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The title is a slogan placed by the Iranian leadership on a giant billboard in the heart of Enqelab Square in Tehran, depicting the Strait of Hormuz above the mouth of Donald Trump, president of the state of the "Great Satan" that must be defeated, just as the state of the "Little Satan" — Israel — must be destroyed. Yet the facts tell us this week that an agreement is taking shape, precisely "at the breaking point," with both Satans, the Great and the Little, an agreement that may be signed next Friday. It has not occurred to the Iranian media machine that breaking points can strike its own leaders too, and not only its enemies, even as the Iranian leadership believes it has achieved an unprecedented divine victory at this breaking point — whether in the strait or in South Lebanon. If American and Iranian intentions prove sincere and the American-Iranian "memorandum of understanding" or "framework agreement" aimed at halting hostilities and lifting the blockade on the closed strait comes to be signed, we will find ourselves facing a situation in which Tehran will have succeeded in seizing by the throat to wrest the desired victory through total suffocation of the world's economies, while Washington will have succeeded in grabbing the nose and mouth to force the Iranian head under water through naval blockade and comprehensive paralysis of port traffic. Thus the time factor turned against the one who holds only the throat, as the billboard says and shows. While we await the signature expected in the course of this week, there are observations worth making that bear directly on this agreement. First observation: the announced memorandum of understanding cannot be taken at face value alone, insofar as the mediators have succeeded in building a solid lining conducive to the agreement's success by providing undeclared solutions of considerable political, security, and economic weight, solutions that accord with the mediators' vision grounded in a strategic reading different from that of either party to the conflict. This deserves to be credited to the mediation actors, even if it displeases the partisans of the hard line and the perpetuation of war, for the weight of the mediating countries and the states that support them in this battle can no longer be measured by their current role alone, nor by the immediate results we will draw from it: this weight has become one of the pillars of the geopolitical equation, one that can no longer be bypassed at the international strategic level or in the regional power struggle of the new Middle East. This opens a space of civilizational and prospective competition, in place of militia-based warfare with all the filth, destruction, and slaughter of peoples it has carried in its wake. Second observation: this "memorandum of understanding" or "framework agreement" has laid bare the atrophy of Iranian power, which refuses to acknowledge its defeat and summons the arsenal of ideology, its last weapon for preserving the cohesion of the regime's core and the hard nucleus that composes it, made up of Revolutionary Guards and doctrinal militias capable of arresting and eliminating anyone who holds a dissenting opinion. For refusing to acknowledge defeat is fundamental to the plan of remaining in power, a plan itself built on a particular understanding of American policies and their internal contradictions within the deep state, an understanding in which the Iranian leadership has known how to exploit American containment policies to the fullest, whereas the Trump administration has failed in its reading and assimilation of the Persian mentality, the true crown jewel of the Velayet-e Faqih system. The crudest example of this failure lies in the way Netanyahu convinced Trump to launch the initial attack at zero hour, the one that was to bring down the regime, which allowed Netanyahu to pride himself for a long time on the title of godfather of this war whose every request Trump granted without question. Yet as the war unfolded across time and the scope of its repercussions on the nations of the world grew, a new equation took shape, one that brought Netanyahu back to his true stature: that of an irresponsible political gambler, indifferent even to the potential fall of the White House itself. The spectacle of master and servant plays out daily before our eyes: when Trump is vexed by the damage Netanyahu causes, he scolds him like an ungrateful son, and when he needs him, he heaps praise on his achievements, to the point that the relationship of the Trump-Netanyahu duo irresistibly evokes Bertolt Brecht's satirical play, Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti , where the master, in his hours of intoxication, displays an overflowing magnanimity, and where, upon his lucid awakening dictated by his interests, he reverts to brutality and domination. It would have been wiser for Netanyahu, before proclaiming himself master, to revisit the remark made by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan upon reading the terms of the first agreement with America after the June war, titled the "Growing Security Partnership" : "Israel is a small state signing an agreement with a great power; this means we have become a client state." And at the signing of the first strategic partnership in 1981 with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, American Secretary of State Alexander Haig declared that "Israel is an American aircraft carrier that cannot be sunk." In an irony of reality, Netanyahu himself now demands of his government that it work to produce its own munitions, so that its decisions may once again become autonomous. Third observation: the provisional "framework agreement" rests on the Iranian regime's inability to achieve a clear and convincing victory, following the considerable destruction inflicted on its military, security, and economic apparatus. All that remains to it is its missile arsenal and its paramilitary instruments, harmful certainly, but without any real power to alter the equation. The United States, for their part, massed the bulk of their military power in the hope that the mere deployment of arms and the threat of their use would suffice before resorting to them, a relatively failed wager that brought them back each time to direct participation in the fighting; for the surplus of power and its costs are no less damaging than the battles themselves. When the profound inability to produce a solution began to manifest its effects in Congress, among MAGA supporters, and at gas stations, the sleights of hand on stock markets and shareholdings were no longer sufficient to mask a deficit whose cost the people pay from their own pockets. After these observations, as we move toward a "preliminary agreement," an "agreement of principles" whose inner workings remain opaque and whose surface resolves no fundamental question beyond the ceasefire and the consecration of negotiation as the sole means of resolving conflicts, while neutralizing the practices of Iranian paramilitary racketeering and the mechanisms of absolute American domination and hegemony, are we not faced with a balance of power between the Islamic Republic and the United States comparable to the balance of power that once prevailed between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had nothing but the "Intifada of Stones" as its sole means of neutralizing the army of occupation and forcing the Rabin government to abandon its bone-breaking policy and negotiate a withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip? Was not the preliminary agreement of principles known as the "Oslo Accord" produced according to the same political philosophy that today presides over the making of this provisional "framework agreement"? When the PLO signed its agreement with Israel, the "Little Satan," it was forbidden, and its leaders were accused of treason. When the Iranian leadership signs its agreement with America, the "Great Satan," it becomes permissible, and some will celebrate its victory. But one can say, without much hesitation, that this agreement is the Iranian Oslo.

