What is striking about the US-Iran memorandum is not only what it includes, but what it leaves out. It is dressed in the language of war prevention, sanctions relief, nuclear restraint, and regional calm. Yet it manages to erase the one thing that ought to sit at the centre of any serious agreement: the Iranian people.

That omission is not accidental. It is the familiar diplomatic fraud. The great and the good will speak solemnly about obligations, international responsibility, human rights, and the duty to avert wider catastrophe, then draft a document that treats Iran as a problem to be managed rather than a country to be reckoned with. They promise accountability with one hand and file away the people who must live with the consequences with the other. The population is praised in theory and ignored in practice.

And what of President Trump’s promises? He has made a habit of speaking as though forceful rhetoric were a substitute for principle. He promises strength, deliverance, deal-making, and a new seriousness. But if those promises end in another arrangement that secures the state while ignoring the society, then the performance was hollow from the start. One can hardly brag about toughness if it stops at the perimeter of the regime and never reaches the prisons, the streets, the universities, or the homes where fear is part of daily........

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