One can only imagine the jubilation on the streets of Kiev and Moscow this week, with the news that Trump has sorted out the Middle East and is now free to turn his attention to resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Before I consider the pesky little details of that sorting out of the Middle East, let me give you two little tastes of what living in a war zone feels like, on a day-to-day basis. The influence of the war can be felt in all sorts of unexpected places. Here are two of them.
(A quick word of background to the first little taste. For decades now, apartment buildings (or blocks of flats, as I realise with a slight shock I used to call them) in Israel have been constructed with a dedicated communal bomb shelter in the basement. More recently, new homes have been built with each apartment having a ‘safe room’, essentially a one-family bomb-proof room that is an integral part of the family apartment and functions in normal times (whatever they are) as an additional room.)
Israeli media, like, I suspect, those of most of the first world, are full of adverts for retirement homes, golden age resorts, assisted living, and so forth. In Israel, many of these complexes are fairly high-end, and the advertising often targets the 55+, still very active and independent, pre-retirement population. A radio advert currently running gives much prominence to the fact that ‘every apartment in our complex has its own integral safe room with a sea view, so that, when the sirens sound, you don’t even have to move.’ In Israel, in 2026, an integral safe room is a top priority selling point for a retirement home.
As for your second appetiser: a lead story on this week’s news was a warning from Israel’s Transportation minister. As the chief administrator of Ben Gurion airport explained, the world’s airlines are now expected to be flying to Israel this summer, and 2.4 million air tickets have been sold for flights into and out of Ben Gurion airport in July. However, the airport is currently able to handle only 1.6 million passengers, because it has insufficient space for planes to park. The reason for this is that about two-thirds of the airport’s aircraft parking capacity is currently occupied by 70 USAF refuelling and transport planes.
With peace having broken out when I wasn’t looking the other day, these 70 planes may all go back to where they are usually parked. If they don’t, 800,000 passengers may have their flights cancelled on them, since the airline cannot fly them to Israel because the plane park is full. This, I suppose, puts into perspective my own annoyance when I headed for our local mall on Sunday and drove around for 5 minutes unable to find a parking space and finally gave up and parked a five-minute walk away.
With a sinking feeling, I see that I have only achieved, with that preamble, 460 words, which means I have no alternative but to address ‘the deal’. This is problematic, and only partly because it is likely to put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. ‘Addressing the deal’, it emerges, is about as meaningful a term as ‘recognising Palestine’
You probably don’t remember my blog post from 25 August last year. But, then, you probably don’t file all my blog posts in a folder on your desktop, as I do. Let me refresh your memory. I wrote then about that week’s European fad, to recognise the state of Palestine. I quoted, on that occasion, the following verse:
As I was going down the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
I wish that man would go away!
Last time, the man who wasn’t there had metamorphosed into a country. This time, he has transformed himself into a peace agreement.
I can’t speak with absolute authority, since we mere mortals have not been privileged to have the details of the peace agreement – sorry, I can’t keep this charade up any longer: it’s not a peace agreement; it’s a ‘peace agreement’ – to have the details of the ‘peace agreement’ shared with them. However, it seems clear that what this thing is is nothing more than two lists, representing the positions of Trump and the IRGC, which will form the basis of discussions over the next 60 days, at the end of which the IRGC will not have moved a centimetre from their listed position, and, in order to have any chance of emerging from the mid-terms in November with a shred of respectability, Trump will sell out Israel, the US and the rest of the free world, by accepting the IRGC position, and then, if not sooner, release money to enable the IRGC to resume full funding of its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza.
JD Vance tells us that the ‘peace agreement’ is “a very general document” and is “about a page and a half” long, so it is clearly nothing more than a series of bullet points to form the basis of discussions toward a peace agreement (or, more accurately away from a peace agreement and toward a Trump sell-out).
It’s fair to say that I’m not widely known for the insightfulness of my geopolitical analysis. So, if I say that I have serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concession Trump is trumpeting (“Iran has agreed to never have a Nuclear Weapon” [Trump’s caps], you are entitled to question my credentials. Fortunately for my argument, reports are that it isn’t just me saying this, but also the director of the CIA, whose street creds are presumably significantly greater than mine.
The Times of London reports that a source told the American news website Axios that “the intelligence reflects that the Iranian intentions are not in line with their commitments under the deal”. In the real world, we call that lying and cheating. The source stated that “the intelligence agencies concluded that the way Iranian officials were discussing the deal among themselves was inconsistent with what they were telling the mediators”. I know: almost impossible to believe, isn’t it!
If I needed any more convincing that this week’s developments are deeply concerning, confirmation came in the form of messages from the leaders of Germany, France, the UK and Italy, welcoming the signing of the memorandum. Usually a very reliable yardstick these days: If the West European football giants agree on something, it’s never a good sign.
America’s primary concern was stated with engaging honesty by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer: “What exactly is in this understanding? Will service members remain in harm’s way? What have we actually gained here from Trump’s war?” What a telling framing of concerns that is. For the Senate minority leader, the primary concern is ensuring that US military personnel are not in any danger. The secondary concern is whether the free world is safer or not. Forgive me if I seem callous, and I truly would not wish to belittle even a single soldier’s death, but the primary purpose of an army is not to be kept safe, but to keep its country safe. By the very nature of the concept of a military, the safety of troops cannot be a country’s primary consideration.
Even Trump’s supporters among Republicans in the Senate seem sceptical about the deal. Republican senator Lindsey Graham said he was “somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiation team is claiming”. So, he agrees with the CIA assessment. America and Iran are co-signing an agreement (initially digitally and, this coming Friday, physically) on whose meaning and interpretation they do not agree.
There are times in history when enemy states wish to end a conflict honourably and pursue a path of peace. Sometimes, they achieve this by signing an agreement whose ambiguity allows each of them to avoid losing face with its own people.
There are other times in history when one state wishes to end a conflict honourably and pursue a path of peace, and the other wishes to resume, unhindered, its belligerent march towards regional domination and the destruction of its enemies. Any leader who signs an ambiguous agreement with such a state is not safe to be trusted with a fountain pen.
Tellingly, Senator Graham went on to identify VP Vance as the “architect of the deal”. This reads remarkably like recognising this ‘deal’ as the charade it is. In readiness for handling the fiasco that is bound to ensue, Vance is being set up to be pushed under the bus when it starts careering out of control.
The trouble, from where I’m sitting, is that Vance is not the only one who is in grave danger of being pushed under this careering bus. In common with every last Israeli, I am feeling a lot closer to that bus’s wheels than I was a few days ago.
As the Psalmist says, “Put not thy faith in princes” (146:3).
I fear that the geopolitical structure upon which we relied for 70 years is now falling down.
Like everyone else in Israel, I’m hoping for a mini-bus.
Trump is no Churchill. Churchill’s comment on the Munich agreement, (‘peace in our times’) comes to mind. “You had to choose between dishonor and war; you chose dishonor, and you shall have war.”