In the final hours of a presidency defined by volatility, Donald Trump is reportedly seeking last-minute edits to the US-Iran nuclear deal. This is not a move born of diplomatic strategy but of personal brand management. For years, Trump derided the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as an 'embarrassment'. Now, with the clock ticking, he wants to leave his mark on a document he once vowed to tear up. Yet for the people on the streets of Tehran and Washington, this late-stage tinkering feels less like policy and more like performance art.
Consider the human cost behind the headlines. In Iran, ordinary citizens have endured sanctions that crippled their economy and fuelled inflation. The deal they hoped would bring relief became a bargaining chip in a geopolitical game. In the US, families worried about another Middle Eastern war saw the deal as a fragile thread of peace. Trump's edits may satisfy his base, but they ignore the exhaustion of those who have lived through this uncertainty.
This is also a cultural shift. The nuclear deal was once a symbol of multilateralism, of nations sitting down to solve problems. Now it is a prop in a reality show. The language of diplomacy is being replaced by the language of deal-making: 'better terms', 'last-minute changes', 'leverage'. It reflects a broader trend where complex international agreements are treated as corporate acquisitions. Who gets the credit? Who walks away with the better deal? The substance is lost in the spin.
Class dynamics play a role too. The elite diplomats and political insiders who orchestrate these edits will not feel the pinch of a broken accord. It is the working-class families in both nations who will bear the consequences of renewed tensions. In Iran, the poor struggle to afford bread; in the US, veterans worry about deployment orders. The last-minute edits are a luxury of the powerful, a final flourish before the curtain falls.
This story is not about nuclear centrifuges or enrichment levels. It is about trust, memory and the human appetite for closure. Trump wants to rewrite the ending of a deal he never wrote. But history is not a Word document. You cannot cut and paste your legacy. The real edits will be made by the next administration, by the markets, by the protesters. As the clock ticks down, one thing is clear: the deal was never really his to edit.
In a world of soundbites and hashtags, we have lost the patience for genuine diplomacy. The US-Iran nuclear deal may survive or collapse, but the real story is how we have come to treat our most solemn agreements as disposable content. And that is a edit we should be terrified of.
