The history books will show that on this day, the United States and Iran signed a document that may or may not be worth the foolscap it's printed on, but which certainly cost more than the chairs used in the negotiation. British intelligence, with the kind of weary knowingness usually seen in barmen who've heard every excuse, is whispering that this 'historic accord' is about as solid as a gin and tonic with no gin. It's a cover-up, they say.
A strategic sprucing-up of a pig in lipstick. Because you see, the cost of war is not measured in dollars or missiles; it's measured in the hollow ache in the gut of every mother who lost a child, every child who lost a father, every politician who lost a microphone. But here, in this deal, we have a heady mix of handshakes and hyperbole, a papist confession without the penance.
The deal claims to freeze Iran's nuclear ambitions, but what of the ambitions of the hawks in Washington who needed a boogeyman for the last 40 years? The true cover-up is not about centrifuges or enriched uranium; it's about the obscene cost of conflict, the trillions that flowed into the pockets of defence contractors while the national infrastructure crumbled and the poor were left to fight for pittance. The Americans and Iranians will spin this as a victory for diplomacy.
I call it a victory for amnesia. The real news, the stuff that gets swept under the flag, is that war has a price, and we are still paying it. British intelligence, those sad-eyed chroniclers of geopolitical folly, know that this deal is a bandage on a gangrenous limb.
The hollowness of the cost of war is that it is never paid, it's only ever deferred. So pop the champagne corks, my friends, and raise a glass of lukewarm Chardonnay to the 'Deal of the Century'. Just don't ask me to drink to the health of the souls that paid for it.
