Sooner or later in every armed conflict, someone will trot out the well-worn aphorism that “Truth is the first casualty of war.” And certainly, in the Iran war truth beat a hasty retreat as soon as the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran and Lebanon on February 28.

But what was meant to be an operation which would be all over within days has now lasted three months. And, during that time, truth – and at points, reality itself – has come in for a thorough beating from all sides.

This week we’ve heard from Iranian state TV, which announced it had obtained a copy of an “unofficial framework for a memorandum of understanding” of how to end the conflict. The main points, which included a plan for Iran to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in partnership with Oman and giving Tehran access to billions of dollars of frozen assets, come across as highly improbable to say the least.

Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump immediately dismissed this as “a complete fabrication”, going on to threaten to bomb Oman if it turned out to be true. “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up”, he told a reporter on Wednesday. “They understand that. They’ll be fine,” he added.

The US president followed this up with a post on TruthSocial in which he said it should be mandatory for an array of Arab and Muslim countries across the region to sign up to the Abraham accords and normalise relations with Israel. Trump sees this as the landmark achievement of his first term of office. But after signing up Israel, the UAE, Bahrain,........

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