Following the official announcement of a framework agreement between Washington and Tehran on a memorandum of understanding to serve as the basis for talks between the two capitals, the picture looks like this: effusiveness in Tehran, where the document is being hailed as a historic victory; anger in Israel; calculated restraint in the United States; cautious optimism in Lebanon; and relief in Gulf countries and Europe, accompanied by a drop in oil prices. The memorandum of understanding, announced late Sunday night by President Donald Trump, is set to be signed on Friday in Geneva, where Trump arrived Monday to take part in G7 meetings. The document is said to have already been signed electronically. However, a Qatari delegation's trip to Islamabad on Sunday evening suggests that some details may still need to be ironed out. Doha had joined the mediation efforts led by Pakistan at Washington's request. This assumption is further supported by comments from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who indicated that the document would be unveiled sometime this week, without providing any further details. In the meantime, Tehran has made a point of dwelling at length — with triumphant commentary — on the provisions of the 14-point memorandum of understanding. The text lays the groundwork for a ceasefire intended to lead to lasting peace, following negotiations that will span 60 days. Two long months for a process fraught with obstacles, as the memorandum of understanding is merely a document outlining the broad strokes of the negotiations to come. Iranian media reported that it calls for a "permanent and immediate halt to the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and the unfreezing of $24 billion in Iranian assets, half of which would be released before talks begin." Also according to Iranian media, the document provides for the suspension of sanctions on the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemical products, and their derivatives. In exchange for an end to hostilities and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, Washington would gradually lift the blockade on Iranian ports as well as the sanctions that have been strangling the Islamic Republic's economy. But the central issue for both parties remains the fate of enriched uranium stockpiles and Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Tehran only mentioned the nuclear program, claiming that Washington had agreed to allow the Islamic Republic to continue enriching uranium to 3%, a point on which the United States had previously been unyielding. There was no mention, however, of the ballistic missile program. If the Iranians are to be believed, it is they who managed to have all their conditions accepted by the United States. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi announced that final talks would only begin "once the United States has fulfilled key commitments, including ending the naval blockade, halting military operations, and releasing frozen Iranian funds." "Once these urgent commitments are carried out, we will immediately enter into negotiations," he told state television. "The unfreezing of Iranian assets as well as reparations for damages are two essential points" of the agreement, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said at his weekly press briefing. According to him, "the American side has committed to taking steps in both of these areas" — a claim that U.S. Vice President JD Vance was quick to deny. At a press conference, he assured that Iranians "will get nothing until they honor their commitments." "They only talk about what they stand to gain while staying silent about what they will give in return," he added, stressing that Donald Trump will have achieved through diplomacy what he had sought to impose through war — namely, that Iran never have the possibility of obtaining a nuclear weapon and that it stop funding terrorist activities throughout the Middle East. While Tehran claimed to have wrested from Washington an unlocking of compensation funds for the reconstruction of sites destroyed or damaged by Israeli-American strikes, JD Vance insisted that the only funds the Islamic Republic would receive would come from already frozen Iranian assets. The United States also expects the Strait of Hormuz to reopen "toll-free" on Iran's part, he continued, while Iranian diplomats had spoken of maritime "service fees." At the same time, Donald Trump was congratulating himself on the fact that ships "some of them laden with oil, are beginning to exit the Strait of Hormuz and sail along a route that is completely secure." Demining operations are expected to begin shortly. French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that France will engage in this process alongside the United Kingdom. He also stated, on the sidelines of the G7, that Iran's highly enriched uranium capabilities must be "neutralized" under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Anger in Israel Widely welcomed by the international