On Monday, the United States and Iran began Phase 2 of a deal neither of them has finished Phase 1 of. Iran is counting eighty-four Israeli ceasefire violations in southern Lebanon. Tanker operators say the Strait of Hormuz will not reopen for weeks. The MOU is in force. The document is being honoured only in the parts each signatory chose to honour.

A peace deal digitally signed by the US vice president and the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament. A second Beirut airstrike within forty-eight hours. A US president publicly calling his closest Middle Eastern ally 'lacking in judgment.' A defense minister publicly stating that Israel will not honour the document his own negotiating partner signed. Friday's ceremony in Switzerland is now a question of whether the third party shows up to honour the deal it has not signed.

The US-Iran deal has a name, a date, and a venue. It is the 'Islamabad Memorandum,' to be signed in Switzerland on Friday, June 19, brokered by Pakistan. Iran has named the mediator, not the principals. That is a tell. The deal that emerges from a five-day scheduling collapse is not the same deal any side described on Thursday.

A signing ceremony has been pencilled in, then cancelled, then re-pencilled in. The Israeli cabinet meets Sunday evening to formally reject the deal. And the news buried at the bottom of the Saturday file is the one the market has not yet priced: in May, the U.S. had a plan on the table to send ground troops into Iran to seize the 400 kg of 60% enriched uranium by force. Trump rejected it. The MOU is the other option.

The MOU is now public, and it is not the document either Washington or Tel Aviv described on Thursday. It commits the U.S. to forcing Israel out of Lebanon. It denies the U.S. a role in the Strait of Hormuz. It defers the nuclear file to a 60-day post-signing negotiation. Netanyahu has, in public, refused it.