After fifteen weeks of Operation Epic Fury, Donald Trump has staged an Operation Epic Retreat by signing a fourteen-point 'peace deal' with Iran. Of course, it is still a draft memorandum of understanding and the final agreement will be signed after sixty days. Meanwhile, Israel does not agree to the deal and its continuing military attack in Lebanon can derail the peace plan. For the peace agreement to materialise, several points of the MoU have to become immediately operational: ceasefire on all war fronts including Lebanon, lifting of the US naval blockade and withdrawal of US armed forces from Iran, free international passage through the Strait of Hormuz till Iran and Oman decide on the future administration and maritime services, waivers for export of Iranian crude oil and petroleum products and associated banking and transportation services and release of Iran's frozen funds.
Trump signed the deal on 17 June, 2026 at a G7 dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles. Observers immediately drew a historical parallel with the 1919 Versailles treaty that Germany had to sign with the Allied Powers taking full blame for World War I. For the US, the current juncture is however not yet so humiliating as for Germany after World War I. Trump himself invoked another moment from the history of the twentieth century to justify the US retreat. He said he would not be liked to be remembered as Herbert Hoover who was the US President at the time of the Great Depression of 1929. The Hormuz blockade and the escalating energy crisis could land the US and the global economy into another Great Depression, feared Trump. For more recent parallels, the world remembered the American defeat in Vietnam and the collapse of the US design in Afghanistan where after two decades of war and occupation the US withdrew its forces in 2021 handing over the reins to the Taliban.
After kidnapping President Maduro of Venezuela, Trump thought that regime change in Iran was the next low-hanging fruit. After the sudden US-Israel invasion of Iran on 28 February and the assassination of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the US-Israel war machine thought Iran would collapse within days. But then the world saw Iran's spectacular resilience and fightback - the Iranian missiles and the Hormuz masterstroke have not only foiled the regime change conspiracy but also forced the US into an ignominious retreat. For the US to agree to respect the sovereignty of Iran and to withdraw not just the ongoing naval blockade and military intervention but also the decades-old economic sanctions and restrictions on Iranian deposits is a massive victory for Iran and setback for US imperialism's blueprint of unchallenged American domination in a unipolar world.
Indeed the Iranian resistance has also encouraged domestic opposition within the US and cracks in Trump's MAGA base for dragging the US into yet another war, this time at the behest of Israel. Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the USA, anger against the tyrannical Trump presidency runs high across the country. After the victory of Zohran Mamdani in the mayoral election in New York City, two other young democratic socialists appear likely to become Mayors in two iconic American cities - Nithya Raman in Los Angeles and Janeese Lewis George in Washington, D.C. Defying all exercises in mass distraction, the shocking Epstein Files that exposed the depth of depravity of the Trump-Netanyahu nexus refuse to get erased from the public memory. The regime change operation that Iran managed to defeat may well become a reality for the US now reeling under Trump's tyranny.
The Iran war has also eroded the American domination over the western world. For the first time in decades, America's European allies refused to go the whole hog in support of another US-Israel military expedition. Marco Rubio's attempt to invoke racist nostalgia for colonialism along with shared Christian heritage and values to reinforce the strategic cohesion of NATO did little to cement the growing cracks. Pope Leo XIV, the first US-born pontiff, actually opposed the US-Israeli invasion of Iran as an unjust war and Trump's condemnation of the Pope's stance only added to the widening rifts between the US and Italy. It should be noted that Italy has a powerful working class movement which strongly opposes the genocide in Gaza and stands in open support for Palestine. Italy's far-right Prime Minister Georgia Meloni who used to be a great admirer of Donald Trump seeking to bring Europe closer to the US under Trump's second presidency, is now having a running feud with Donald Trump.
The Modi government’s foreign policy of capitulation to the US-Israel axis of aggression has only rendered India more vulnerable against this changing international backdrop. Relentless tariff and trade blows apart, India is having to deal with humiliating racist treatment of Indian immigrants, including those with valid documents, and US missile attacks on Indian ships and seafarers near the Strait of Hormuz. While countries like Pakistan and Qatar have played a role in ceasefire negotiations, the Modi government did not have the courage to take a stand against the war even when it hurt India's own interests in so many ways.
The growing irrelevance of India's foreign policy in the Modi era is now starkly underlined by Modi's awkward hugs, handshakes and endless giggles in the company of foreign heads of states, and his photo ops and PR exercises in global summits like his clueless guest appearance in the G7 summit. He did not even have the courage to demand an apology from Donald Trump on the issue of the killing of Indian seafarers by US navy, and his mention of the issue of safety of seafarers only met with an insensitive and curt reply from Trump describing seafaring as a 'rough profession'. To keep Modi and his bhakts happy Trump said the US will stand by India in the event of any attack as long as Modi was at the helm. Iran's ability to assert its sovereignty in the face of a war even after the assassination of its leader serves as a stark contrast to India's growing loss of international stature and strategic autonomy under Modi's megalomaniac foreign policy of self-promotion at the cost of the country's interests and dignity.