community, particularly in Europe, the Iran-US agreement is far from meeting the expectations of Israeli authorities, who have made no secret of their anger. Tel Aviv considers that the framework agreement does not neutralize the Islamic Republic's capacity for harm — let alone its proxies, particularly Hezbollah, which still poses a threat to the security of northern Israel. Israel had wanted Washington to "finish the job" rather than fall into agreements that Tehran has mastered the art of circumventing. The announcement of the memorandum triggered a genuine political storm within the Israeli cabinet, which deemed it "dangerous." Several ministers openly criticized the American administration, calling the agreement a "capitulation to state terrorism." Even the Israeli opposition condemned it. In the evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated at a press conference that Iran would not acquire nuclear weapons "with or without a deal." He did not comment on the memorandum of understanding but pledged to "remain vigilant in repelling any threat from Tehran's allies against Israel, particularly from Hezbollah." In this context, he announced that his army "will remain in Lebanon for as long as necessary" and that it had not withdrawn under Iranian pressure because he had remained "very firm." "I believe our American friends respect this firmness and this position. We will stay in Lebanon." Notably, he signaled a desire for military independence by announcing a defense budget of nearly $121 billion. "We are going to develop concepts that go beyond imagination," he declared, in what appears to be a message to the United States, which provides substantial military aid to Tel Aviv. For Israeli officials, the memorandum legitimizes Iranian influence and protects Hezbollah's paramilitary structures — which Tel Aviv had been gradually dismantling — from the moment it included the Lebanese front within the announced ceasefire framework. Israel is also convinced that the unfreezing of Iranian funds will enable Tehran to rebuild its ballistic missile arsenal. The Israeli government has also warned that it does not consider itself bound by the document and that a withdrawal from Lebanon is not being considered as long as Hezbollah has not been disarmed. This is an argument it can easily make, given that it has already reached a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon under Washington's sponsorship. In this context, several Israeli ministers have argued that Tel Aviv reserves the right to act unilaterally to defend its interests, even if doing so runs counter to the ongoing diplomatic momentum. Fragile calm in Lebanon In Lebanon, Hezbollah was quick to echo Iran's triumphalism. Since the announcement of the memorandum of understanding, the group immediately halted its strikes on Israeli targets, falling in line with directives from its Iranian patron — all to suggest that it is thanks to Iran that a ceasefire has been established on the Lebanese front. Hezbollah, it should be noted, does not recognize the Lebanese-Israeli truce agreement, due to its fierce opposition to direct negotiations between the two capitals. On the ground, a fragile calm prevailed throughout the day in southern Lebanon, where sporadic Israeli fire targeted Nabatieh and Kfar Tebnit, where an Israeli drone killed the driver of a vehicle. A journalist was also wounded in a drone attack in the same town. By evening, unconfirmed reports from unofficial sources indicated that the Israeli army was advancing toward the strategic hill of Ali Taher, overlooking Nabatieh, and that clashes had broken out with Hezbollah militants. Many villagers rushed to return to their towns despite warnings from the Lebanese army. On the political front, Lebanese authorities welcomed the memorandum of understanding, while the pro-Iranian group was quick to exploit 'the Iranian victory' by calling — through the voice of Jaafari mufti Mohammad Ahmad Kabalan — for a change of government. Most alarming was his line of reasoning. According to him, the new cabinet must 'reflect the national balance, now that the factors that justified the pro-American camp's rise to power have disappeared.' In the mufti's view, the new ministerial team should include 'Hezbollah's (Christian) allies, namely the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and the Marada,' led by Gebran Bassil and Sleiman Frangieh respectively — a move aimed at restoring Christian legitimacy to a movement entirely subservient to Iran and completely isolated domestically. Sheikh Ahmad Kabalan also argued that 'Lebanon must withdraw from direct negotiations with Israel,' which are set to resume on June 22 in Washington. To achieve its goals, will the pro-Iranian group follow through on its threats to bring down the government? When asked about Lebanon, President Trump replied: 'We really want to see if we can sort out that country's problems. It's a tiny piece of what we're doing. But it shouldn't be that hard. We just need to have a little chat with Hezbollah.'

