With coincidental timing, which might once have been seen as ironic but which instead underlines the strange times that we live in, birthday boy US President Trump concluded the draft peace deal while also organising a series of brutal MMA matches on his front lawn.
Just prior to attending UFC Freedom 250 — quite possibly the oddest 80th birthday party ever and almost definitely the strangest event ever hosted on the White House’s South Lawn — Mr Trump signed off on a Pakistan-brokered deal which, all going well, will end the three-month long exchange of fire between the US and Iran.
The air and missile strikes had ramifications far beyond their impact craters. World sharemarkets have shuddered from the reverberations and commodity markets — especially oil — have been in convulsions ever since.
Fuel prices have soared to astronomic levels, hurting both families and businesses, and they will likely remain high for some time to come until the many oil and gas tankers anchored in the Persian Gulf awaiting safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz are able to commence making deliveries as per normal.
The process to get to this point has been rather like one of the ultimate fighting bouts in the temporary octagon plonked on the same lawn used for the annual Easter Egg hunt. It began with bluster, buffoonery and boasting, before both combatants started flailing away wildly at each other.
At least the UFC combatants had an objective in mind: a valuable purse and possibly a gaudy title belt. Quite what the US has achieved from instigating months of turmoil and global uncertainty is less obvious.
Ostensibly, the US and Israel embarked on this escapade to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Many observers doubt that Iran was intending to do any such thing, and that even if they were that the country’s scientists were anywhere close to actually achieving that.
Prior to the bombers being launched all sides were engaged in talks in Geneva to try to settle details of Iran’s nuclear programme and its restriction to purely energy purposes. One of the provisions of the latest deal is that the talks resume — although quite how willing each country will be to compromise given all that has gone on is debatable.
But they were talking before and will be talking again, which again begs the question of what has been achieved in the interim? With no knockout blow being struck, the judge’s scorecards will decide who has ‘‘won’’ this bout.
Quite apart from the billions shorn from people’s pockets at the petrol pump and from their pension funds, this war has likely cost thousands of lives and left infrastructure damage in the billions of dollars to be cleaned up throughout the Middle East.
At the end of UFC Freedom 250 taking down the ‘‘Claw’’ — the metal structure assembled over the octagon — was the work of hours. Repairing the damage off this latest Gulf War will take years.
Then there is the issue of whether or not, as Mr Trump declared, that ships of the world can actually start their engines and let the oil flow.
If this war has proven anything it is to demonstrate the vice-like grip that geography has given Iran on the Strait of Hormuz. The oil will only flow if Iran says it will, and the insurance companies covering the risk on hundreds of oil tankers deem the risk to their cover has ended.
If Iran holds just one card, it is a high one and there is no certainty that the negotiators on the other side of the table can trump it, so to speak.
The US president has always had a bellicose approach to foreign policy. Perhaps Mr Trump needs to take a leaf from the UFC fighters he is so fond of and ally months of careful preparation and planning to a pugnacious attitude.
