A peace signed in June, already fraying by summer’s end

On June 15, 2026, a peace agreement was signed between the United States and Iran — a sentence that would have sounded like fiction for most of this century and still sounds unfinished. The ceremony produced the usual artifacts: leather folders, fountain pens, a photograph of hands, a statement about courage. It did not produce a shared account of what either capital is allowed to do in the Gulf the following week.

Peace agreements between enemies are often written to stop a clock, not to rewrite a map. This one appears to have stopped the clock in the room where it was signed. The test of June 15 was never the signing. It was July, and August, and the first tanker that burned.

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