Ever since Trump decided to go to war in Iran, we have heard only good news from the administration. Trump has said repeatedly that “we won,” but it is not true. Iran still has uranium and now controls the Strait of Hormuz, choking off the world’s supply of oil.
Now, rumors again say that a deal is soon to be announced. This is the closest I could find to a description of the deal that will be announced. According to The New York Times, many Senate Republicans are unhappy with the deal.
Jennifer Rubin at the Contrarian questions the details of the deal:
According to news reports, Iranian and U.S. negotiators are closing in on a deal to end Donald Trump’s reckless, unconstitutional war. As the terms revealed that Trump’s war failed to attain his aims (e.g. permanently ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions), Republicans began blasting the deal. A Trump Truth Social post attempted to contain the backlash. He insisted he had told the negotiators to proceed carefully because time was on our side.
It bears repeating that Trump’s overly cheery take that we are on the verge of a deal may be nothing more than Trump spin. (Axios reported the deal could take days to complete.) Negotiations could stall at any time, leaving the Strait of Hormuz closed and no agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.
The agreement reportedly under discussion would simply continue talks about Iran’s nuclear program. A final nuclear deal, if concluded, would require Iran to give up its stockpile of enriched material (or reduce the level of enrichment) and suspend enrichment for a fixed time (as under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). One imagines Iran will be happy to talk and talk and talk. The purported agreement, according to U.S. sources, would permit free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. That would simply be a return to the status quo.
But most galling for Republicans, Trump’s agreement reportedly would unfreeze $25 billion in Iranian assets, a significant achievement for the economically hobbled Iranian regime. Recall that Republicans and Trump personally excoriated President Barack Obama’s agreement to unfreeze a mere $1.7 billion in conjunction with the JCPOA, which they claim amounted to funding Iran’s nefarious activities.
War hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) freaked out as details of the agreement dribbled out. “If it is perceived in the region that a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful over time, we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq,” Graham warned on X. “A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the Strait in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids.” Graham was not done with his scathing review:
This combination of Iran being perceived as having the ability to terrorize the Strait in perpetuity and the ability the inflict massive damage to Gulf oil infrastructure is a major shift of the balance of power in the region and over time will be a nightmare for Israel.
Also, it makes one wonder why the war started to begin with if these perceptions are accurate.
He was not alone. “The rumored 60-day ceasefire — with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith—would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught,” tweeted Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) chimed in as well, saying he was “deeply concerned” about the reported deal, the New York Times reported. “It would be a ‘disastrous mistake’ if an agreement resulted in Iran being able to enrich uranium, develop nuclear weapons, and have effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, he said.” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on CNN observed, “It doesn’t make sense to me … now we’re talking about a posture where we may accept nuclear material remaining in Iran?”
The deal under discussion would dispel any notion that the United States “won” the war. The Wall Street Journal was quick to conclude: “The agreement, if completed, wouldn’t achieve Trump’s main goal of preventing Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon.”
If this deal holds, there will be no question that Trump’s war amounted to a major strategic failure. Maybe we get an agreement similar to the JCPOA, which would have been in place had Trump not exited the deal. (Getting back in war something you already had is nothing to cheer about.) The agreement would leave the regime (perhaps more radical than ever) in place, deny Israel any permanent end to the Iranian threat, reveal the limits of U.S. influence and power in the region, and, by default, afford China (as evidenced by Trump’s pathetic showing at the summit) increased stature and confidence. Preventing a restart of a war no one wanted and an end to the energy shock Trump provoked can hardly been called “wins.”
The entire episode underscores the utter fecklessness of the Republicans in Congress, who don’t exercise their constitutional authority or conduct even minimal oversight. The deaths and injuries to U.S. troops, the deaths of thousands in the region, the physical destruction in Iran and Lebanon, the damage to the Gulf states’ oil operations, the extensive depletion of U.S. munitions, the tens of billions in costs, and soaring energy costs (and broader inflation spike) have achieved no lasting, positive result for the United States or its allies in the region. At best, we would be back to an agreement akin to the JCPOA but with a much emboldened, more dangerous, and well-funded Iranian regime.
Whether this deal gets finalized or not, Congress must conduct extensive oversight to fully investigate the Trump regime’s malfeasance, incompetence, and lack of honesty. If war crimes were committed, the officials responsible need to be held accountable. And finally, Congress needs to pass legislation to prevent this and future presidents from unilaterally blundering into unnecessary, ill-advised and illegal wars in the future.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What business does the U.S. have holding Iranian assets in the first place? The U.S. has broken far more international laws (which we don’t even recognize) than Iran has. If some other nation seized and held out assets, what would we call that? Theft and an act of war.
As for this: ““The rumored 60-day ceasefire — with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith….”, what a load of nonsense. It’s always the U.S./Israel that breaks the “ceasefire” first, then when our enemy rightly retaliates, we cry about them violating the ceasefire. We’re the playground bully who cries when someone finally dares to fight back. “Ceasefire” means Iran ceases, the U.S./Israel fires.
