Fresh hostilities in Gulf suggest US-Iran memorandum was too broadly worded

A residential building in Muharraq, near the international airport, was hit by an Iranian drone on Sunday, according to the Bahraini interior ministry. Photograph: Bahrain Police Media/Reuters View image in fullscreen A residential building in Muharraq, near the international airport, was hit by an Iranian drone on Sunday, according to the Bahraini interior ministry. Photograph: Bahrain Police Media/Reuters Analysis Fresh hostilities in Gulf suggest US-Iran memorandum was too broadly worded Patrick Wintour Document appears to have been subject to conflicting interpretations on key issues of Lebanon ceasefire and strait of Hormuz Middle East crisis live – latest updates The sudden eruption of fresh hostilities in the Gulf – just 10 days after Iran and the US signed a memorandum of understanding to end the conflict – threatens to put the two countries back on the path to war . It appears the deliberately opaque wording in the memorandum has been unable to withstand the pressure of conflicting interpretations, and as a result supporters of the deal inside Tehran are on the back foot. Statements to the effect that Iran’s government should never have agreed to reopen the strait of Hormuz are proliferating – and not just among the country’s hardliners. The wording of the 14-point document was deliberately broad on two of the most vexed issues, the Lebanon ceasefire and the strait, in the hope that as trust developed between the two sides, a modus vivendi could be found. Instead, the agreement is crumbling under the pressure, with each side accusing the other of violating its terms. Shadow war: how use of proxy forces by Iran, Israel and US is driving Middle East instability Read more In Lebanon , the difficulty is that two ceasefire agreements had been agreed – and they are pulling against each other. The first ceasefire, mentioned in the memorandum and developed at the Lucerne talks attended by the US vice-president, JD Vance , gave a new role in Lebanon for Iran, and hence its proxy Hezbollah. Iran was to join a new deconfliction mechanism, and it seemed as if Israel was being squeezed out. The second, fuller, ceasefire signed by the Israel and Lebanese government in Washington on Friday and overseen by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio , reverses all that, by excluding Iran and Hezbollah. It allowed for Israel to remain in southern Lebanon until the complete disarmament of Hezbollah – a condition the Shia force could never accept. The agreement – signed by Nawaf Salam, the Lebanese prime minister and a former head of the international court of justice – also contained a clause stating that both sides would cease all hostile actions in all legal fora, leaving Israel immune from prosecution for any alleged war crimes committed in Lebanon. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, responded to that deal triumphantly, saying: “We will stay in the area until Hezbollah’s weapons and those of the remaining terrorist groups are dismantled.” But i