By Amar Singh Bhandal

On the morning of 6th May as American and Iranian negotiators were exchanging drafts of a memorandum of understanding intended to end the war, President Trump posted a message on Truth Social.

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"If they don't agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before." Previous American presidents could not have written that sentence and credibly meant it. This one can, and the difference explains the logic underpinning how this war is being fought and how it might end.

The diplomatic scramble that has characterised the war in Iran over the past few days — a one-page memorandum floating between negotiators amid renewed missiles and drones deployed across the Gulf — is being reported in Europe as just the latest instalment of Washington's haphazard approach to ending the conflict. Think tanks have already begun picking apart the proposed deal: the unfreezing of assets, the future of Hormuz, the all-important question of uranium enrichment. There is, however, an analytical hole that remains almost entirely overlooked in British and European commentary, without which the negotiations look chaotic and unstructured. When properly understood, a far more calculated - though no more comforting - doctrine can be seen at play.

The Pottery Barn Rule: you break it, you own it. Coined by Secretary of State Colin Powell before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this simple logic dominated US foreign policy for two decades. It bound military action to post-conflict responsibility regardless of cost or consequence, constrained the........

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