Donald Trump says Iran’s leaders are “vicious,” “evil,” lying “scum.” Perhaps they are, but that is not the root cause of his predicament in the Strait of Hormuz, where the US president now says the ceasefire is over and further diplomacy would be a waste of time. His troubles — and therefore those of America’s Gulf allies and the global economy writ large — stem from his own falsehoods.

The war Trump launched against Iran on Feb. 28 didn’t end in the victory he has claimed. Nor did the ceasefire terms he agreed in an attempt to end it — set out in a so-called Memorandum of Understanding — represent Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” They were anything but. The document’s language is so ambiguous it has allowed both sides to continue pursuing their war aims by other means.

This was an improvement over the devastation of war and the risk, cited by Trump himself, of tipping the world into recession. Nonetheless, it created an inherently unstable situation, because it was only a question of time before that ambiguity meant the two sides would start accusing each other of breaking the ceasefire terms. Those perceived breaches began within days and produced periodic exchanges of fire. But until Wednesday, neither side had wanted to declare the truce and negotiations over, because the alternative was so unappealing.

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