On: G7 summit gets underway with spotlight on US-Iran deal

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.