On: Iran war: US wary of peace plan postponing nuclear deal

Thursday

A most diverting paragraph in the evening paper concerning the Persians and their straits. One pictures the scene in some gilded, carpet-strewn chamber in Tehran: a gathering of gentlemen, their expressions a fine blend of theological fervour and the sharper instincts of the bazaar, debating how best to handle the American blockade. Their proposal has the elegant simplicity of a child trading a prized marble for a temporary reprieve from bedtime - “You may have your strait back, if we may have our toys.” The American officials, for their part, wear the pained expression of nannies who have discovered the nursery favourite has been secretly constructing a catapult in the potting shed. They insist, with that weariness peculiar to those who must govern the ungovernable, that any agreement must include the surrender of said catapult. It is the old, old story: the guest who promises to cease playing the gramophone at three in the morning only if one first unlocks the drinks cabinet. The promise is, of course, merely a pause in the symphony, not its conclusion.

I am put in mind of Clovis’s remark last week, that international diplomacy is merely a larger, slower, and infinitely more tedious version of the negotiations between him and his aunt’s Pomeranian over the possession of a slipper. The dog understands the leverage of a threatened annihilation perfectly well; it is the principle of permanent disarmament that it finds philosophically unsound. The Americans wish to believe in the reformed character of the Persian dog, while the Persians calculate, with serene logic, how many slippers they might acquire before the next scolding. One rather hopes they reach an accord, if only for the spectacle of the signing ceremony. I imagine the pens will be checked most carefully for hidden mechanisms.