For the second time in just over a month, Donald Trump has announced via social media, and without any announcement from the parties involved, the end of an armed conflict. On May 10, it was India and Pakistan, and on June 24, it was Israel and Iran. From his Truth Social account, Donald went wild with his usual abundance of capital letters: "CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL! It has been agreed between Israel and Iran that there will be a complete and total ceasefire.... Assuming everything works as it should, and it will, I would like to congratulate both countries, Israel and Iran, for demonstrating the strength, courage, and intelligence necessary to end what should be called ‘THE 12-DAY WAR’...". Trump's words are very similar to those used for India and Pakistan, and on closer inspection, this is no coincidence. A few days after the ceasefire between Delhi and Islamabad, it emerged that American soldiers, rather than Pakistani soldiers, were stationed at the Nur Khan base (near Rawalpindi) bombed by India. The same American soldiers who, apparently, had landed a month earlier in Bagram, Afghanistan: a small contingent whose presence has never been officially confirmed. According to many analysts, the only plausible reason for the renewed American presence in the area was the possibility of an attack on Iran. A few weeks later, Trump invited Field Marshal Asim Munir, head of the Pakistani army, to lunch at the White House, effectively accrediting him as the country's leader. Not only that, but Munir was also received at the Pentagon, the State Department, and Centcom headquarters. The day after Pakistan officially nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump himself decided to enter the conflict between Israel and Tehran. The Pakistani people reacted with outrage, while the government promptly sealed the border with Iran. And while a series of fake Iranian accounts managed by Islamabad circulated news online that Pakistan was ready to lend its nuclear weapons to its Iranian brothers against Israel, the generals were busy playing the game they do best: that of the three monkeys. The American operation, codenamed Midnight Hammer, involved 125 military aircraft and targeted three nuclear facilities: Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. According to official information, the planes took off from the United States. Some jets were sent west into the Pacific as “decoys,” while others preceded the main bombers to ensure that the airspace was clear. Two dozen cruise missiles were reportedly launched at Isfahan from a submarine. However, perhaps things did not go quite as planned: in Pakistan and the surrounding area, there are increasingly insistent rumors that the Americans actually used, if not bases, at least Pakistani airspace to strike Iran. And that Islamabad has, for the umpteenth time, at least in appearance, thrown the brothers of the Ummah overboard in the face of the prospect of several billion dollars and a renewed ‘friendship’ with America. On the other hand, double and triple games have always been in Pakistan's DNA: it is the only Islamic country with nuclear weapons, which it regularly uses to blackmail the rest of the world whenever it is asked to account for the terrorists it breeds and manages. Pakistan is, if proof were needed, the reason why Iran, like any other state that uses terrorism as a means of foreign policy, must not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. Even if, according to Trump's posts, the ayatollahs are basically good guys, apart from their little vice of wanting to build the Bomb. A ‘nation of merchants’ ready to do business and with a leadership to be treated with every consideration: even if its most notorious military contingent is an international terrorist organization. But then, terrorists are friends or enemies, ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending on the international situation and the convenience of the moment. Just like dictators and cutthroats disguised as rulers. Ultimately, you can always fabricate a dossier to get rid of them, as happened in Iraq, or suddenly invoke ‘international law’ to stop the weapons in the name of ‘peace’ and prevent a criminal regime from being eliminated. After the ‘twelve-day war’, all Iranians are grateful: especially those, and there are hundreds of them, who were promptly picked up by the police in the aftermath of the ‘victory’ celebrated by the regime. Tortured, beaten, thrown into prison or hung by their necks from a crane, they are happy to contribute to the Nobel Peace Prize so desired by Trump. The Iranian girls are happy, those torn to shreds for singing a song or uncovering their heads, those blinded by the regime, those raped, those dead and those who are missing. Just as they are happy in Pakistan, after the ‘three-day war’, all those who disappeared at the hands of the state, the opponents massacred, tortured and thrown dead onto the streets. The widows of tourists killed in India by terrorists armed by Islamabad. The fact is that this ‘peace’, the much-vaunted Trumpian pax, is not peace but, as the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti said, only absence of war. Unresolved conflicts, always ready to be used as a means of metaphorically twisting the arm of allies or enemies, remain, precisely, unresolved. And ready to explode in your face when you least expect it. Like September 11, like October 7. As Hillary Clinton said: “You can't raise snakes in your garden and expect them to bite only your neighbors.” You can't stir up wars from afar and then declare peace. Stopping the conflict in Iran or Pakistan without addressing the root cause is of little use. Just like peace, if it is merely absence of war.