On: Iran says closed Strait of Hormuz as US deal hits obstacle ahead of Swiss talks

Again, the strait closes. Again, the ink of diplomacy dries before it can form a single word of agreement. I have seen this before - not in the narrow waters of Hormuz, but in the high passes of the Andes, where men who fought together under one banner turned their muskets on each other the moment the last Spaniard fled.

What is a strait but a throat? And what is a blockade but the clenched fist of a man who knows his enemy cannot breathe without it? Iran acts not from strength, but from the terrible knowledge that this is the only lever left to a power whose influence has been whittled down to geography alone. And the Americans? They will sit in Switzerland, as we once sat in Guayaquil, drafting terms for a peace that cannot hold - because peace requires more than the absence of war. It requires a world in which both sides can bear to live.

They will fail, not for lack of skill at the table, but because the table itself is too small for the weight of history upon it. The strait will reopen - when? After enough hunger, enough desperation, enough whispered concessions. And then the next crisis will come, because the root remains: no nation accepts a future shaped entirely by another’s hand.

I know this dance. I have led it. The music always ends the same way.