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No one gets a Nobel peace prize for ending a war he started, let alone for a pointless war of aggression that set back the causes that supposedly prompted the conflict. No amount of Donald Trump’s spin can obscure the fact that his newly announced deal with Iran is one big lesson in why this war should never have been launched.
The text of the deal, a 14-point memorandum of understanding, underscores its emptiness. The tyrants of Tehran are undoubtedly celebrating.
Trump’s political challenge is to show that his deal is better than the one negotiated by Barack Obama in 2015 and abandoned by Trump in 2018 – that Trump’s bombing produced a result superior to Obama’s diplomacy. The problem for Trump is that it didn’t. He did worse.
Trump will likely spotlight two supposed “victories”. First, Iran “reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons”. But it made that pledge in the Obama accord and many times since then. The key issue is whether the steps that could lead to a nuclear weapon are curtailed.
To that end, Obama imposed severe restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Trump can only hope to secure similar limitations during negotiations that are supposed to be concluded over the next 60 days. But such complex issues are unlikely to be settled so quickly, and the deal allows for the deadline to be extended by mutual consent.
Still to be resolved are whether and for how long Iran will limit what it calls its right to enrich uranium, whether it will export or dilute its half-tonne of highly enriched uranium, and whether it will dismantle its nuclear program. The deal says only that such issues will be “adequately addressed” in a final accord, hardly an airtight commitment. Trump will tie sanctions relief to Iranian concessions on these points, but that could have been accomplished through diplomacy, without resorting to war.
Second, Trump will highlight that Iran has agreed to reopen the strait of Hormuz, where its restrictions on movement of some 20% of the world’s oil and gas led to galloping prices and a surge in worldwide inflation. But Iran only closed the strait once Trump initiated his war of choice. Now Tehran sees the power of this new weapon. The genie is out of the bottle and will not easily be lured back.
Trump announced that the strait will be “permanently toll free”. But the published deal doesn’t say that. And Iranian officials have maintained the right to impose fees for unspecified services, which might mean no more than the “service” of not firing on boats passing through. Trump’s war has left global commerce worse off.
The deal is noteworthy for what it does not include. There is nothing on Iran’s ballistic missile program, nothing on Iran’s military support for regional allies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, nothing on regime change in Tehran. These were all reasons cited by Trump for going to war. In these areas, his bombing accomplished nothing.
Indeed, in lieu of regime change, he obtained regime hardening, as US and Israeli bombers killed off Iranian clerical leaders and left Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials in charge.
Meanwhile, the Iranian government can trumpet its own victories. The deal requires that Israel end its attacks in Lebanon.
That does give Benjamin Netanyahu the opportunity to play spoiler, given his quest for ongoing war with Iran. But Netanyahu may not dare. Trump has become overt in his anger at the Israeli prime minister, calling him “fucking crazy” and “a very difficult guy”, and explicitly criticizing his tendency to attack entire apartment buildings using the pretext of attacking a single Hezbollah member (although the same criticism can be made of Israel’s disproportionate attacks in Gaza, which Trump aided and abetted).
As soon as the accord is signed, Trump commits to “issue waivers” for all sanctions on Iranian petroleum exports. That is a reward for simply returning to the status quo that existed in February before Trump opted for bombing over negotiation.
Then, according to the “progress of negotiations” toward a final agreement, Trump agrees to release frozen Iranian assets. Once a final accord is reached, Trump commits to lifting all sanctions on the country. In addition, the deal includes a $300bn private fund for “rehabilitation and economic development of Iran”.
These economic incentives toward a deal were all available in February as well. The bombing made no positive difference.
If there is a silver lining in this debacle, it is that the utter failure of Trump’s military adventure in Iran may give him pause before trying another. (The same could be said for Vladimir Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine.) Resorting to military force is often far more complicated than Trump’s quick removal of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Might makes right, in Trump’s warped view, but it doesn’t guarantee victory. There turns out to be a role for diplomacy after all.
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Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments
