In the autumn of 1956, Britain and France launched a military operation to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser. The operation was swift, decisive, and, within weeks, a geopolitical catastrophe. Washington refused to support it. The pound collapsed. The troops withdrew. While it wouldn't be appropriate to downplay the event with a mere sentence, it revealed a harsh truth: the era of European imperial power projection had come to an end. Many historians state this crisis as the start of the collapse of the British and French Empires.

The United States has spent the decades since as the inheritor of that mantle. In the Middle East, that posture has rarely been questioned. But it is being questioned now, and the interrogation is arriving from an unexpected direction. The US, Israel-Iran war is now entering its fourth week, a Strait of Hormuz blockade that has sent oil markets into their worst crisis since the 1970s, and a Truth Social post that may, in retrospect, come to mark an inflection point as consequential as the moment British troops boarded their ships home from Port Said.

As the Iran war entered its fourth week, President Donald Trump announced on Monday that the United States had engaged in diplomatic talks with Iran and was taking a five-day pause on strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure. The announcement came via Truth Social, in characteristically capitalised prose: the U.S. and Iran had, Trump wrote, held "very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East."

Trump had issued a 48-hour ultimatum over the weekend, threatening to "obliterate" Iran's power plants if Tehran did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That deadline was due to expire Monday evening. It did not. Instead came the pause, five days, contingent on progress, the Department of War instructed to stand down on energy infrastructure strikes.

Trump said special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had held discussions into Sunday evening with a "top person" on the Iranian side, claiming both parties were keen to "make a deal" and would speak again by phone on Monday. Iran's response was to flatly deny that any such talks had taken place. Iranian state media, citing an unnamed senior security official, said: "There has been no negotiation and there is no negotiation, and with this kind of psychological warfare, neither the Strait of Hormuz will return to its pre-war conditions nor will there be peace in the energy markets."

Two parties. One alleged deal. Zero confirmed........

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