The satellite photograph is of a tanker for transporting oil.The satellite image depicts an oil tanker. The tale this week out of Washington is that diplomacy is still alive. President Donald Trump Monday withdrew a strike package scheduled to depart on Tuesday following Saudi, Emirati and Qatari pleas for forty-eight to seventy-two hours of calm, saying that a deal with Iran was finally in sight. The subdued attitude was not to be found on Tuesday evening. The president said the "days" not weeks or months Tehran has to come up with something "serious" on the table or that which he had earlier warned would leave them "nothing left of them" will occur. The message was loud and clear as a five-hour security session in the Israeli cabinet went late into the night, and the Prime Minister's corruption trial was thrown off schedule: the runway is about to run out.

Now, according to Channel 12 news in Israel, the only thing remaining to be determined is when Jerusalem can return to the American strikes on the Islamic Republic. The United States and Israel are making the most extensive military preparations since the ceasefire that ended the conflict late in March, two Middle East officials told the New York Times. One Israeli official stated quite plainly that they're preparing for days to weeks of fighting and waiting for Trump's final decision. For its part, the IRGC, on Tuesday, issued a chilling statement saying that in the event of a resumption of aggression "the regional war that was threatened will this time extend beyond the region, and our crushing hits will bring you to your ruin in places you cannot even imagine. Iran's army also pledged in a separate statement to "open new fronts" against the assets of the United States in the event of a resumption of hostilities. In a significant but under-the-radar gesture, Jordan shot down a drone in its airspace on the same day.

The Iranian counter-proposal that arrived in Washington over the weekend, through the Pakistani middlemen and under the Chinese seal of approval, called for removal of sanctions, unfreezing of Iranian assets, withdrawal of US navy from the Iranian waters, compensation in full for war damages, withdrawal of American forces from the Iranian border areas and a formal end of fighting in Lebanon and other fronts. Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed the contours to IRNA. Trump rejected a nearly identical version last week as "garbage. By all reliable sources, the new draft hasn't budged an inch from where it is. According to a Pakistani source, both sides are "changing goal posts. Diplomat-speak for: No one is playing ball.

Now is the time to speak the truth about this war. There's no misunderstanding. It's not a PR issue stemming from hawkish rhetoric from both sides. It is a project that has been in operation for decades, and which has openly pledged to destroy a sovereign nation, armed and financed proxies from Beirut to Sanaa to Baghdad to Gaza, enriched uranium to levels it has no civilian use for, and fired more than a thousand ballistic missiles against Israel and the Gulf Arab states since the conflict began again on Feb. 28. The civilisation, which has been around for thousands of years, cannot be expected to negotiate the terms of its own erasure, and any structure which sees the aggressor and the defender as moral equals is not peace. It is intermission.

That's why the deal now in discussions is concerning in Jerusalem as much as the prospect of renewed fighting. CNN said, quoting several Israeli sources, that the biggest worry in the Israeli security establishment is not that Trump strikes, but that he "grows tired of talks and cuts a deal, any deal, with last-minute concessions. A sunset clause as envisioned in the negotiating drafts would essentially re-open the JCPOA "doors" and return to the status quo of the Obama era with restrictions that expire, enrichment resumes, ballistic missiles untouched, and the proxy network Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqi militias left in place to be rebuilt at leisure. After issuing in February five conditions for an acceptable outcome, Netanyahu has publicly trimmed that list to one: removal of the enriched material, and dismantling the enrichment capability. Missiles and proxies, a source close to the negotiations said, "are probably off the table. It's a low, powerful admission.

It's the economic background which lends the next decade of days their teeth. In the first few weeks of the war, the price of crude oil jumped the most on record for any month, topping $120 a barrel, as Brent crude, which was at $72 a barrel the day before the war started, traded in the area of $110 on Tuesday following Trump's stand-down hint. Since the United States went to war, gasoline prices have increased $1.16 per gallon. In North America, the price of jet fuel is approximately 95 percent higher. In early May, Spirit Airlines went under. International Energy Agency's Fatih Birol cautioned the G7 in Paris that commercial stocks are running rapidly low and the strategic stocks already mobilized a 2.5 million bpd boost in supply are not unlimited. Washington's Operation Economic Fury is said to cost Iran $500 million a day. None of this is sustainable for any party, which is why the next step is so risky: each side thinks it's in a strong position to hold their ground and wait for the other side to crack.

It is not a lookie-loo event in India. About 88 per cent of the crude oil consumed in New Delhi is imported with nearly 45 per cent coming from West Asia. The government's own economic review has stated that every 10% increase in oil prices over baseline assumptions increases inflation by some 30 basis points, and the current Brent price is way above the current assumptions. 60% of Indian households use LPG for cooking and it is the first commodity to have broken down queues, delayed deliveries, panic stockpiling in the early weeks of March. The 10-rupee-a-litre cut in excise duty on petrol and diesel announced in late March created political breathing room at the expense of fiscal space that New Delhi did not have. There is a larger current account deficit. Rupee has been under pressure. India has a very small strategic petroleum reserve of about 5.33 million tonnes giving a few days cover compared to the China's stockpile of 110-140 days. The difference says it all.

The Indian instinct is at work here as well and it is not just rupees and barrels. India has long been living with the export ramifications of theocratic radicalism: Kashmir, Mumbai, Pulwama, Pahalgam and most of all; most European chancelleries treat it as an abstraction, while India knows it in its marrow. Today Israel is fighting for a principle which India has had to fight for many a time on its own territory. The question of a sovereign democracy's right to withhold from a hostile theocracy the means of its annihilation is not a debating-society question. It is the presupposition of all other discussions.

But it is the political mathematics on the American side that is uniquely combustible. A New York Times/Siena poll published this week showed Trump's approval at 37 percent as 64 percent of Americans said the war was the wrong decision. A slow travel season and pump prices are no abstract concepts to the White House that's looking at midterms. On Monday, the president said the war is "very popular," once people understand it is the kind of line politicians give out when the data doesn't support it. That's the kind of margin a rushy, face-saving deal would fill and it's the kind of margin Israeli planners are bracing against now.

So the next ten days aren't necessarily about Iran signing something. It is about whether or not the world will accept paper as an alternative to the one thing that actually can solve this: a world without the enrichment capacity, the missile arsenal and the network of proxies Iran has spent a generation building. All of this is choreography the Pakistani-brokered channel, the eleventh-hour cries of the Gulf states, the IRGC's warnings that the battle will continue "beyond" the region. The question is whether Tehran's current leaders, whom even the U.S. president now openly calls "extremely radicalized," can be left with the option to make another attempt in five years, or 10, or 20.

The markets are expecting a fudge. World stocks indicate that they can't afford one. But in Jerusalem it should be clear from every indicator that the hard choice is the cleaner one, and the cabinet, which sat for five hours Monday night, has already made that decision. The question now is whether Washington has the stomach to agree. Tehran has days. Thus, in a less comfortable manner, do all of the other people.