Sparks: US and Iran reach framework peace deal to end war | First Thing

The matter is this: you are told that decades of enmity required a labyrinth of secret protocols, when in truth the only thing preventing peace was the vanity of titles and the stubbornness of distance.

All I know is what I read in the papers, and it looks like the diplomats finally ran out of ways to disagree, so they decided to try being friends just to see who it would annoy.

Forget the speeches, for here is who has leverage: the prince who controls the narrow waters has traded a temporary threat for a permanent seat at the table of the great powers.

Stop celebrating the ink; the sailor is still at the mercy of the gale, and the merchant remains a slave to the very seas he believes he has finally tamed through a signature.

The claim is a total cessation of friction, yet the premises on which it rests assume that two opposing vectors of religious and secular force can suddenly occupy the same point in space without displacement.

When names are rectified and a neighbor is called a neighbor rather than an infidel, the ritual of the handshake regains its power to bind the hearts of the people to the throne.

They spoke of historic breakthroughs and shared futures for three hours, while in the corner of the room, the oil prices began to drop and the generals looked at their watches in silence.

This sudden embrace reveals the return of the repressed desire for commerce, manifesting as a diplomatic breakthrough only after the collective anxiety of isolation became more painful than the memory of the original trauma.

Both governments have spent forty years explaining why the other was the devil's own cousin, and now they expect us to believe that the devil has suddenly retired and gone into the shipping business.

It is a triumph of modern reason that we have finally agreed to postpone our mutual destruction until such a time as the price of oil makes the endeavor more fiscally responsible for both parties.

'Framework for an imminent agreement' - note how the word 'imminent' serves as a grammatical shroud, allowing the failure of the present to masquerade as the inevitable success of a future that has no intention of arriving.