Donald Trump is once again doing what he does best. He is trying to market confusion as statesmanship, improvisation as strategy, and a pause in violence as proof of peace. The ceasefire he has been touting as a great personal triumph already looks less like a diplomatic achievement and more like a clumsily assembled political prop.

It was built to dominate a news cycle, not to survive contact with the region it claims to pacify. That is the first thing one must understand about this latest farce.

A real ceasefire is not just an announcement or a boast, and it is certainly not a social media performance. It is a negotiated structure with clear terms, obligations, enforcement, and consequences for violation. What Trump appears to have pushed through was something altogether flimsier, a public relations moment dressed up as a diplomatic breakthrough!

Also Read: How Donald Trump turns war into spectacle

The moment the dust began to settle, the contradictions were already visible. Iran and others seemed to operate on the understanding that Lebanon was part of the de-escalation framework, and Donald Trump himself had signalled that the Iranian proposal looked workable.

Yet, the moment Israel resumed pounding Lebanon and the arrangement came under strain, Washington retreated into semantic evasions. US Vice President J D Vance now says the ceasefire was really only between the United States and Iran, and if others thought Lebanon was covered, that was their misunderstanding and their problem.

In other words, the United States now wants to claim the prestige of brokering calm without accepting responsibility for the very theatre where that calm is being shredded. This is not a misunderstanding, but the oldest American trick in the book.........

© Mathrubhumi English