ANDREW NEIL: If you believe a single one of Trump’s wild boasts about his Iran deal, I have got a campervan to sell you!

Donald Trump would like us to believe that he has achieved peace today with his so-called ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Iran, designed to end hostilities in the Gulf and pave the way for a comprehensive peace agreement between America and Iran.

It is far from clear that it actually solves anything. In fact, the misfortune in Iran has only made things worse for America and its allies in the Middle East region.

We must be careful. Neither Iran nor America has yet released a specific list of the contents of the agreement, which is expected to form the basis of 60-day peace talks while the guns fall silent.

The memorandum of understanding will not be signed in Geneva until Friday. We know that some finer points are still being negotiated. So all comments are flying blind to some extent.

Despite this warning, the mood music is not very encouraging. Iran is close to boasting. Israel is silently outraged. Before the ink even had time to dry, conflicting comments began to emerge.

“I hereby authorize the opening of the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said on Sunday, insisting that once mines were cleared there would be a return to pre-war, free, open navigation for world shipping through one of the largest chokepoints for global trade.

We should all hope so. Since Trump attacked Iran in collaboration with Israel at the end of February, and Iran retaliated by seizing control of the Bosphorus (for the first time ever), the global economy has taken a hit, with oil and gas prices soaring and shortages of essentials such as fertilizer (for agriculture) and helium (for microchip making) spreading.

But Iran doesn’t exactly see this from Trump’s perspective. The regime’s Fars news agency announced that Iran will continue to regulate shipping through the Bosphorus in coordination with Oman (located on the southern side of the Bosphorus).

Neither Iran nor America has yet released a specific list of the contents of the agreement, which is expected to form the basis of 60-day peace talks while the guns fall silent.

So it’s not a complete return to the previous status quo. Even if this were to happen, along with a return to previous normal service, it would hardly be a major Trump achievement. This would merely restore the logical situation that existed before the war began.

There also does not appear to be anything in the memorandum regarding limiting Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal or its ability to make up for losses in Israeli-American attacks.

I also understand that he has almost nothing to say about Iran’s continued arming and financing of its terrorist proxies in the Middle East (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others that are less well-known but equally odious).

Now you will understand why Israel is not very happy with Trump’s ‘peace deal’.

A senior Israeli official told a local television channel yesterday morning: “This is a disastrous deal for Israel.”

‘There is no one at the top, from the Prime Minister to the Israeli Armed Forces, who does not think this way’ [Israeli Defence Forces] chief of staff.’

Israel’s concern was further increased by Trump’s speech that he would give Iran access to some of its frozen funds held abroad and allow it to increase its oil exports.

Both moves would help fill Tehran’s coffers, and the regime has developed missile capabilities and financed its proxies in the past while being relatively flush with funds.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces backlash over US-Iran peace deal

There is also Iran’s ambition for nuclear weapons. Trump has frequently stated that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb under any circumstances. He sometimes cites this as the main purpose of starting his war.

The Trump administration’s original line was that Iran could not be given any financial lifeline or sanctions relief unless Iran’s nuclear capability was clearly and verifiable eliminated. This line is now being glossed over.

I was told that there was very little in the declaration about nuclear weapons. All the thorny issues—Iran’s current near-weapons-grade uranium stockpile and its ability to further enrich it—were included in the 60-day talks, with no visible advances on any of them.

Trump now says he is “in no rush” for Iran to give up its existing enriched uranium and describes as “harmless” what he once claimed was an act of war for a war with Iran. So Trump’s concept of a peace deal not only fails to resolve long-standing frictions between Iran, America, and its allies in the Gulf, but also fails to resolve the problems it has created. Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz is unified. Enriched uranium is another.

President Obama’s previous deal with Iran had its flaws, but it resulted in 97 percent of Iran’s enriched uranium being sent to Russia.

Trump tore up that agreement early in his first term, giving Iran the freedom to enrich enough uranium to build ten to 12 nuclear bombs.

All of this is now a matter of negotiations that will last 60 days. As Obama might put it, Iran is adept at prolonging such talks and pocketing concessions.

I wouldn’t be surprised if these are followed by another 60 days of negotiations. Or real peace can never be achieved.

Iran thinks Trump does not have the stomach for even bigger attacks, let alone starting an all-out war against Iran. This is a reasonable operating assumption.

America now relies on diplomacy without the threat of credible force as a backup. No wonder Tehran feels smug.

The regime was soaked in blood but did not surrender. The Conservatives have consolidated their grip and are more repressive than ever.

Now they are eagerly awaiting the easing of sanctions; new resources to strengthen their control and pump more money into missiles and proxies; and continuing to talk about nuclear capabilities until Trump gets bored and turns his attention elsewhere. He seems to be making things up as he goes along anyway.

He called the New York Times on Sunday afternoon and spoke for almost half an hour. During this time he insisted that the Strait of Hormuz would soon be ‘permanently free’ (Iran has other ideas); He claimed to have saved Israel from ‘nuclear annihilation’ (Israelis don’t think so); stated that he would restart attacks on Iran if a final agreement is not reached (no one believes this); argued that the Middle East was being ‘reshaped to America’s advantage’ (fictional); and suggested the US was prepared to act as ‘custodian of the Middle East’ for 20 per cent of the region’s revenues (if anyone believes that, I’ve got a caravan to sell them).

While we wait for the ‘peace’ memorandum to fully operate, we can be sure of one thing: the Iranian people will not take part in this memorandum.

There was a time when Trump called on them to rise up and get rid of their oppressors. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu even persuaded him to go to war and assured him that the regime would collapse. He says now: ‘I never cared about regime change.’

The Iranian people are being left to a much crueler fate than before Trump started the war. America’s allies in Europe and Asia suffered from the war due to the damage it inflicted on the global economy. Israel is angry.

Gulf allies are now courting Iran because they have concluded that they cannot trust America. The odious Iranian regime has discovered new resistance and increased global influence.

In the coming months, Trump will walk away under the guise of bombastic rhetoric with little to show for the fruitless, unnecessary war he started, and history will record it as the greatest foreign policy disaster of his administration. As he likes to say, nothing else comes close.