The world speaks of a Lebanese tragedy brought about by Hezbollah and, behind it, Iran, and of another Palestinian Nakba caused by Hamas. What remains absent from any account of this tragedy and this Nakba are two major events: the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005. Both withdrawals were complete. The first was carried out in execution of UN Security Council Resolution 425, adopted in 1978, and that same Council had from the outset rejected the official Lebanese narrative regarding the Shebaa Farms, a narrative that Hezbollah and its spearhead, the "president of the resistance" Emile Lahoud, had rushed to deploy. That narrative was nothing but a brazen lie, designed to justify the retention of the "resistance" weapons, weapons that were never directed at anything other than the Lebanese interior, and whose sole purpose was to keep southern Lebanon as a mailbox between Israel on one side and the Islamic Republic on the other. All of this unfolded without anyone pausing to ask, even in passing, about the fate of the people of that land, who were, and remain, the greatest absent party in this internal and regional equation. To this day, there is no rational explanation for what has befallen southern Lebanon and its people. The events that followed the Israeli withdrawal confirmed that the preservation of arms took precedence over liberation from occupation. The proof was the determination to keep the southern front open. A Hezbollah unit, acting on direct instructions from Bashar al-Assad, whose ego Iran was intent on inflating, abducted several Israeli soldiers just a few months after the withdrawal. Lebanon faced a choice between letting the South continue to bleed and working toward rebuilding itself. For Iran, the Israeli withdrawal was an opportunity to demonstrate the depth of its grip on Lebanon. That grip only expanded and consolidated after 2005, when members of the Hezb assassinated Rafic Hariri, an act that triggered a Syrian military withdrawal and left the Lebanese arena open before the Revolutionary Guards. What did Lebanon build upon that Israeli withdrawal? It built, in practice, the catastrophe it suffers from today, one that has cast the entire country's future to the winds. Everyone speaks of the catastrophe, but very few point to the Lebanese failure itself, a failure that Iran systematically encouraged by obstructing any fruitful investment in the Israeli withdrawal. It would have been possible to turn that withdrawal into an opportunity for a better future, for the country, for its people, and for the South in particular, rather than allowing it to become the bridge over which occupation returned, an occupation whose eventual end, if it comes at all, remains unknown. And heavier than all of this is the scale of the ruin, the devastation, and what has rained down upon the villages of the South, along with the number of displaced persons within the Shia community, which now surpasses all imagination. As for the other date that deserves to be recalled constantly, it is that of the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005. It is certain that Ariel Sharon's calculations, primarily concerned with ridding himself of the Gaza Strip while consolidating control over the West Bank, drove that withdrawal. But it is equally certain that the Palestinian side as a whole, both the Authority and Hamas, did everything within its power to turn the Israeli withdrawal into yet another Palestinian catastrophe. One can naturally hold the Palestinian Authority, in the person of Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, accountable, a man who possesses no leadership qualities of any kind. Abu Mazen chose to remain outside Gaza at the very moment the Israelis withdrew, rather than being on the ground, among the people of the territory. With time, Hamas's weapons prevailed over Gaza and its people. Rather than making the withdrawal of summer 2005 an opportunity to build a small-scale model of a viable, civilized Palestinian state, that withdrawal became an opportunity for Israel to claim that there was no Palestinian partner with whom to negotiate. What Gaza endures today did not emerge from a vacuum. It is the result of a deliberate, calculated course of action pursued by Hamas over more than two decades, focused on retaining its weapons in order to build an "Islamic emirate" along Taliban lines, and on undermining the Palestinian national project at its very foundations. Israel did not object to this orientation, nor did it object to the rockets Hamas launched from Gaza, nor take issue with them. Its overriding concern was to confirm that the Palestinians did not deserve a state and that negotiating with them was pointless, while deepening Palestinian internal divisions at the same time. In southern Lebanon first, and then in Gaza, the weapons served their function in Israel's interest, until the "Al-Aqsa Flood" came. On October 7, 2023, the spell was turned against the sorcerer. Israel discovered that it could no longer coexist with either Hezbollah's weapons or Hamas's arsenal. Both belong to the past, and more than that, they belong to a different world, one that was prepared to reach all manner of accommodations with Iran and its regime, which has practiced the art of extortion with unparalleled mastery since the very first day of its existence in 1979. The two Israeli withdrawals, from southern Lebanon and from Gaza, were two missed opportunities for the Lebanese and the Palestinians. The withdrawal from the South laid the foundations for a Lebanese catastrophe that could have been avoided, and the withdrawal from Gaza laid the groundwork for a new Palestinian Nakba, at a moment when the future of the entire region and the contours of its possible reshaping are being posed, in light of developments in Iran, with unprecedented sharpness. Opportunities pass before peoples. Some know how to seize them; others do not. What is truly reprehensible is the refusal to acknowledge that those opportunities existed, and to act as though they never were, when in fact they were more real and more tangible than was necessary.

