India, June 21 -- The framework looks promising on the surface. Scratch it, and the cracks run deep.

Call it what you will, a peace deal, a framework or a diplomatic breakthrough. The Trump Administration wants it to be called a peace deal. But look past the terminology and what you really have is, at best, an extended ceasefire dressed up in the language of statesmanship.

The problem is not that the people negotiating this deal are not serious. The problem is that the countries involved, the United States, Iran, and Israel, want fundamentally different things. And no amount of clever drafting can square that circle. Every time a ceasefire proposal has been floated, either Israel struck on Hezbollah positions preceded by Hezbollah's int...