The team of US Vice President JD Vance was already at the airport, the reporters ready, dozens of White House officials already in Switzerland - and then it all collapsed. The trip for peace talks between the US and Iran was abruptly called off on Thursday evening.

The talks were to begin in Oberhorn, Switzerland, on the basis of a memorandum of understanding signed two days earlier. That document opened a 60-day window for a lasting agreement on Iran's nuclear program and for securing the transport of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. But the Iranian side, through its agencies, signaled that it first wants proof Washington is actually implementing the previous agreement before it sits down at a new table. On top of that, Israeli military operations in Lebanon are cited as a reason for Tehran to delay the arrival of its delegation.

The supreme leader approved the memorandum, but with a clear reservation - that Trump signed "out of desperation," and that if the American side is too demanding in its requests, the deal won't go through. In other words, nobody trusts anyone, yet everyone pretends to negotiate. This is diplomacy in which a signature on paper is worth exactly as long as it lasts until the next crisis.

Behind the whole story lies a very human calculation of power. The failure directly threatens Vance's presidential dream for 2028, and the Republican hawks are already calling the deal a capitulation. Trump himself turned the risk into a joke: "If it works, I'll take the credit. If not, JD's to blame." That sentence contains the whole of politics - success has many fathers, failure is always someone else.