The Middle East is sinking into wars and upheavals that show every sign of worsening, more malevolent than at any previous moment. This alone is reason enough to devise solutions that might allow the world to escape its predicament — through diplomacy, through acting with sound judgment freed from instinctive reflexes, through demonstrating the limits of military power, or through some combination of these factors — including by curbing the defiance of laws and the recklessness that now prevails in the conduct of war, under what might be called the “law of the authority of the killing machine.” Wars, assassinations and strikes may achieve military objectives, but they far more often serve as media spectacle, generating effects that run counter to those intended. The ideological and nationalist systems of the region rarely collapse under external pressure alone; they tend instead to reconstitute their cohesion by invoking narratives of threat, siege and resistance to anything new. Assassinations carried out in excess belong not only to the technological realm — they are political operations inseparable from the relationship to human beings, to peoples and to history, and they do not necessarily liberate the region from its convictions. Historical precedents consistently suggest that the fall of totalitarian regimes rarely comes about through direct external strikes. Dismantling the environment that sustains them is a far deeper process, and one that is generally underestimated. What begins as a surgically precise news event evolves into escalation, destabilization and identity alliances more powerful than before. Strikes may yield tactical success, but they become a strategic problem when they kindle a fiercer nationalism and a bloodier violence. Killing a leader such as Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei would mark a moment of rupture for the Middle East, and for global Islamism as well, after four decades of absolute power and a theocracy hypermilitarized by the Revolutionary Guards — opening onto social violence, chaos and pressure within a country like Iran, one that has equipped itself precisely to absorb shocks, monitor its environment and manage risk. The United States and Israel took the gamble of a “decapitation” operation against this eighty-six-year-old man. Beyond the act itself, history illuminates the danger of such an approach when it fails to wager on the mobilization of civil society and on social change within closed regimes. Bombardments can kill or neutralize enemy leaders and condense wars into days, or prosecute several wars at once, but they rest on the assumption that “cutting off the head” brings down the entire structure — whereas Franco’s regime fell with his death, while the deaths of Stalin and Mao did not immediately dissolve the systems they had built. This is the trap of the contemporary war machine: it kills individuals, it compresses conflicts rather than resolving them, it weakens regimes without definitively toppling them in societies with a strong doctrinal imprint and a more insurrectionary internal character, as the Middle East and Africa both attest. The conflict with the outside world is distorted by the fusion of identity with martyrdom — as seen in Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran’s leadership — and escalation takes on an ever-wider political dimension. The circle of vengeance and reprisal expands, anchored in a composite institutional and ideological architecture that weaves together religion, politics and society. External elimination within these structures becomes a factor of internal mobilization, liable to reinforce the political framework rather than impel any deep reorientation toward ending the regime. Conflict mutates into a quasi-permanent cycle of violence, accompanied by a steady rise in the capacities for fortification, adaptation and renewal, while the wager on internal transformations — which presuppose complex political, social and economic conditions — gradually fades. Diplomatic negotiations grow longer and less fruitful, and extended war becomes inevitable — all the more so since the Iranians believed they could buy time by redoubling their arguments for endurance, at the cost of their own people’s lives and wellbeing. For his part, Donald Trump overestimates his capacity to carry messages, his ambitions ranging across ceremonial halls — from the Arc de Triomphe to the Kennedy Center — through to the most serious political stakes: inflation, reforms stalled before the courts, public discontent in the months before the midterm elections, and even the international balance of power, from his war against Iran to his diplomacy toward Russia and China. Nothing is going as he wishes in bending what remains of the Guide’s regime to obedience, while Israel relentlessly pursues the opportunity it has long awaited in its endless expansionist war. America finds itself in a situation strikingly similar to that of 2003. Once again, a Republican president wages a war of regime change; once again, the target is a dictatorship within an American equation of control. But this is also the equation that kills people in fishing boats in the Caribbean without evidence or legal process, that imprisons and isolates the Venezuelan president, that threatens Cuba and Mexico, that eliminates the Iranian Supreme Guide — whatever one may say about his record in crushing popular uprisings. And the world has not forgotten how George W. Bush described the invasion of Iraq as “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” nor how he envisioned, in his grand designs, the export of democracy to Afghanistan. There is a singular irony here: Donald Trump, elected by a constituency persuaded by the “America First” banner in a strict isolationist logic during his two successful campaigns of 2016 and 2024, is redoubling foreign interventions and returning to war, premised on assumptions about an Iranian nuclear program that was on the verge of becoming dangerous. Yet tactical success is transformed into making “James Bond” more technological, in the dimension of interference in Venezuela. The phase shift that great military powers can bring about by eliminating foreign leaders with precision is not technological in nature but political. It may well fail to settle the matters at hand or simply erase power, redistributing it instead and turning into a problem in its own right — as the attempted assassinations of Muammar Gaddafi in 1986, of Saddam Hussein in the nineteen-nineties, or of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the leader of the Chechen separatist movement, all demonstrate. Escalation options then take shape that cross a threshold into something else entirely. The assassination of Hassan Nasrallah did not annihilate the resistance as a whole, nor did that of Dudayev, nor those of the historic leaders of Fatah and Hamas: on the contrary, these eliminations ignited the movements in forms more violent and more destructive than before. Things shift toward leaderships less constrained by diplomacy, more disposed toward escalation and violence, with an emotional intensity that sharpens — none of which achieves absolute control, and all of which corrupts it. Afghanistan lived under the Taliban’s theocracy, and America decided to subdue it and drag it into the modern era, imagining a future where girls could go to school, grow up, find employment, stand for public office and dress as they chose, with equal rights. And what came of it? The conclusion is inescapable: war does not succeed in making a country democratic; only a country and its own citizens can accomplish that, from within. It is probable that power is what matters above all to Trump, who will strike deals with whoever holds it — whether religious clerics, socialists in Venezuela, communists in Havana or authoritarian rulers in Iran. He is almost committed to seeking allies without real weight, as is the case with Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela. Iran is not Iraq in 2003, and appears capable of asymmetric retaliation against the painful American-Israeli strikes, as well as against those attacks carried out against the Arab Gulf states, unjustified by any reasonable reckoning. All of this risks leading as well to contradictory diminishing returns, and this war may prove far darker and far longer — a war of attrition for the countries of the region — while the world begins to adapt and accommodate itself to its economic repercussions, rather than focusing the political attention that the West wished to direct toward Asia. Factoring in risks ordinarily accounts for half of any calculation, without sufficient assessment of the scale of damage as to their consequences. There is no doubt that Iran’s vexatory political conduct has caused immense harm to the lives of Iranians and the peoples of the region over half a century, provoking regression and a manifest indifference to the needs of populations in the building of any future. The strategic errors lie in an evil to which no one any longer responds — that of striking a Gulf region that was attempting to accomplish its own modernity. And the greatest challenge remains avoiding the worst in the many wars that the world does not know how to close.

