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The White House blew up the Hormuz cease-fire agreement because it didn’t understand—or didn’t care—what it had agreed to. The results will cast a long shadow over the strait.

When it comes to peace and cease-fire agreements, details matter. This applies to any international agreement, of course, but when armed conflict is involved, the lack of trust or goodwill between the parties allows for almost no room for error or imprecision. Even if never brought before any judicial body, the signed text of an agreement is the only way to establish exactly what the parties actually agreed to.

The White House blew up the Hormuz cease-fire agreement because it didn’t understand—or didn’t care—what it had agreed to. The results will cast a long shadow over the strait.

When it comes to peace and cease-fire agreements, details matter. This applies to any international agreement, of course, but when armed conflict is involved, the lack of trust or goodwill between the parties allows for almost no room for error or imprecision. Even if never brought before any judicial body, the signed text of an agreement is the only way to establish exactly what the parties actually agreed to.

Before going any further, a caveat. As is often the case with international agreements, translation issues are a significant concern. According to images released via Iranian state media, U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian each signed both English and Farsi versions of the text. My assessment is based upon a scan of the signed English text released by the White House. Absent contrary language in the agreement, however, both versions are equally official and controlling, and without a careful comparison of the two by a qualified translator, there is no way to know how they might differ or how significant any differences might be.

Even in a single language, small differences in wording, structure, or sequencing can have potentially life-or-death consequences. Any vagueness at all opens the door to disputes over interpretation. In the 2020 U.S.-Taliban agreement, for example, the Taliban promised to release “[u]p to five thousand (5,000) prisoners,” and then quickly stepped up their attacks specifically to capture more prisoners to........

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