The news lands with the familiar thunderclap of a Trumpian announcement: a new Iran deal is in the works, and British diplomats are scrambling to adjust their starched collars. To the uninitiated, this might seem like a sudden shift in Middle Eastern tectonics. To those of us who recall the rhythms of history, it is merely another episode in the West’s long, farcical dance with a regime that has perfected the art of stalling while enriching uranium.
Let us dispense with the pieties. The original JCPOA was not a masterstroke of diplomacy; it was a monument to wishful thinking, a parchment scribbled with promises that Tehran honoured only in the breach. President Trump’s withdrawal in 2018 was coarse, yes, but it was also a rare moment of honesty in a foreign policy establishment that prefers euphemisms to realities. Now, with the New York real estate mogul heralding a fresh framework, one must ask: has the mullahcracy finally capitulated, or are we watching the same old carousel?
The timing is exquisite. As Britain’s mandarins dust off their Farsi phrasebooks, the wider region is in flux. The Abraham Accords already reshaped the chessboard, pitting Israel and the Gulf states against Iran in a de facto alliance. The notion that a Western deal can supersede local dynamics is the sort of hubris that Edward Gibbon would have recognised: empires decline when they mistake their own grandeur for permanence. Our diplomats, poor souls, still believe in the magic of signatures. They forget that Iran’s supreme leader treats treaties as tactical pauses, not moral commitments.
What does the recalibration mean for Britain? It means our already tattered reputation as a global mediator takes another knock. We follow Washington’s lead not out of conviction but from sheer institutional inertia. The Foreign Office will produce a flurry of cautious statements, no doubt peppered with the word “welcome” and the phrase “ongoing dialogue”. Meanwhile, Tehran will extract concessions, pocket the relief from sanctions, and continue its missile programme.
One hesitates to sound like a broken clock, but the Fall of Rome was not a single event; it was a series of such moments, each a small surrender to the idea that negotiation is always preferable to resolve. The West has become a civilisation of lawyers, not soldiers. We believe in clauses and protocols, not in the brutal realities of power. The Iranians, by contrast, never forget that the point of a deal is to advance their interests, not to make peace.
Still, there is a perverse logic to Trump’s overture. The president thrives on the theatrical pivot, the dramatic reversal that keeps his opponents off balance. Perhaps this is a gambit to isolate Iran further, to squeeze it between American flexibility and Israeli steel. Perhaps it is a mere distraction from domestic troubles. In an age of intellectual decadence, we have lost the ability to read the intentions of statesmen; we can only react to their tweets.
The educated reader, weary of foreign policy sermons, might ask: what is to be done? The honest answer is that the West must stop treating the Middle East as an extension of its own moral theatre. Iran is a revolutionary state, not a liberal democracy. Its leaders believe in their mission, and no amount of charm offensives will change that. The only durable outcome is one that recognises the region’s tragic logic: stability requires deterrence, not trust.
So as British diplomats brace for the new order, let them remember that the Victorians built an empire on gunboats and resolve, not on negotiating tables. We have become soft, fond of our comforts and our multilateral platitudes. The Iran deal, whether it fails or succeeds, is a mirror held up to our civilisation: we see in it our own reluctance to face the world as it is. Trump, for all his bluster, at least understands that reality. The question is whether we are willing to look.
History, as ever, will judge. And it judges harshly those who mistake an agreement for a resolution. Let us hope, against hope, that this time is different. But let us not bet on it. The odds of the Augustans returning to Rome are about the same as a revolutionary theocracy becoming a trustworthy partner. Some things, dear reader, are as immutable as the stars.
