A reporter asked whether the ceasefire was done and the MOU was dead. Donald Trump answered from the NATO summit in Ankara. 'To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum, they're sick people, they're led by sick people, and they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it.'

He said this while Khamenei was being buried in Mashhad. 

The ceasefire that Trump celebrated three weeks ago as bringing 'peace and security' to the region did not expire through a legal process. There was no neutral arbiter, no dispute resolution mechanism, no formal declaration of termination. It ended in a press gaggle at a NATO summit in Turkey, in a sentence that lasted eleven seconds, delivered by the same man who signed the document and is now calling the people he signed it with scum. 

The MOU was nineteen days old when this publication described it as a framework for managing pain rather than ending the war. It lasted three days longer than that before both sides were accusing each other of material breach. It lasted twenty-two days before the president who signed it told reporters it was over and said he was not sure he wanted to make a deal at all. 'Let's just finish the job,' he said. 

The job, by Trump's own description at Mount Rushmore last week, is denuclearisation. The nuclear programme was not destroyed in February. It was dispersed and hardened. Analysts said at the time that the strikes would accelerate Iran's motivation to acquire a weapon rather than eliminate its capacity to do so. Trump is now threatening to strike Iran's electric and desalination plants and seize Kharg Island, the oil export terminal through which roughly 90 per cent of Iran's oil revenues flow. The naval blockade, lifted under the MOU as Iran's primary concession demand, has been reimposed. JD Vance told reporters in Milwaukee: 'The basic deal was we'll lift our blockade if you stop shooting at ships, but if you shoot at ships, we are going to knock the hell out of them.' 

Iran's IRGC has said retaliation in the coming days will be harsher. Oil prices jumped 6 per cent on Trump's remarks. Brent crude is back above pre-war levels. The Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world's oil supply passes, is a conflict zone again.

Khamenei was buried today at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, the city where he was born in 1939. He was killed on February 28. His son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei, believed to have been wounded in the same strike, did not appear at the burial. The man who now leads the country Trump called scum has not been seen publicly since the war began. 

The ceasefire lasted twenty-two days. The MOU lasted nineteen. Trump told reporters he would allow his negotiators to keep talking if they wanted to. 'I don't care,' he said. 'They can talk, but I think they're wasting their time. They're a bunch of lying guys.' 

Iran has not said the MOU is dead. Iran has not said talks are over. The country being called scum by the president of the United States at a NATO summit while burying its Supreme Leader is, for now, letting the other side do the talking.