A heavy, anxiety-filled suspense gripped the entire day and evening of this Sunday, June 14, which was supposed to be marked by the virtual, online signing of the framework agreement (or memorandum of understanding) intended to "suspend" hostilities between the United States and Iran for a period of 60 days, with the aim of launching a negotiation process over the dispute — nuclear, ballistic, financial, and geopolitical — with the Islamic Republic. Over the past 48 hours, both President Donald Trump and the Pakistani Prime Minister repeatedly and insistently affirmed that the framework agreement would indeed be signed on Sunday. The signing was expected to take place "virtually," in the presence of U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Qalibaf. Yet well into the late evening (Levant time), the ceremony planned for this purpose had still not taken place. Two factors accounted for the delay: internal Iranian disagreements and a military escalation on the Lebanese front. Regarding the latter, a snowball effect triggered a serious escalation in military operations. On Sunday morning, air raid sirens sounded multiple times across northern Israel, signaling missiles or drones launched from Lebanon and landing on Israeli territory. This attack was carried out by Hezbollah despite the fact that Tel Aviv had repeatedly made clear that any rocket or drone fire hitting northern Israel would immediately trigger a retaliatory strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut. Indeed, the Israeli air force conducted a raid on that area around noon, killing a senior Hezbollah military official responsible for the party's telecommunications. From early afternoon onward, media outlets and political circles across the region engaged in all manner of speculation about the possibility of an Iranian retaliatory strike against Israel following the raid on the southern suburbs. In an apparent bid to "save" the framework agreement — to which he seems (mysteriously) fiercely committed — President Trump reportedly exerted heavy pressure on the Iranian regime to refrain from launching its retaliation against Israel. According to multiple consistent sources, he even offered the Iranian leadership a major concession — the lifting of the naval blockade — in exchange for Iranian military restraint. To no avail. Late in the evening, an adviser to the Iranian Supreme Leader announced that "Iran will respond forcefully to the raid on the southern suburbs." The head of the influential National Security Commission of the Iranian Parliament echoed this, also stating that an Iranian response was in the making. The Iranian military command likewise indicated that a strike against Israel would take place shortly. At the same time, the Tasnim news agency — close to the Revolutionary Guards — reported the closure of airspace in eastern Iran. Critics of the Iranian President The second factor that likely explains the delay in signing the framework agreement is the emergence of serious internal divisions within the Iranian regime over whether a deal with the United States is advisable. These internal rifts were publicly confirmed by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who openly criticized the accusations of treason leveled against the Iranian Parliament Speaker (the principal negotiator with Washington) and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is at the center of the ongoing talks. President Pezeshkian also condemned the fact that Iranian state television had broadcast remarks attributed to the Supreme Leader opposing dialogue with the United States. It is worth recalling in this context that demonstrations hostile to any agreement with the Americans were held on Saturday in Tehran, most likely at the instigation of the Revolutionary Guards. Protesters went so far as to demand the resignation of the Speaker of Parliament and the Foreign Minister, even issuing death threats against any official who might support the deal in question. These demonstrations lend weight to analysts and media outlets who claim there is a faction within Iran convinced that the country has achieved a 'symbolic victory' over Washington and therefore has no need to sign any agreement with the United States. Trump's grievances and uncertainty over the deal In any case, and on a completely different note, President Trump published a post on his social media platform stating that 'this morning's strike on Beirut should not have happened.' In his message, he placed equal blame on Israel and Hezbollah, urging both sides to stop the escalation, as it 'could be the beginning of a long and beautiful peace' that no one should stand in the way of. It is worth recalling that this week was marked by severe military tensions between Iran and the United States. American strikes on multiple targets in southern Iran followed the downing of a US Apache helicopter by the Revolutionary Guards. President Trump had even threatened a major strike during the night of Thursday to Friday (Levant time), before calling it off at the last minute. The world woke up on Friday to news of an imminent deal between the warring parties — announced, of course, by Trump himself on his social media platform. Even as encouraging news was being picked up by the media, numerous 'leaks' in Iranian outlets systematically contradicted the wave of optimism. One Iranian tactic in this regard has been to spread rumors about the terms of the deal that directly contradict what Washington has disclosed. According to these 'reports' circulating in Tehran, Iran would retain control over the Strait of Hormuz, preserve its right to enrich uranium, and recover all Iranian funds frozen in banks around the world — which prompted President Trump to post an angry message on Friday accusing the Iranians of 'lacking honor.' Unexpectedly, it was Minister Araghchi who stepped in, urging Iranian media to stop publishing unfounded reports, drawing a favorable response from Trump. What about the enriched uranium? While the exact terms of the deal remain