It was fight night on the White House lawn. Beneath a great steel canopy nicknamed ¡°the Claw,¡± Justin Gaethje did a backflip off the caged ring in the center of the South Lawn after winning the Ultimate Fighting Championship title card. In the audience, the president, newly 80, had just announced that the Iran war was over, and the Strait of Hormuz was open.
Hours earlier, around when he was gathering for a birthday dinner with family inside the White House, Donald Trump had fired off a social media post announcing a deal to end the Iran War he¡¯d started nearly four months earlier: ¡°The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,¡± he declared on Truth Social. ¡°Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!¡±
But as with so much of the war, Trump¡¯s rhetoric ran ahead of the facts on the ground. The text hadn¡¯t been released, the formal signing was still days away and the hardest questions ¡ª nuclear, sanctions, Lebanon ¡ª had been kicked down the road.
It almost didn¡¯t happen. That morning at around 6:45 a.m. in Washington, Israel bombed southern Beirut ¡ª exactly the kind of move that Iranian negotiators warned would blow up the talks. Israel said it was responding to projectiles fired by Tehran-backed Hezbollah.
Across the West and the Persian Gulf, critics saw something else: a last-ditch effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scuttle a deal he¡¯d been shut out of. Iran balked, but four hours later, Trump took to social media to criticize the Israeli attack, which he said ¡°should not have happened.¡±
His frustration with his wartime partner was no longer secret. He told Axios that afternoon that the signing was delayed a few hours because of the strikes, and that he¡¯d called Netanyahu to berate him over it. ¡°I was so pissed off. I let him know,¡± he said in a expletive-laden tirade. Within a few days, the U.S. president would be echoing some of Israel¡¯s staunchest critics. But first, he needed Iran to agree to sign.
Three hours later, Trump had the thing he¡¯d been promising for months: a deal, or at least the framework for one. There were no details beyond leaked drafts that suggested a financial bonanza for Iran: immediate oil waivers, potentially imminent sanctions relief, and a possible $300 billion reconstruction fund backed by Gulf money. For Washington, the gains were narrower: a reopened Strait of Hormuz, an end to the fighting, and another pledge that...
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