Peace deals are never easy and the path to the U.S.-Iran agreement announced on Sunday may yet take unexpected turns.

If implemented as envisioned, the pact will conclude — for now — a war that has remade the Middle East. It will ease the strain on world markets by reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

But fundamentally, the deal will mark more of an intermission than a conclusion: It would entrench rather than end the struggle between America and Iran. And it would not undo the regional and global changes the war set in motion, many of them deeply challenging for the U.S.

The emerging deal between Washington and Tehran, based on a “memorandum of understanding” laboriously........

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