uncertain, American sources cited by pan-Arab channels suggest that frozen Iranian funds will not be released until the agreement is implemented, that the Strait of Hormuz would automatically remain open, that uranium stockpiles would be removed from the country, and that nuclear facilities would be dismantled. As for the nuclear file, it is expected to be the subject of future negotiations beginning as early as next week, should a deal be signed. However, on Saturday, a CNN report raised alarming concerns on this matter. According to the network, during the current ceasefire period, Iranian authorities have reinforced the storage of their enriched uranium in ways designed to make access more difficult and more dangerous. They reportedly buried 450 kilograms of enriched uranium in tunnels rigged with mines — measures taken in response to President Trump's threats to task the US military with seizing the uranium. Israeli discontent and the Lebanese unknown One of the major unknowns surrounding this proposed Iran-US "deal" is its implications for Lebanon, particularly given Israel's clear displeasure on this front. The Iranians were quick to reassure Hezbollah that a ceasefire in Lebanon and an Israeli withdrawal are included in the document — which explains the immediately triumphalist tone struck by certain Hezbollah MPs, who boasted about the deal's "implications" for the Lebanese arena. They also took a swipe at the Lebanese authorities, calling on them to abandon the direct negotiations process with Israel. Yet the next round of talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington remains scheduled for June 22, according to multiple concordant sources. As for the Lebanese authorities, they are maintaining a firm stance against Iranian interference and remain committed to the direct negotiations process in Washington, as stated this week by President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. Another murky point is whether the agreement will compel Iran to distance itself from its proxies in the region — foremost among them the Lebanese Hezbollah, the only one that truly fought to help keep the mullahs' regime afloat. Numerous reports coming out of Washington suggest that this is indeed the case, even as Iranian officials continue to issue declarations insisting they would never abandon Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the situation on the ground in southern Lebanon remains volatile, with clashes continuing between Hezbollah and the Israeli military. Clearly anxious about their freedom of movement in Lebanon, the Israelis are already pushing back against anything that might cause them to forfeit their "gains" in the South, particularly their territorial conquests. For its part, Hezbollah stands to benefit from a halt in the fighting, even though it has already been pushed back north of the symbolic Litani line — but it too has an interest in slowing Israel's advances. This would explain the ferocity of the fighting in recent days along specific axes, as both sides compete for control of two key areas: Nabatieh and Tyre. Israel's military is clearly attempting to make as many territorial gains as possible before any development forces it to scale back the intensity of its military operations in Lebanon. And as usual, it is Lebanese towns and villages that are paying the price. Evacuation orders are being issued in rapid succession for dozens of villages, some in areas that had until now been spared — such as Jezzine, for example. Deal with Iran or not, all eyes will also be on Monday's G7 summit in Évian, which Donald Trump is attending. The American president is planning a meeting with Middle Eastern leaders — one that Netanyahu has reportedly already decided not to attend.

After more than twenty years spent at the heart of the great houses of high jewelry and international luxury, from Cartier to Hermès, from De Beers to LVMH, between Paris, London and New York, Marie Berthelon could have continued along a perfectly mapped trajectory at the summit of the system. Instead, she chose to step away from it to revive Rouvenat, a nineteenth-century Maison that had disappeared and that she is now reactivating as a living territory, at the crossroads of heritage and the avant-garde. At the head of a small, deeply committed structure, she defends a singular vision of high jewelry: a luxury of circularity and memory, where recycled gold, antique stones rediscovered in forgotten safes, and raw or polished materials do not seek perfection, but light. A jewelry that does not add itself to the world, but awakens it, transforming what already existed into a contemporary presence. This text was not planned, and was not meant to exist in this form. It was born from a lunch beneath the glass roof of 416 rue Saint-Honoré, at Rouvenat, in the presence of Marie Berthelon, co-founder of the Maison, through a conversation that gradually moved beyond the frame of the moment. The table was long, covered with fresh flowers. The cuisine, precise and luminous, was signed by Servan. And in the light filtered through the glass roof, the lunch unfolded gently, almost naturally, as though the place itself were setting the rhythm of the exchanges. A Maison Born of a Living Paradox Marie begins without detour. Rouvenat is “a start-up with 150 years of history.” In that sentence, everything is already there, though not yet unfolded. A Maison founded in 1852, later disappeared, and now reactivated as a contemporary presence, as though time had folded in on itself without ever erasing it. Before that, there was a long journey through the great luxury houses: Cartier, Hermès, De Beers, between Paris, London and New York. Marie rejects none of it, but gradually moves away from it, until reaching that tipping point where a necessity asserts itself: “To leave the highly structured world of corporate life and return to something more embodied, freer, more human.” It is within this shift that Rouvenat tightens around a rare form: only five people in the team, each with a plurality