I was enjoying a rather exquisite branzino at Le Cinq with a former deputy secretary of state last Thursday when my phone buzzed with the news. President Donald Trump, in his characteristically decisive and unbothered manner, had declared the US-Iran peace deal "all signed."
Naturally, the usual chorus of professional hand-wringers immediately began hyperventilating. The press, glued to their Middle East crisis live blogs as if international diplomacy were a spectator sport, eagerly pointed out that the actual memorandum of understanding wasn't scheduled to be signed until Friday.
The G7 leaders, currently huddled in whatever picturesque European compound they've commandeered this week, were reportedly scrambling in a total panic to "tie up loose ends."
To which I say: grow up.
It turns out that prematurely declaring an international peace treaty completely finished before the ink is even in the room is exactly the kind of visionary leadership the global energy market has been begging for.
Let us be perfectly honest with ourselves, a courtesy the diplomatic corps rarely extends. What is a "loose end" in the grand scheme of a Middle Eastern war? The exact timeline of military withdrawals? The meticulous verification of uranium stockpiles? The intricate, multi-lateral enforcement mechanisms required to unwind years of devastating proxy violence?
Please. These are administrative trivialities. They are the geopolitical equivalent of reading the Apple terms of service before clicking agree. What actually matters—what has always mattered to those of us who have to live in the real world and manage diversified energy holdings—is that Tehran is finally allowed to sell its oil and fuel again.
We were still drafting the table of contents for the memorandum when the President announced the total cessation of hostilities to reporters on the tarmac.
For months, this conflict has been an absolute nuisance. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to project quarterly earnings when the region is functionally closed to maritime traffic? It is a nightmare. I have friends—good, decent people who sit on the boards of major logistics firms—who have practically had to cancel their summer plans to the Amalfi Coast just to monitor the Brent crude index.
The human toll of this uncertainty has been staggering. Just last week, my broker sounded on the verge of tears while trying to hedge against a potential refinery strike.
And now, thanks to a stroke of executive impatience, that nightmare is over. The President said it is signed. Therefore, the markets believe it is signed. Therefore, the oil can flow.
It is deeply embarrassing to watch Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron fussing over "the next stage of talks" like nervous accountants who have lost a receipt. The Europeans have always had an unhealthy obsession with process. They genuinely believe that a war isn't over until a committee of bespectacled bureaucrats has stamped a piece of vellum in three different languages.
But commerce does not wait for vellum. The moment the words "all signed" left the President's mouth, I immediately called my wealth manager and told him to go long on Iranian heavy crude. You do not need a fully ratified treaty to load a supertanker. You just need a general, legally ambiguous vibe of non-aggression, which is exactly what we have now achieved.
The beauty of a deal that nobody has actually read yet is that the market can project whatever profit margins it wants onto the blank pages.
The media will inevitably continue their live blogs, breathlessly updating the public on whether a specific paragraph regarding sanctions relief has been properly formatted. They will act as if the absence of a formal signature on a Thursday invalidates the very concept of peace.
They are missing the forest for the trees. The war was keeping fuel prices artificially high, and now the war has been rhetorically canceled by a man who simply got bored of waiting for the paperwork.
If the G7 leaders had any sense, they would stop trying to tie up these mythical loose ends and start focusing on what really matters: ensuring those newly operational Iranian oil terminals have expedited shipping lanes. Everything else is just noise.