There are agreements that end wars, and there are agreements that merely confess that war has failed. The reported US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding belongs, at least for now, to the second category. It is not yet peace. It is not even a settlement in the durable sense of that word. It is a pause forced upon all sides by the exhaustion of coercion.

For Washington, the lesson is uncomfortable. Even after decades of sanctions, military pressure, naval blockade, covert action and regional containment, Iran could not be reduced to a state of surrender. For Tehran, the lesson is equally severe. Strategic defiance carries a crushing price. Its infrastructure has been hit, its economy weakened, its people pushed deeper into hardship, and its regional deterrence has been exposed as less reliable than its rhetoric suggested.

This is why the MoU should not be read as an American victory or an Iranian triumph. It is better understood as an armistice of exhausted powers. The United States discovered that punishment alone cannot reorder the Middle East. Iran discovered that resistance alone cannot secure national survival. Israel discovered that military preponderance cannot by itself manufacture strategic obedience. The Gulf discovered, again, that geography is destiny. And the world discovered that a narrow maritime passage can still discipline empires.

That passage is the Strait of Hormuz.The nuclear question has understandably dominated the public debate. It was the centre of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and it remains the most sensitive point in any negotiation with Iran. But the new situation is larger than enrichment levels, centrifuges and inspections. The immediate centre of gravity is maritime. The reported terms around reopening Hormuz, restoring freedom of navigation, easing blockades and stabilising energy flows reveal the deeper reality: Iran’s most important weapon may not be a missile or a centrifuge, but its geography.

This is the return of chokepoint geopolitics.Through Hormuz passes a major share of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas. For India, China, Japan, South Korea and much of Asia, this is not an abstract........

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