The war has been President Donald Trump’s worst foreign policy blunder – so far.
It makes it harder for the United States to deter its enemies.
It has damaged its alliances with the oil-producing Arab monarchies of the Gulf, whose business model as islands of stability in the turbulence of the Middle East will take years to repair.
Privately, their officials already talk about diversifying their allegiances, and about the necessity of finding ways to live alongside Iran, its neighbour across the water. China will have been watching closely as the United States burned through hard–to–replace stocks of weapons and came up against the limits of its power.
The agreement, assuming no more last-minute hitches, ends a war that was based on America and Israel’s misreading of the strength of their enemy in Tehran. That will create a huge sigh of relief among all those whose lives have been turned upside down by the war, starting with civilians in the firing line.
The agreement re-opens the Strait of Hormuz, Trump says, taking the pressure off the global economy and the real lives of hundreds of millions of hard-pressed people around the world.
Thousands of people in the Middle East have been killed. Homes and businesses have been destroyed. The impact on fertiliser production that depended on supplies shipped through the strait could mean people in poor countries going hungry later in the year, with Africa south of the Sahara particularly at risk.
The agreement is not a peace deal. The full text, which negotiators have said has 14 points on two pages, has not been published yet. But as well as reopening the strait, the memorandum of understanding extends the ceasefire and lifts the US Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports.
It defers the thorniest issues to future negotiations. That agenda will include the future of Iran’s nuclear programme and the level of sanctions relief it will get in return for concessions.
A line has, at last, been drawn under the war that the US and Israel started on 28 February.