President Trump might have thought that negotiating an interim diplomatic understanding with Iran was going to be the hard part. But selling the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding to the public is proving to be just as laborious.
Trump deserves blame not because he negotiated a poor peace deal but rather because he decided to go to war in the first place
Less than 24 hours after the document was released, virtually nobody is particularly satisfied with it. Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, normally deferential or wholly supportive of Trump’s agenda across-the-board, are already expressing nervousness at the terms and demanding a full briefing from the administration about how the White House plans on executing them. Iran hawks who didn’t want diplomacy with Iran at all are irate that Tehran is effectively given sanctions relief on the front-end, before it has to do much of anything. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is worried about how Iran will use the cash. And the Gulf Arab states, which never thought the war was a good idea in the first place and unsuccessfully lobbied the Trump administration to double down on diplomacy instead, are upset that Iran’s missile program isn’t addressed at all.
The only people who seem pleased with the terms are the Iranians. The Iranian regime is bragging that they’ve outlasted Washington’s military might and bested it at the negotiating table. “This is a historic document and a message from a powerful Iran: peace will be realized in the shadow of mutual respect,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said today.
Analysts will spend the coming days poring over the MOU and critiquing it. They will have much to complain about. In principle, the MOU is a common-sense attempt to rewind the calendar back to February 27, the day before the conflict erupted, and provide the United States and Iran with a few more months to determine whether the technical particularities of Tehran’s nuclear program can be resolved. It’s the details and structure of the document that has a lot of people in Washington nervous. The most troublesome aspect for most is the fact that Washington will enact sanctions waivers, allowing Iran to export its crude oil to world markets again, even before any nuclear questions are discussed, let alone tackled. At current prices, that concession could net Tehran $60 billion over the next two months.
The alterations from former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran more than a decade ago are hard to miss. Trump was one of the earliest to pounce on Obama’s JCPOA, calling it one of the worst deals an American president as ever negotiated in the country’s history. There were problems with the Obama pact – Iran, for example, could continue researching technology for faster centrifuges and would be able to enrich uranium at higher grades after 15 years. Still, US sanctions relief was tied to Iran shipping out its stockpile of enriched uranium, dismantling about two-thirds of its centrifuges and converting its underground Fordow enrichment plant into a research facility. In contrast, Trump’s MOU essentially gifts early sanctions relief to keep the Iranians at the table.
Taking a hammer to the Trump-Iran framework is fair game. No government or politician deserves the benefit of the doubt. But it’s vitally important not to allow the details of the deal to ignore the elephant in the room: none of this needed to happen in the first place. Trump deserves blame not because he negotiated a poor peace deal but rather because he decided to go to war in the first place.
The genesis of the story can be traced back to May 2018, when Trump, despite pleadings from his own national security advisers, vowed to make good on his campaign pledge to withdraw the United States from Obama’s JCPOA. Trump not only pulled out but re-imposed all of the economic sanctions previously lifted and added new ones to the pile. The White House thought Tehran would capitulate; instead, the regime began installing more centrifuges, churning out more uranium at higher quality and growing its stockpile. The June 2025 airstrikes on Iran’s major nuclear facilities was a slap-dash way for Trump to fix his own mess, at least temporarily.
Trump’s assumptions on Iran didn’t get any wiser as time went on. When the US and Israel teamed up to launch an even broader air campaign against Iran on February 28, both expected the regime to collapse or at least become desperate to sue for peace. The notion of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation was viewed as a possibility but a low-probability scenario because there was an inherent belief the regime would have already thrown in the towel.
The precise opposite happened. We all know the story by now. Iran’s military infrastructure was dealt a severe blow by US and Israeli air power, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) quickly weaponized its geographical advantage near the strait to stop maritime traffic. The IRGC sent missiles and drones into the Gulf states to hit their energy facilities, a strategy meant to spike oil and natural gas prices around the world and push the Gulf royals into convincing Trump to end the war. The second bet failed but the first succeeded with flying colors, so much so that Trump admitted in his press conference this week that he chose to sign a deal with Iran to forestall an economic depression.
It’s difficult for rational people to go through this and ask what it was all for. Iran’s position looks stronger today than it did before the war. America, Israel and the Gulf’s looks, if not weaker, than at least more vulnerable. The MOU is far from ideal. But decision to go war was the original sin.
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