After dining lavishly on lobster, caviar and truffles in the opulent surrounds of the Palace of Versailles last night, Donald Trump affixed his signature to the much-anticipated memorandum of understanding that will, all being well, begin a 60-day ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran.

The document was subsequently signed in Tehran by the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

“This was not easy,” the US president reportedly remarked as he wielded his trademark Sharpie marker pen – a statement that may go down as a huge understatement. The text of the deal reveals the Iranian negotiators drove a very hard bargain in return for opening the Strait of Hormuz, which the world now hopes will enable the global economy to recover from the considerable disruption of the past three and a half months.

This war has been an utter disaster for the US and Israel, writes Arshin Adib-Moghaddam of SOAS, University of London, who has been researching and writing about Iranian affairs for many years. Trump and his ally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have failed to secure any of the outcomes they set out to achieve when they attacked Iran on February 28. In fact it has arguably left Iran, while battered, stronger strategically than it was before the war.

It’s not as if Iran-watchers haven’t warned of the danger of using blunt force against Iran. As Adib-Moghaddam notes here, he and fellow scholars and analysts have been stressing for years that the Islamic Republic was well prepared for the sort of asymmetrical conflict we have now seen it wage. And now, of course, it has demonstrated to........

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