I write about this war once a month, mostly for myself. Writing is how I think. Building an argument on the page is how I work out what might be happening and what might come next. The method earns its keep, but it keeps catching me out, because this war has surprised me more than once.
The cleanest miss was the last one. In June I argued the peace would hold, albeit messily, on two self-enforcing ceilings neither side could afford to break. It broke inside three weeks. I had the deal itself roughly right, having put a negotiated climbdown in May at better than three chances in four, and the memorandum arrived on cue on 17 June. What surprised me was how briefly it lasted, and that Iran discarded a settlement written largely in its favour.
Put the misses together and a pattern shows through. I keep expecting this thing to end. Brevity in March, a deal by summer in May, a durable settlement in June. The one outcome I kept discounting, the long grind, is the one we now have. It is becoming a morass.
There is a second habit sitting underneath that one, and I only caught it while writing this month's piece. I keep assuming the staff work has been done. In March I assumed serious planning lay upstream of the military execution. It did not. This month I assumed an agreement had been tested for workability before it was put to Iran. It had not. Both are the same error in different clothes. I keep crediting the US in this war with more competence than it possesses.
So I will pay less attention this month to what Tehran and Washington say, and more to what they do. This piece is mostly about the memorandum of 17 June, because a peace that died in eight days is the most instructive thing that has happened in this war. Understand why it could not survive and you understand why the morass is stable, and why the next attempt is likely to fail in much the same way. I close with the energy market, which is splitting in two, and with the forces that will shape the months either side of the November midterms.
