Back to square one? A ‘deal’ that resolves little and could make things worse

• The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is a "half-baked" starting point for talks, not the "peace deal" transforming the Middle East as claimed by the Trump administration.
• The MoU grants Iran significant concessions, including linking a Gulf ceasefire to Israel ceasing Hezbollah attacks, reinforcing Iran's regional power and creating a strategic setback for Israel.
• The MoU leaves nuclear and financial issues largely unresolved despite US inducements.

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LONDON - The Trump administration is famous for puffing up the significance of anything it does.

So, it was no surprise that every US decision-maker from President Donald Trump down, has hailed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) concluded with Iran as a “peace deal”.

Vice President J.D. Vance went even further, claiming that the agreement “is going to fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years”.

In reality, the document agreed between the US and Iran solves none of their differences; it is merely a starting point for further talks, which are likely to prove inconclusive.

Far from transforming one of the world’s most turbulent regions into an oasis of peace for the next half a century, Iran and the US should consider themselves lucky if their MoU lasts for the next 60 days without bloodshed.

Nor can the deal be regarded as a great diplomatic victory for the US; history may well remember this document as one heralding the decline of American credibility and influence in the Middle East.

Trump ordered his military to attack Iran on Feb 28 because he bought into Israeli claims that the war would be short and result in the collapse of Iran’s clerical regime.

In public, however, Washington justified its attack with three demands: Iran should be stripped of its nuclear capabilities, it must accept limitations on its missile arsenal and it must give up its support for various Iranian proxy militias and armed groups in the Middle East.

The latest MoU not only fails to address these issues but actually reinforces Iran’s alliance with its most powerful regional proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon, by accepting that a ceasefire in the Gulf is dependent on Israel ceasing to attack Hezbollah.

This is a significant concession no US president since Ronald Reagan was prepared to consider, something the Iranians understand only too well.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament and one of the most influential leaders in the country, hailed the MoU as a victory for “the powerful diplomacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and a “guarantee” of “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of dear Lebanon”.

Of course, the opposite is true; Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah is a major cause of Lebanon’s destruction. Still, US acceptance that Iran can now explicitly condition its behaviour on the protection of Hezbollah imposes a profound change on the Middle East, not because it heralds 50 years of future peace as Vance would have us believe, but because it drags the region back into the conflicts of the past half century.

This represents a strategic setback for Israel, leaving the Jewish state in a far worse position than it was earlier this year, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persuaded Trump to strike at Iran.

In practical terms, all that the US and Iran have agreed to now is to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was in any case open to international navigation before the latest war.

And even on this score, Trump’s claims are exaggerated. “Ships of the world, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” Trump claimed on Truth Social, his preferred social platform. He omitted to say that, even if all goes well, the strait won’t be fully open until June 19, when the agreement is expected to be signed.

Uncertainties aplenty

In a media interview soon after the MoU’s conclusion was announced in the late hours of June 14, Trump claimed the deal includes an agreement from Iran not to obtain nuclear weapons.

Yet having spent months demanding that Iran hand over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium – which Trump likes to call “nuclear dust” – the US president now dismisses this as just an afterthought. “We’ll get the nuclear dust later on, when we’re ready to go in and do it,” he said.

Iran has claimed for decades that it had no intention of producing nuclear weapons, while making all the preparations for producing them. So, the fact that this promise to refrain from nuclear capabilities is now included in a memorandum signed with the US is irrelevant, for it merely represents a restatement of old Iranian positions.

It is impossible to see how nuclear questions can be addressed in the next 60 days, as the memorandum now envisages. And it beggars belief that, having successfully refused to hand over its nuclear material despite two US-led military offensives within the past 12 months, Iran will now be prepared to surrender its enriched uranium stocks in a few weeks.

An even bigger uncertainty persists over the financial questions of the memorandum. The Iranians claim that they will get huge sums of their own cash, frozen in various Western banks, plus relief from economic sanctions.

The US administration remains hazy on this point, largely because Trump spent years criticising the Barack Obama administration for “loading up aeroplanes” with cash to Iran as part of a previous nuclear deal.

Yet we do know that in the latest negotiations, US diplomats have dangled before Iran’s eyes plenty of financial inducements in return for a deal. The money would probably not be airlifted in crates, but the sums transferred to Iran are almost certain to be far bigger than those authorised by Obama.

And in his desperation to offer Iran financial inducements but not to be compared with his Democratic predecessor, Trump also seems ready to lift restrictions on Iranian oil exports, a far bigger concession to Tehran than any previous US president considered prudent.

Yet the biggest imponderable is what will now happen to the US military deployments in the region.

If the majority of the US naval forces and other assets remain deployed in the Gulf over the next 60 days, then at least in theory, the US will retain military pressure on Iran while it negotiates.

But if – as now seems more likely – US troops start leaving the Gulf, Iran will have little incentive to offer any concessions, and the 60-day deadline will become irrelevant.

Besides, the Iranians know that the longer they drag out a diplomatic process, the closer Trump gets to the US mid-term elections in November, and the lower the chances of renewed military action.

An ill-conceived US military operation, therefore, concludes with a half-baked memorandum.

It is still wrong to claim that Iran has won this war. Its top leaders were killed and cannot even be properly buried for fear of future assassination strikes. And the Iranian economy lies in ruins.

But it is true to say that the US has lost another war with grave consequences for all those in the Middle East who hitched their fate to, or were dragged along by, Trump’s military adventure.