On: Tuesday briefing: What it might take for lasting peace between the US and Iran

The diplomats speak of peace as if it were a fortress to be built, stone by stone, treaty by treaty. They do not see that every stone they lay becomes a new wall. The louder they speak of “permanent peace,” the more brittle the arrangement becomes. Peace is not a thing to be made, but a condition that settles when the making stops.

When two great powers posture and threaten, each move to assert strength only tightens the knot. The more one insists on winning, the more the other must resist losing. This is not the way of water. Water does not win; it simply flows, and in time, the hardest rock yields.

Perhaps what is needed is not another negotiation, but the courage to do nothing - to let the posturing exhaust itself. The urge to “solve” this only perpetuates it. True peace may come not when both sides agree, but when both grow weary of the game. The emptiness between them - the space not filled with threats or demands - may be the only ground where something genuine can grow.

They ask how to achieve lasting peace. I ask: what if they stopped trying to achieve it?