There is nothing like the clash between a fast-moving story and a fixed deadline to whip your thoughts into order. This week the story was how, on Tuesday night, a genocidal threat by Donald Trump to destroy Iranian civilisation suddenly turned into a ceasefire that, the president said, would herald a Golden Age of peace and prosperity for the Middle East. Our thoughts were, pace Mr Trump, whether the truce could possibly hold and what it would mean.
The ceasefire was always going to be fragile—how fragile we soon discovered, as Israel bombed Lebanon, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and the Trump administration furiously dismissed accusations that the president had caved.
Even so, we concluded that the truce may hold, if only because Mr Trump would be reluctant to restart the war. He knows that renewed fighting will panic markets and infuriate voters. For his Golden Age to crumble in days would leave him looking a loser and a fool.
So we cleared our pages to create space for a new cover leader on the lessons of the war, a new briefing on the conflict’s implications for Iran, Israel and the rest of the Middle East and coverage of the effects of the war on America, NATO, commodity markets and the world economy. We also changed The Insider show, pulling in our experts on Iran, the Gulf and American politics to debate the potential of the truce to bring a lasting peace. Subscribers can watch it now.
Our conclusion was bleak for Mr Trump. Not all wars have a winner. But every war has at least one loser and, if the ceasefire does not lead to a comprehensive peace between America and Iran, the biggest loser will probably be Donald Trump. | 
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