of roles. “Everyone does almost six jobs,” she says, not as an organizational model, but as a way of remaining as close as possible to the material. Luxury as Living Memory Very quickly, another grammar of luxury emerges, less theoretical than sensory, almost organic. Marie speaks of a luxury “with heart, consciousness and circularity,” but these words do not describe a system: they describe an attention. Because here, nothing truly begins with creation. Everything is set in motion by the gaze. “Making something new out of the old,” she says at first, before immediately refining the idea: above all, it is about “bringing a new gaze to what already exists.” It is in this tiny gap that the entire philosophy of the Maison resides. It requires a certain gaze, almost a discipline: learning to see differently, to slow down, to accept searching where things still lie dormant. And also a form of courage: that of not moving toward the obvious new, but returning to what was already waiting to be awakened. From this attention are born pieces that do not seek effect, but presence: “Pieces with heart and spirit.” Living Matter, Active Light In this high jewelry, matter is never decorative. It is tension, passage, circulation. Raw or polished, assembled or living alone, recycled gold or silver captures light without freezing it. It transforms it according to the angle, as though each surface possessed its own breath. The creations go beyond the idea of recycling. They belong to a movement of continuous transformation, in which existing materials are reinterpreted rather than replaced. The stones, antique ones, are rediscovered in forgotten safes, opened after years of silence, sometimes decades, and it is in this return to the surface that their story begins again. “Entirely existing materials,” Marie says, as if to remind us that nothing here starts from zero, but that everything begins again elsewhere. Léon Rouvenat and the Memory of a Sign To understand this vision, one must return to the nineteenth century. Léon Rouvenat, a partner of Christofle, founded the Maison in 1852, at a time when jewelry was becoming a true industry of art, structured and international. It stood out then for a modernity that was astonishing for its time. Its historic hallmark, a discreet, almost secret detail, was a keyhole. A sign conceived as an invitation: to open the jewel, to reveal its interior, to make it an object of passage rather than a closed object. This symbol now irrigates the rebirth of the Maison and notably inspires the Unlock collection, where the keyhole motif becomes a contemporary language, between threshold and intimacy. Around this heritage, several lines structure the current universe, such as Unlock, precisely, where the jewel becomes passage, secret and opening, or Bolt, with its more architectural writing, where forms seem to lock and then free themselves in the light. Frame, for its part, frames the stone like a living image, without ever fixing it. In this continuity, Rouvenat does not seek to reproduce a past, but to extend its gesture: that of a jewel conceived as an object to be read, opened, crossed through. Rediscovery as a Starting Point That said, nothing begins as a strategy. The adventure is born at a Parisian bouquiniste. There, Marie discovers more than 3,000 old Rouvenat gouaches. An intact material, still vibrant. The shock is discreet, but immediate. From there, she does not organize a reconstruction: she attempts a reactivation. “I wanted to give it a voice again,” she says simply. In the boutique beneath the glass roof, this idea becomes tangible. Recycled gold, recycled silver, antique stones rediscovered in safes, certified and reworked materials: everything already exists, but nothing is fixed. What matters is not the origin of the elements, but the way in which they are put back into circulation. And in this movement, matter becomes language: a language of light, contrast, density and breath. The Cases as an Extension of the Gesture More broadly, Rouvenat opens its universe to dialogues with contemporary artists, entrusting them with the creation of its jewelry cases: recycled, these become unique pieces, extensions of their creative worlds. Jewelry thus enters a space of exchange between matter, trace and memory, and ceases to be an isolated object to become a shared territory. It is within this movement that the collaboration with Senz takes shape. A multidisciplinary artist, Senz explores typography, photography and digital printing through dense and symbolic cultural collages. He intervenes on existing cases, made from old boxes that have been found and then transformed, reinterpreting them through pictorial gestures and interventions drawn from urban art, shifting their initial status without freezing them, but instead putting them back into circulation. Over the course of the lunch and the exchanges, one idea runs through everything without ever becoming fixed. Luxury is no longer an accumulation, but a relationship to materials, memories and layered times. And perhaps, above all, a way of looking, with enough slowness for what was buried to begin appearing again. True luxury today may be precisely this: knowing how to reveal, with creativity, the echo of stones that was already there. In conclusion, when the lunch comes to an end, nothing truly closes. The flowers remain on the table as though they were still inhabiting the light, and the glass roof continues to let something slow, almost suspended, filter through. The conversations, for their part, do not seem to stop; they simply move elsewhere. With Marie, nothing resembles a rupture. Rather, it is a continuous shift between eras, gestures, materials and memories. And within Rouvenat, something takes shape with discreet evidence. A high jewelry that does not add, does not overload, but shifts the gaze until things reappear. A Maison traversed by artists and materials, where cases, collections and contemporary gestures prolong one and the same movement: that of a jewelry memory that continues to circulate.