New Delhi, July 3 -- 40 million barrels of crude oil exported since the Islamabad MoU was signed 15 days earlier, sold at prices 20 percent above what Iran was receiving before the conflict. On the same day, Donald Trump told reporters that "the denuclearisation of Iran is moving along well." His negotiators in Doha had spent two days on shipping fees and frozen bank accounts. The nuclear program did not come up.

That distance - between what Iran's parliament speaker is telling parliament and what the American president is telling the press - is the actual state of the negotiations five weeks before the MoU expires.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, who led the Iranian technical team in Doha, described two rounds of meet...