A Peace No One Has Signed Yet

Trump travels to the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains this Monday with momentum behind him after announcing an agreement meant to end the war with Iran. It has not been published, it has not been signed either, and Tehran is keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed until that happens!

This Monday Trump is on his way to the French Alps, to the summit of the Group of Seven in Evian-les-Bains, after announcing an agreement meant to end the war with Iran. For days he and Iranian representatives had claimed progress, yet even on Sunday everything appeared fragile after renewed strikes between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. The roughly fifteen week war drove energy prices worldwide, voters widely rejected it according to polls, and some Republicans worried about the midterm elections in November.

Ships of the world, start your engines, Trump wrote, let the oil flow, and celebrated an agreement that according to his words ends the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which before the war about twenty percent of the world’s crude oil flowed. But Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said the closure would remain in place until the agreement was officially signed. Neither the White House nor Iran published the text or gave many details. Pakistan, which mediated, announced through its Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif preliminary talks meant to prepare sixty days of technical negotiations over the nuclear program.

Trump had once criticized Obama for his 2015 agreement, saying it had not kept Iran from obtaining the bomb and had poured billions into its coffers. In 2018 he withdrew from that Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed besides him by Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the European Union. Now his own agreement is meant to bring Iran sanctions relief and economic incentives once it fulfills certain requirements. He rejected the comparison in The New York Times, saying they had negotiated from strength and Obama had paid them off. He did not say who would verify whether Iran complies, nor who would remove the 441 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that are said to be buried beneath the nuclear facilities heavily hit during the summer.

Critics accuse him of not explaining how his financial assistance differs from Obama’s. For all the criticism of the old agreement, Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said that at the time there had been international inspectors and an alliance with the Europeans, along with Russia and China as signatories, whereas now America was acting alone or only with Israel, and that made nobody safer. Trump ally and Iran hawk Lindsey Graham also expressed skepticism, saying Congress must review and vote on every nuclear agreement, and that he expected Vice President JD Vance, the architect of the agreement, to present it. What troubled him was that Iran apparently saw it differently from the American team.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk welcomed the agreement with its immediate and lasting ceasefire, the reopening of Hormuz, and a framework for further talks. At the same time he condemned the violence of Israel and the United States against Iran, which he said had killed thousands and destroyed facilities, and called Iran’s attacks on the Gulf states and Jordan, along with its blockade, completely unacceptable. He again called on Washington to disclose the investigation into a deadly strike on a school in southern Iran at the beginning of the war and urged the greatest restraint.

In Evian Trump will meet those with whom he has fallen out, Macron, Starmer, Merz, and Meloni, whom he did not consult before deciding on war and whom he accuses of lacking support, all of them NATO members. Yet on the way he threatened Macron in the New York Post with one hundred percent tariffs on French wine if Paris did not remove its digital tax against American technology companies, while wines from the Union already carry fifteen percent tariffs. Discussions will include mine clearing in Hormuz, for which Britain and France offered help once the war pauses, because fear of mines has stopped tanker traffic. Host Macron invited Egypt and Qatar, along with the United Arab Emirates, to a Middle East round on Tuesday. Britain, France, Germany, and Italy welcomed the agreement as an opportunity to stabilize the region and the global economy, and Starmer called it a significant opportunity from which a lasting peace must emerge.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy also invited Macron for Tuesday, for a round on the war with Russia. A one on one meeting with Trump is not planned, yet he spoke by phone with both on Sunday. The conversation with Putin lasted just under an hour, adviser Yuri Ushakov reported, Trump had pressed for an end to the fighting and declared himself ready to influence the Europeans and Kyiv, but at the same time said that recent strikes on civilian targets in Russia made an agreement more difficult. The White House did not comment. Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner are expected to travel to Russia soon. Zelenskyy wrote that he had told Trump the situation on the eastern front had improved and that more would be discussed at the summit.

So he appears crowned by an announcement, not by a signed document. Peace has been declared before it has been signed, and oil summoned before the route is open. And the man who condemned paying out now pays himself, only without the allies and the signatures that at least made an agreement reviewable. An announcement can be asserted, a treaty can be read, and this kind of power prefers the first. Beneath the rubble created by his bombs lie four hundred kilograms of uranium that not a single line has yet accounted for, and the ships he ordered to start their engines wait before a passage that the other side still keeps closed.