“There never was a good war or a bad peace,” wrote Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s founding fathers, in 1783. On Sunday, Washington and Tehran announced preparations to sign a deal in Switzerland this week that could, at last, bring their war to a close. Few outside US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel would agree that this war was “good”. There is no question Iran has, for years, provoked its neighbours and the US through an aggressive and hegemonic foreign policy. But the decision to strike Tehran dramatically underestimated the price that a failure to achieve “total victory” would exact on the world economy. At the same time, many in the Middle East fear the coming peace – if negotiated to the region's and global economy's disadvantage – will be a bad one.
The agreement’s rough outlines – gleaned thus far through background briefings, leaks and social media posts from Washington and Tehran – promise much. Advertised is an immediate end to hostilities on all fronts. Critically, this includes Lebanon, where Israel’s relentless bombing campaign has thus far blocked negotiators’ progress. Also included is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of oil sanctions against Iran and 60 days of talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, which Tehran is said to be ready to halt. For the millions across the Gulf who spent the spring living under missile alerts, these are not abstractions. If this ruinous war is really ending, that is worth something.
Yet the weeks that preceded the deal give cause for unease. The Pakistan-brokered truce agreed between the US and Iran in April did not end the violence so much as rename it. Iranian projectiles continued to target the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain. Israeli attacks on Lebanon intensified even when Mr Trump cautioned Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, against them. Regional officials have taken to describing the result as a low-intensity war, in which limited strikes and ground incursions persist while agreements remain nominally intact. A new settlement should not be built on the same elastic notion of a ceasefire. This will partly depend on whether Mr Netanyahu’s thirst for violence in Lebanon can really be reined in.
The deeper flaw may be what the deal leaves out. It addresses Iran’s nuclear programme and grip on Hormuz, but is expected to say little of the regional ambitions that have unsettled the Arab world for a generation. As this newspaper has argued before, it is Tehran’s network of proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen – not its centrifuges alone – that drives instability. An agreement that lets the regime declare victory, recover billions in frozen assets and rebuild those militias risks rewarding such behaviour.
Nor is it likely to reckon with Israel’s conduct. Mr Netanyahu used this war as a pretext for operations in Lebanon that nearly all of Israel’s allies consider indefensible. Reports suggest this week’s deal could preserve Israel’s freedom to act militarily while requiring restraint of everyone else.
None of this argues for prolonging the war, only for a clear-eyed and diligent approach to what is being signed. A bad peace would pause the fighting while leaving every incentive for its resumption intact. A good one would use this moment to chart a firmer course with better guardrails than what past deals with Iran and Israel have allowed.
Mr Trump’s Vice President, JD Vance, said on Sunday that the new peace deal could “fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years”. Whether that is for the better or worse will depend on what happens in the next 60 days.
