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Iran’s latest demands in the diplomatic quarrel over the Strait of Hormuz may seem excessive—Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said they “could never be an acceptable condition of any deal”—but in fact they were part of the deal that President Donald Trump agreed to two months ago.

The proposal, issued Saturday by the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, stated that Iran would not open the strait—the waterway for a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil traffic—until the United States ended its naval blockade, lifted sanctions on Iran’s oil exports, released Iran’s frozen assets, withdrew its military forces from the area around Iran, and paid reparations for the damage inflicted by its massive bombardment of the country since February.

Except for the part about reparations, the demands restated some of the 14 articles in the memorandum of understanding signed by U.S. and Iranian negotiators in mid-June. Though Trump hailed the MoU as a major achievement, the text described it as the “framework” for an agreement that diplomats would finalize over the subsequent 60 days. It fell apart within a week, predictably, as the two sides acted on conflicting interpretations of its central provisions.

And........

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