On Thursday, Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the United States had reached ‘a great settlement of the war with Iran,’ with a signing possible this weekend, perhaps in Europe. The Dow rose nearly 2 per cent. The Nasdaq rose more than 2.5 per cent. Oil prices fell. Within hours, Iran’s foreign ministry said reports of a finalised agreement were ‘merely speculation’ and that Tehran had not made a final decision on anything.

This is not the first time. It is the fifth.

On February 28, Trump announced ‘major combat operations’ against Iran and predicted swift victory. By early April he was setting deadlines: ten to fifteen days to make a deal or face consequences. On April 4, in a profanity-laced Truth Social post, he told Iran to ‘open the f—ing Strait’ within forty-eight hours or face ‘Hell.’ Two days later, with the deadline expiring, he reversed course and announced a two-week ceasefire, crediting Pakistani mediation, declaring the US had ‘already met and exceeded all military objectives.’ Oil fell nearly 16 per cent that day.

The two-week ceasefire produced talks in Islamabad in April. The talks did not produce a deal. Trump extended the ceasefire indefinitely and maintained a naval blockade on Iranian shipping. Through May and into June he repeated that an agreement was close, that Iran wanted a deal ‘a lot more than I do,’ that total victory was, again, two weeks away. On June 10, the US launched new strikes on Iranian targets. Trump told a Fox News correspondent that top Iranian officials had called him directly asking the bombing to stop. Hours later, US Central Command launched a second night of strikes. Iran said it had closed the Strait of Hormuz. An Iranian cargo vessel sank in the Gulf of Oman after a US attack.

On June 11, Trump threatened to seize Kharg Island, which handles roughly 90 per cent of Iran’s crude exports, and said the US would hit Iran ‘very hard tonight.’ That evening, he announced the strikes were cancelled. ‘We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran,’ he told reporters, adding that markets were ‘up 1,000 points,’ which ‘means they like the deal.’ He later clarified, unprompted, that what had been agreed was ‘a very strong memorandum of understanding that is a little conceptual.’ Israel, he said separately, was not a party to it, though he told Netanyahu the eventual agreement would require Iran to give up its enriched uranium, dismantle its enrichment infrastructure and end support for regional proxies. Netanyahu had not been consulted on those terms before they were announced.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman said no final decision had been reached. Iran’s parliamentary speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted that ‘wrong strategies and impulsive decisions will reset the entire board for the worse,’ warning that further escalation would create ‘an endless quagmire.’

Each of the five announcements followed roughly the same shape. A deadline or a threat, then a reversal framed as victory, then a market reaction, then a gap between what was announced and what either side would confirm. Each time, the gap closed only when the next announcement arrived to replace it. Nobody appears to total the score.

It would be easy to call this a failure of message discipline, a president whose promises keep outrunning the facts. But failure implies the goal was accuracy and the execution fell short. Look instead at what each announcement actually produced. A 16 per cent fall in oil prices on April 7. A nearly 2 per cent rise in the Dow on June 11. A news cycle, each time, in which Trump is the dealmaker rather than the person presiding over a war that has now passed its hundredth day and killed more than 3,600 people in Lebanon alone, and pushed six million people across three countries into acute hunger. Each announcement bought something real. None of them bought an ending.

The market did not discount Thursday’s announcement for the four that came before it. Oil fell and stocks rose on a memorandum its own author called ‘a little conceptual,’ hours before the country it was supposedly made with said no such thing had been decided. That is not a communication failure. The communication worked exactly as it has worked four times before. What it has never done is end the war it keeps announcing the end of.