October 1962, the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis • Doha, ~25 May 2026: Iran and the US sign a 60-day MOU ending the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, releasing $12bn in frozen Iranian funds, opening uranium-enrichment talks. Pakistan-led mediation, Qatar joined late.
Doha, expected Sunday 25 May 2026: a 60-day Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding ends the US Navy's 50-day blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, releases $12 billion in frozen Iranian funds, and opens negotiations on uranium enrichment. The legal-word substitution, the public-and-secret pairing, the time-limited window are the exact template that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.
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October 2003 to November 2025, Bolivia from the Gas War to the first non-MAS president in two decades • La Paz under siege, May 2026. President Rodrigo Paz, six months in office, faces the same canyon-road blockades that brought down Sánchez de Lozada in 2003. Morales is barred from running for office. His networks are running the blockades.
Bolivia, 17 October 2003: a Chicago-educated technocratic president fled the country by helicopter after sixty-seven people were killed in two weeks of road blockades organised by a coca-grower congressman named Evo Morales. This week the streets of La Paz are blocked again. Morales is sixty-six, banned from running for office, and back at the architect's table.
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June 1887 to June 1890, the German Empire under Bismarck and the early reign of Wilhelm II • Beijing, May 2026: Xi receives Trump (13-15 May) and Putin (19-20 May) at the Great Hall within a week. Energy and security joint statements with Russia; no treaty with the US; 'China holds the cards' framing.
Berlin, 18 June 1887: the German chancellor signed a secret three-year treaty with Russia at the same time he was bound by a public treaty against Russia. The arrangement held the European peace for three more years. Then his emperor died. Trump and Putin visited Beijing within a week of each other this month.
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August 1974 to December 2021, the Republic of Korea • Peru's 7 June 2026 presidential runoff: Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular, 17.19%) versus leftist Roberto Sánchez (Juntos por el Perú, 12.03%). It is Keiko's fourth consecutive runoff, eight months after the death of her father Alberto Fujimori.
Seoul, 15 August 1974: a 22-year-old woman watched her mother die at the National Theatre. Two presidencies, an assassination, an impeachment and a prison sentence later, the same arc is being walked in Peru. Keiko Fujimori is in her fourth presidential runoff on 7 June.
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September 1980, the Iran-Iraq War, Tuwaitha • 17 May 2026 drone strike on the UAE's Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant: three drones, two intercepted, one hit a perimeter substation generator. No claim of responsibility. UAE adviser pointed at Iran's proxy network.
At dawn on 30 September 1980, four Iranian F-4 Phantoms refuelled in the air over the border, climbed deliberately high, then dropped to the deck and bombed Iraq's Osirak reactor. It was the first attack on a nuclear plant in human history. Forty-six years later something flew at the UAE's Barakah.
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October 1986, Reykjavík, Iceland • The Trump-Xi Beijing state summit (13-15 May 2026): no treaty signed, a walk to the Temple of Heaven, and parallel actions including Yuan Hua Hu's Hormuz transit, the cancelled Polish deployment, the Havana visit, and Kinmen tourism resumption.
Reykjavík, 12 October 1986: Reagan and Gorbachev nearly abolished all nuclear weapons and signed nothing. The press called it a disaster. Within five years the Cold War was over. In Beijing this month, Trump and Xi did the same.
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1853-1870 Second French Empire, Paris • The Lagos waterfront clearances in Makoko and other lagoon communities (Dec 2025-May 2026): 10,000+ displaced, 3,000+ homes destroyed, 12 dead from tear gas including two infants, for luxury 'Dubai of Africa' development.
Paris, 29 June 1853: Napoleon III handed a prefect a map and told him to air the city, unite it, beautify it. Three hundred and fifty thousand poor Parisians were pushed out of the centre. Lagos is doing the same thing this week.
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67-66 BCE Roman Republic, Mediterranean • The Strait of Hormuz blockade, Project Freedom, and the unilateral executive authority exercised in the 2026 Iran war.
Rome, 67 BCE: the grain ships could not get past the pirates. The Senate handed one man the entire Mediterranean, and he cleared it in three months. The Republic never recovered. The Strait of Hormuz, May 2026: same chokepoint, same emergency, same temptation.
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1683 to 1699, Vienna, Linz, Rome, Moscow, Mohács, Belgrade, Slankamen, Zenta, Karlowitz • IDF chief Eyal Zamir received by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi, 15 May 2026; Iron Dome batteries on UAE territory; the Abraham Accords (15 September 2020) functioning as a multi-power coalition against Iran.
In 1684 Pope Innocent XI bound the Habsburg empire, Poland, and Venice into a coalition against the Ottomans with an exclusivity clause: no separate peace. Fifteen years later, at Karlowitz, the Ottomans lost most of Hungary. On 15 May 2026 the IDF chief was received in Abu Dhabi.
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1956 to 1972, Moscow, Camp David, Beijing, Wuhan, Ussuri • Trump-Xi Beijing summit, 14 May 2026: joint statement that Iran 'can never have a nuclear weapon' and Hormuz 'must remain open,' preceded by Hegseth's 16 April 2026 announcement of Chinese assurances to halt weapons supply to Iran.
In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and embraced peaceful coexistence with the United States. By 1960 the Soviet Union had withdrawn more than a thousand advisors from China and the alliance was broken. On 14 May 2026 Xi Jinping told Donald Trump in Beijing that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon. China is Iran's patron.