This is Dispatches with Patrick Cockburn, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

This is Dispatches with Patrick Cockburn, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.

Oil tankers are beginning to make their way nervously out of the Strait of Hormuz for the first time in 10 weeks under the terms of the US-Iran deal to end the war. At the same time, the US has ended its blockade of Iranian ports and suspended sanctions on Iranian oil.

President Donald Trump faces strong criticism from Israel and anti-Iran hawks in the US for agreeing a peace accord, or memorandum of understanding (MOU), which leaves Iran stronger than it was before the war. But the President appears intent on avoiding his own “forever war” like those he had previously criticised in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given the unpopularity of the war in America – and the fact that critics of the deal offer no alternative policy other than more war – he may get away with an utter failure to achieve his original objectives of regime change after a decisive military victory.

Will the deal last? Friction is already impeding negotiation of the next phase of the pact, with US Vice President JD Vance dropping plans to travel to Switzerland for further talks. Suspicion of the US, which has twice attacked Iran while peace negotiations were under way, has apparently led Iran to wait to see whether or not the US is going to implement the interim agreement.

Israel is the biggest obstacle to a negotiated peace, its leaders denouncing the deal as a betrayal and a calamity for all. The first paragraph of the MOU mandates “the immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon”. But Israel is desperate not to end its incursion into Lebanon where it is fighting a resurgent Hezbollah, the Shia paramilitary movement allied to Iran. On Friday there was fierce fighting in the south of the country where Israel says that a four-man Israeli tank crew, including a battalion commander, were killed and a further five Israeli soldiers wounded in attacks on Friday by Hezbollah, while Israeli air strikes killed 18 and injured 33 people according to the Lebanese government. Later Israel and Hezbollah announced a ceasefire.

It looks unlikely that the MOU will unravel at this late stage, though Israel will try to preserve its freedom of operations in Lebanon. These are now being constricted on the insistence of Trump, who, along with Vance, has been publicly denouncing Israeli behaviour in furious terms never used by American leaders in the past.

Trump recounted his expletive-laden exchanges with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he accuses of reckless violence in a bid to provoke Iran into stalling or scrapping the peace deal. Vance said of Israel in an interview with The New York Times that “you can’t just kill your way out of solving every national security problem that you have”. Trump demanded that Israel stop blowing up entire apartment blocks, with civilians inside, just because they saw a single Hezbollah fighter........

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