Trump says he does not make bad deals, but even Republican hawks doubt that now | US-Israel war on Iran

Every year on May 24, Iranians celebrate a historic victory in the war with Iraq: the liberation of Khurramshahr in 1982.

Some hoped that a peace treaty with the United States this year could mark a similar turning point in their country’s history.

Last-minute disagreements meant a final agreement on Pakistan was unlikely to be signed as hoped on Sunday; But what is clear is that the United States has acknowledged that it cannot achieve through war what it set out to do in terms of forcing Iran to make concessions on its nuclear program when it began the conflict on February 28.

Instead, the US had to promise to prevent the freezing of apparently billions of Iranian assets and hand them over to a regime tougher than the one that went to war. In return, the Strait of Hormuz will gradually reopen and commercial traffic will return to pre-war levels and the pressure on the world economy will be eliminated.

So Iran receives assets in exchange for restoring the pre-war status quo. The amount of assets and the timing of their distribution could affect the concessions it makes on the nuclear dossier, particularly the stockpile of highly enriched uranium. It was the disagreement on this issue that triggered one of the last-minute setbacks that blocked the deal on Sunday, as Iran insisted that nuclear talks could not begin with such established commitments.

Donald Trump insists he doesn’t make bad deals and says this isn’t the case. But both Democrats and Republican hawks spent 48 hours pushing back against that assessment. Obama-era foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes put it succinctly: “Nothing was accomplished by Operation Epic Rage [the US-Israeli war on Iran] Except to put the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] Responsible for Iran and the Strait of Hormuz”.

Ali Vaez, director of Crisis Group’s Iran Project, said: “D.C.’s Iran hawks have fought two wars, nearly every imaginable sanction, a blockade, a blow to the global economy, and they will argue that a little more pressure and a touch more bombing will magically yield concessions they still won’t be satisfied with.”

Trita Parsi of the Quincy think tank argued that Trump only managed to negotiate a return to the position that should have been in place when the initial ceasefire was declared, before the ceasefire was upended by the US decision to blockade Iranian ports on April 13 and Iran reimposed its own de facto blockade.

In short, Trump, who has spent billions of dollars, has so far been unable to make any more progress on nuclear issues than he did in the last round of talks held in Geneva on February 26, before the war started. It’s no wonder that Republican hawks like Ted Cruz are warning of disaster.

In a statement by its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, Iran rejected allegations in the US media that Iran had agreed to send enriched uranium abroad or agreed to a 10-year enrichment ceiling. He said Iran was only willing to discuss these issues within a 60-day period, which did not make much progress on the stance in Geneva. This does not mean that Iran is ruling out concessions in this area, as Trump assured a nervous Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during Saturday’s talks; but it means that this goal must now be achieved through diplomacy, not military force. Similarly, Israel’s agenda regarding Iran’s missiles, drones and proxies has also been postponed.

Indeed, Iranian president Massoud Pezeshkian insisted that the talks would show that Iran was willing to prove to the West that it was not seeking nuclear weapons. The process of reaching an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is laborious and technical, but it can be achieved, especially if Iran does not believe it is negotiating under military pressure.

But abandoning the military route, at least for now, would be a blow to Netanyahu in an election year. This also comes at a time when support for Israel in the United States has declined significantly in almost every demographic group except older Republican voters.

Israel nevertheless resists some aspects of the agreement, particularly the Lebanese ceasefire framework. Israel is pressuring Washington to include language allowing it to conduct military operations in Lebanon under the pretext of responding to “any threat.” Iran rejects this formulation and insists on a sustainable and permanent ceasefire.

Agreement was not reached on all issues regarding the future management of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and Oman have been arguing about the role of the Persian Gulf strait authority, but Oman is unlikely to support the toll idea and Iran may consider its newfound weapon to be of diminishing value.