Trump duly affirmed that Iran's 10-point framework provided a "workable basis" to begin direct negotiations with Iran.

For Iran, the points were seen as pre-conditions, rather than starting points from which negotiations would flow.

CBS has reported that Trump had been told that Iran's terms, that he accepted on Thursday, would apply to the Middle East region as a whole – and he agreed that would include Lebanon. Mediators reported that the ceasefire would include Lebanon, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's announcement included it. Foreign Minister Araghchi also confirmed that Lebanon was included.

Trump's position however reversed itself following a phone call from Netanyahu. According to Israeli correspondent, Ronan Bergman, writing in Yediot Ahoronot, Netanyahu suddenly and belatedly exploded the situation: In Israel, both echelons — military and political — were instructed to prove that there was no ceasefire for Hizbullah by mounting a huge attack on crowded residential neighbourhoods in Lebanon – killing and wounding over 1,000 persons, largely civilians.

And at the same time as the attacks on Lebanon were taking place, Israel announced that it sought to open a political initiative – direct talks with the Lebanese government centred on the disarmament of Hizbullah and on Lebanon's normalisation with Israel – in order to buttress Netanyahu's demand "for a short window of time for additional attacks against Hezbollah, before the Americans try to roll the same spirit of calm to Lebanon," Anna Barsky writes in Ma'ariv."Assessments in Israel speak of a partial American understanding of this need; but this is by no means assured."

Alon Ben David, a prominent Israeli military correspondent, noted that the PM's initiative might result in civil war in Lebanon, adding in parenthesis that "this had always been the objective."

The Iranian equation however, runs counter to the "revised" US position that Lebanon was never integral to the "all fronts" demand. For Tehran, it is "ceasefire for all, or ceasefire for no one." It is that simple.

The negotiations were only going to take place if Trump was capable of imposing a veto on Netanyahu's thirst for further rounds of blanket bombing in Lebanon. Has Trump effective agency to control Netanyahu — who (together with some Gulf states reportedly) still wants Trump "to go all the way, until the overthrow of the evil regime," Ronen Bergman emphasises.

Yet the US reality is stark:

The US has lost its naval presence and military bases in the Persian Gulf region; its entire inventory of stand-off munitions has been nearly exhausted, along with its air defences, which have been proven woefully ineffective."

This is what decisive strategic defeat looks like.

As Ben Rhodes, former US Deputy National Security Advisor, put it: "It's hard to lose a war this short: this comprehensively."

What took Trump from a Tuesday night posting that "a whole civilization will die tonight," to acquiesce a few hours later to negotiations on the basis of Iran's 10-point plan is for conjecture. But perhaps the juxtaposed images of the crashed helicopter from President Carter's ill-fated attempt to rescue US hostages from Iran in 1980, together with the wreckage of US aircraft near Isfahan from the abandoned Saturday (4 April) attempt to seize enriched uranium from a tunnel at Isfahan, tells its story.