Six reasons why Trump’s Iran deal is doomed to fail

The Palace of Versailles is hardly the setting anyone would have forecast as the backdrop to the end of Donald Trump’s three-and-a-half-month war against Iran.

- MARY DEJEVSKY

But to a US president whose taste veers towards all things gilded, it could hardly have been better suited. And if, as it appears, the promise of a full-dress Versailles banquet had the effect of keeping Trump at the G7 summit for the duration, that surely suited Emmanuel Macron as the host - and the other leaders hoping for a chance to bend Trump's ear.

But it was the details of the document billed as a US-Iran memorandum of understanding (MoU) that a great many countries, and not just the G7, had been waiting for - and it was always going to steal the limelight, once the US and Iran confirmed that agreement had been reached. The hope was, after all, that this US war of choice would soon be over, along with the destabilisation it had brought to the region and to a large share of the global economy.

But will it? First responses have been sceptical, and with good reason. The agreement has many points of vulnerability.

First, an MoU is a long way short of a peace agreement under any definition, and the 60-day period allowed for further talks appears infinitely extendable. It sounds almost provisional - and, as such, breakable at relatively little reputational or political cost to either side. It has also been concluded between two presidents - Trump and Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian - whose authority is not comparable. The ultimate power in Iran rests with the theocracy.