bear the existence of a Jewish state. And, as they have demonstrated on numerous occasions, they will not stop until they have destroyed the Jewish state or until the Jewish state (or, we hope, some less compromised entity such as a coalition of predominantly Muslim countries) has destroyed them.
That is why the ‘Board of Peace’ and similar initiatives on Lebanon are nothing but a waste of time.

The litmus test is the only peace agreement that Trump has successfully brokered: the one between Azerbaijan and Armenia (not ‘between Aberbaijan and Albania’, as he announced, beaming).
In that instance, the Armenian president had agreed to the agonising surrender of Karabakh, a region formally part of Azerbaijan but inhabited by Armenian Christians since the Middle Ages, and from which, in 2023, nearly one hundred thousand refugees had chosen to flee, enduring ethnic cleansing, rather than remain, fall into the hands of the Azeris and suffer genocide.
The main stumbling block between the two countries had been removed, and so peace, albeit reluctantly, could be achieved.

Neither Washington nor Tehran can back down

As for Iran, let’s not beat about the bush: whilst it is undeniable that Trump’s intervention was a disastrous mistake in terms of both timing and approach, it is an equally objective fact that a Pasdaran regime armed with atomic bombs would be a nightmare for much of humanity, starting with the Arab countries.

Therefore, if the US and Israel fail to secure guarantees at least regarding the destruction of enriched uranium, they may, yes, ease the pressure slightly to give the Strait of Hormuz and the global economy some breathing space, but they certainly cannot sign any definitive agreements.

For their part, the Pasdaran are in the midst of a profound crisis of legitimacy following the January protests, and are desperate to claim that they have defeated the Jewish and American ‘Great Satan ’: not only, therefore, do they wish to continue enriching uranium, but they also demand to keep control of the famous strait as their spoils, over which they dream of imposing their mafia-style protection racket in defiance of any international law governing waterways.

Freedom of navigation, let us remember, is no laughing matter: it was the pretext under which the US entered the First World War and one of the principles of the Atlantic Charter to which its commitment in the Second World War was bound.
Can the US and the world really afford to usher in a new era of mafia-style extortion over passage through the straits?

In short, as long as unresolved issues of such significance remain, any peace agreement will not be a genuine peace agreement.
It will be a piece of media tactics or, as the experts like to put it, ‘performative diplomacy’.

Kant had sensed this back in the days when peace treaties were negotiated by gentlemen in wigs, coloured stockings and fake moles.
Today they are negotiated through social media posts, tweets and drones, but the essence, unfortunately, remains the same.