- Trump promised “total victory” and instead got a sixty-day ceasefire with uncertain nuclear talks ahead. It was still better than the alternatives.
THE TEXT OF THE U.S.–IRAN Memorandum of Understanding was digitally signed on Monday. But it still has not been released.
Until that happens—and, frankly, even after it does—both sides will be spinning wildly. U.S. officials will claim Iran has made specific concessions on its nuclear program. Iranian media outlets have and will allude to massive sanctions relief.
But the overall framework of the MOU is clear on certain points: The ceasefire will be extended by sixty days; the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened in both directions; Iran will receive some sanctions relief; and negotiations will begin on restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.
As someone who had a front-row seat to previous negotiations with Iran, having served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Israel, I can unequivocally say that, from the U.S. perspective, this is a very weak deal. But it is also a necessary deal, and, more importantly, it was the least bad available alternative.
This war was a mistake from day one, and it needed to end. President Trump, high on his own supply after extracting President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela in one night, thought that the Iranian regime would collapse quickly. But it did not. In fact, the regime has been strategically strengthened by its survival against a heavy U.S.–Israeli assault and through its ability to carry out some effective counterstrikes. The Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris, and many other countries in the region are now courting Iran and looking to de-escalate and rebuild ties. That’s a clear sign of which way the wind is blowing. And it’s not blowing toward the “total and complete victory” that Trump promised.
But by the time the MOU was being negotiated, the president clearly had different objectives in mind. For the United States, getting the Strait of Hormuz open was the most important outcome. Already oil prices are responding with a modest decline, providing hope that Americans will experience relief from the economic pressure and high gas prices the war brought on over the past hundred days. Of course, the strait was open before the war. Now we are paying to reopen it with sanctions relief. And Iran will attempt to derive additional revenue by imposing transit fees. Worse, Iran has taken a theoretical point of leverage and turned it into a very real and powerful one, imposing costs across the global economy that it now knows will rattle President Trump.
As tough as those concessions are, they may be easier than what comes next. Because on the nuclear issues, there really is no agreement. The only thing we know is that the United States and Iran will enter sixty days of negotiations over the disposition of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and a possible moratorium on further enrichment. Iran knows how to drag out those negotiations, and will try to pocket concessions along the way. Don’t mark your calendar for a signing ceremony in two months. It’s entirely possible that no deal will ever be reached, and very likely that if one is reached, it will be worse than what we could have achieved through diplomacy before the war.
U.S. leverage in these negotiations will be very poor. Iran knows that this has been a deeply unpopular war that Americans felt in their own pocketbooks. The Iranian leadership is not likely to take seriously that Trump would return to fighting, certainly before the midterms. So that means we will be conducting diplomacy without one of the most important tools to ensure success: a credible threat of force.
THE MIDTERMS AREN’T THE ONLY motivating factor for Trump here, though. He seems mainly focused on comparing his deal favorably to the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal reached by President Obama.
We are a long way from being able to make any comparison. But in some ways, Trump’s deal (if one is struck) and the JCPOA are bound to be similar. If anything, Trump could end up for the worse. Negotiations will likely do little to contain Iran’s ballistic missile program, or its support for terrorist proxies. Trump has already abandoned the idea of regime change and offers nothing but lip service to helping the Iranian people. His MOU reportedly includes plenty of sanctions relief—variously described as released frozen assets, oil sanctions waivers, and reconstruction investments; some up front, some as the agreement is implemented—that will strengthen the regime, producing revenue that will be poured into its missile program and proxy networks.
Personally, I have little interest in relitigating a decade of bitter debates over the JCPOA. I’m not a kneejerk opponent of Trump’s Iran policy either. Last summer, I supported Trump’s decision to join Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, based on real progress that had brought Iran too close for comfort to a nuclear weapon. I considered whatever positions one held in 2015, when the JCPOA was signed, or in 2018, when Trump withdrew from it, to be irrelevant to the situation we faced in 2025. That said, honest critics of the JCPOA should not twist themselves into pretzels to defend Trump’s deal. They should acknowledge that we are nearing the same end results, albeit from a much worse place: the loss of thirteen American service members, the death of thousands of Iranians, the depletion of our munitions and strain on our navy’s readiness, and the fraying of our alliances throughout the Middle East, including with Israel.
Israelis are deeply disappointed in this outcome, but they should not be surprised. After some initial overlap of Trump’s and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interests, there has now been a strong divergence. The United States needed this war to end to restore global economic stability. Netanyahu wanted it to continue to further weaken the Iranian regime.
Trump’s claim that Lebanon is included in the ceasefire and his profane shutting down of Israeli attacks on Hezbollah is also a win for Iran. But clashes in Lebanon still have the potential to derail the nuclear diplomacy ahead. Iran will have to restrain Hezbollah from strikes against communities in northern Israel. No Israeli leader could fail to respond to such attacks, but Trump will lean on Netanyahu to do so. And this is where the deal may fall apart, as Netanyahu is being assailed by both supporters and the opposition for allowing Trump to tie his hands.
Let’s hope that war doesn’t erupt again. And let’s hope we see the removal of Iran’s enriched uranium and a long-term suspension of enrichment, with full verification. If such an agreement is reached, I will readily acknowledge its merits. But to achieve those goals, Trump’s team will need to engage in far more sophisticated diplomacy, backed by qualified experts, than they have to date. No two-page MOU will suffice. And no spin, however crafty the spinsters, will cover it up.
There is another historical irony here: After the JCPOA was signed, Obama and Netanyahu worked together to strengthen Israel’s strike campaign in Syria to intercept Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Daniel B. Shapiro is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. He previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East
Thebulwark, https://www.thebulwark.com/p/breaking-down-the-us-iran-mou-memorandum-understanding-ceasefire