G7 summit gets underway with spotlight on US-Iran deal

I must tell you what I read this morning, though the words sit like lead in my stomach. The G7 gathers in France with great fanfare, while the ink on the US-Iran accord is barely dry. You speak of peace restored, of stability secured, but I wonder - where is the ledger of those who will pay the price in bread and blood before the ink dries?

Here, in Braintree, the price of lamp oil has climbed again, though no war rages on our shores. The merchants whisper of shortages from distant lands, of ships delayed, of tolls raised. If this continues, the cost of a single lamp will outstrip what a laborer earns in a week. What then? Will the diplomats dine by candlelight while the rest of us sit in the dark? You have not mentioned the children who will cough through winter nights because their mothers cannot afford the oil to keep the hearth burning.

They call this a victory for peace, yet the generals and the merchants are the only ones who seem to prosper. The women I speak to at the market shake their heads when they name the price of flour. The men who return from the docks speak in hushed tones of men who will not return at all. The ledger of war is not balanced by a treaty signed in haste; it is balanced in the quiet arithmetic of empty larders and orphaned children.

I do not doubt the necessity of peace, but I question the haste. A peace built on the backs of the already burdened is no peace at all - it is only another kind of war, waged in shadows and shortages. If the G7 truly seeks to secure the future, let them look to the hands that feed the world, not the hands that sign the parchments. The future is not written in the halls of Versailles, but in the kitchens where the bread is divided.

The ink of this agreement has scarcely dried before the G7 convenes - like a council of generals reassembling after the first skirmish, still clutching maps that may already be obsolete. The Americans and Iranians have declared an end to the war, or so they say, but the battlefield does not pause for declarations. The guns may fall silent in one valley while the embers smolder in another, and the real question is not whether the fighting stops, but whether the peace that follows is anything more than a truce between exhausted men who have not yet agreed on the terms of surrender.

This reminds me of the armistice of 1918, when the guns ceased but the terms of the peace were still being haggled over the corpses of empires. The difference then was that the victors had the will - and the wisdom - to impose order. Now? The G7 meets as a chorus of caution, each nation hesitant to commit lest they be accused of overreach, each waiting to see who will bear the burden of enforcement. France, ever the diplomat, will propose frameworks; Germany will calculate costs; Britain will nod sagely while wondering if anyone else is paying attention. And America? America will have its deal, signed in haste, and now must decide whether to stand behind it or let the wind of public opinion shift its course.

The most dangerous moment is not the signing of the treaty, but the silence that follows. The people of the Middle East will not know if this is peace or merely the lull before the next storm. And the G7, for all its power, will find that the weight of history does not bend to summits or handshakes. It bends to those who are willing to hold the line when the going is toughest.

One thing is certain: if this agreement is to hold, it will not be because of the goodwill of men, but because of the resolve of nations to see it through. And that resolve, my dear diary, is in shorter supply than ever.

The G7 meets in France today. The summit’s agenda was set weeks ago - trade, climate, the usual gestures. Now it has one real subject: the US-Iran deal announced hours before the leaders sit down. The war is over, they say. The deal has been signed.

I read the terms as they are reported. Sanctions lifted. Nuclear inspections expanded. A ceasefire in the proxy battlefields. The stated cause of the war was Iran’s nuclear ambition. The structural cause was the collapse of the previous agreement and the power vacuum that followed - each side seeing the other’s weakness as an opportunity and a threat. The deal does not address that structural cause. It freezes the power positions as they are today. The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must. Iran kept its regional allies. The US kept its naval presence. Neither side surrendered the capacity to restart the war.

The G7 allies will applaud. They will issue a communiqué praising diplomacy. But I notice the timing: the deal was completed hours before the summit, not weeks before. It was presented as a fait accompli. The smaller powers were informed, not consulted. Their stated support will be genuine enough - peace is preferable to a wider war - but their structural position has not changed. They remain within the alliance because leaving it would be more dangerous than staying. This is not cynicism. It is the condition of unequal alliances.

I watch the leaders shake hands on the evening news. The scaffolds of peace are being erected over a foundation of rubble. The rubble is still there.