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Why no one is pointing out that it is neither the US’s or Israeli’s responsibility to enforce such things, that they are acting without authorization rom the agency which is (the UN), and Iran has pulled a Brer Rabbit ploy on the US, and effectively cannot lose this conflict. That Trump fell for this, to please Netanyahu, for some reason (political power in the US exercised by Israelis?) is pathetic. At we have hit $30 billion in war cost and we cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel..
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On July 14, 2015, the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union (EU) settled on a treaty with Iran that among other things, assured that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful. The treaty, mainly negotiated by U.S. President Barack Obama was known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
TRUMP HATES Obama, so Trump decided that he would break the JCPOA Treaty, attack Iran, and force Iran into what he claimed would be a “better” treaty.
Well, the entire world now knows how that Trump plan has gone…Trump has been militarily stalemated by Iran, the Strait of Hormuz that was open under Obama’s JCPOA treaty is closed, sending fuel prices and grocery prices soaring, AND TRUMP WILL BE LUCKY TO GET A NEW TREATY THAT’S AS GOOD AS THE ONE HE TOSSED IN THE TRASH.
In fact, it’s doubtful that he will.
In the meantime, U.S. allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and others forced Trump to call a cease fire by refusing to allow him to launch any more air strikes against Iran because Iran has thousands of missiles and drones to attack them with AND TRUMP CAN’T DEFEND THEM against Iran’s missiles and drones because Trump has used up more than half of all the U.S. inventory of defensive missiles and has only enough left to defend the U.S. fleet and bases.
TRUMP KEEPS CALLING OFF new strikes on Iran, claiming that he’s negotiating — but the actual reason is because the Arab nations won’t allow him to launch air strikes.
MEANWHILE, on Trump’s recent visit to China, Chinese President Xi Jinping flatly told Trump to his face to butt out of anything that China decides to do to overrun Taiwan because if Trump tries to do anything, China and the U.S. “will collide.”
HOW CAN CHINA THREATEN TRUMP AND THE U.S. LIKE THAT? Well, it’s because China has been watching Trump transfer hundreds of defensive missiles from the U.S. Pacific fleet and land bases, leaving those forces with barely enough missile to defend themselves, let alone prevent China from overrunning Taiwan.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports that the U.S. military has EXPENDED HALF OF ITS INVENTORY of key missile/drone defense weapons and that it will take YEARS (and cost hundreds of billions of tax dollars) before replacement weapons can be produced to bring U.S. strength just back to where it was before Trump started his war — meanwhile, China is not only at full strength, but while the U.S. is struggling to just get back to where it was, China is racing ahead with weapons production that adds to its already full strength. China is now stronger than the U.S., so China PRESIDENT Xi JINPING CAN TALK TO TRUMP ANY WAY HE WANTS TO.
IF CHINA TAKES OVER TAIWAN, the U.S. economy will crash, factories will close, people will be thrown out of work, unemployment will soar, inflation will skyrocket — because nearly every manufacturing industry in the U.S. depends on computer chips from Taiwan.
AND JUST THINK, this entire mess is because (1) Trump hates Obama; and, (2) Trump thought that by creating an easy-win war against Iran he would distract us from demanding that he release the key Epstein Papers that he’s still sitting on.
FOR THOSE DUMB REASONS our United States is now militarily weakened and behind China which has kept its entire weapons arsenal and has been building more while the U.S. weapons arsenal has been wasted in Iran where “Operation Epic Fury” has turned into “Operation Epic Failure”.
Happy 250th.
(Copy and share this, especially on MAGA media. MAGA minions need to hear it.)
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Let us try a thought experiment. Assume assurance of the Hegemony of the US is the first priority of America foreign policy. Now evaluate Trump’s success and failure on that basis. There is no part of Trump’s foreign policy that has added to the realization of that goal. Being antagonistic toward Canada? Nope. Destroying our relationship with NATO? Nope. Failing to support Ukraine in their fight against an invasion that undermines the rule of international law? Nope.
I personally do not think that Trump’s stated goal of making America great, which he has made clear to be the assurance of American hegemony, is a very productive goal. I prefer the goal of helping the world live in an era of peace through international agreements, which I know is difficult. Because I prefer the stability of law to the fragile agreements that drove the world from 1840 to 1940, I deplored many of the decisions that were made over my life by political leaders, many of whom I supported otherwise. I opposed Vietnam, grudgingly supported some of Afghanistan, opposed Iraq, opposed the arbitrary arrest of Noriega…., the list goes on….. because the country often acted unilaterally instead of working to achieve unity. But if you decide to evaluate Trump solely on his ability to achieve his goals as he states them, you have to suggest that he has failed measuring by his own set of standards.
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