Trump’s Iran deal draws backlash from Republicans

The ceasefire agreement between the world’s largest military power and the leading terrorist regime is a huge gap agreement.

But ask yourself this: If the page-and-a-half “deal” was so great, why wasn’t it published?

In a series of critiques, prominent Republicans joined predictable Democrats in voicing their dissatisfaction with President Trump’s collusion. Their attitudes range from deep skepticism to outright opposition.

And media coverage was relentlessly negative, even accounting for the usual anti-Trump hostility.

TRUMP’S IRAN DEAL raises a fundamental question: IS IT REALLY A DEAL?

“President Trump Lost This Battle” New York Times The editor page was announced yesterday.

“Trump made a terrible mistake in starting this war. He waged it recklessly and in flagrant disregard of the law. The United States is becoming even weaker militarily, diplomatically and economically, and will pay strategic costs in the coming years.”

Details of the deal are unclear, but the framework outlined suggests Mr. Trump won several of the terms he insisted on. “This is a humiliating incident for him and the nation he leads.”

This theme emerges throughout the news. Washington Post foreign policy columnist David Ignatius says: “Let’s be clear: Diplomatically, this deal is not a victory parade, but an exit ramp from a costly and unpopular war. The deal falls far short of President Donald Trump’s initial talk of regime change and unconditional surrender. Even one of Trump’s close advisers concedes: ‘It’s inconclusive right now, so you can’t say it’s a huge success, and you can’t say it’s a deal failure.’

But most strikingly, some Republicans have pushed back against demands that Congress approve any peace agreement.

TRUMP SAYS THERE WILL BE ‘FINAL CONSEQUENCES’ IF IRAN VIOLATES THE DEAL AND CONTINUE ITS NUCLEAR TARGETS

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are questioning whether Congress should have a role in approving any deal with Iran. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Senator Thom Tillis said the deal was “doomed to fail” due to a lack of congressional oversight. He also criticized some of Pete Hegseth’s lyrics. “Now we are talking about a stance where we can accept the remaining nuclear material in Iran? How reasonable is that?”

“If you want an agreement to be permanent, it can’t be an executive agreement,” said Senator James Lankford.

His presidential running mate, Senator Lindsey Graham, said the agreement described by Iran “sounds terrible.”

Speaking of uranium, the longtime hawk said: “If they can enrich it anywhere, then that’s the same as the JCPOA, the 2015 Obama agreement that Trump canceled.” Graham told Politico that he was “skeptical that Iran would go there.”

Conservative activist Erick Erickson, who hosts a popular radio show, clearly says: “Trump surrendered to Iran.”

TRUMP MAY HAVE WON A STRATEGIC PAUSE IN IRAN. NOW COMES THE HARD PART

Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall, who launched a Substack site featuring the “morning framework,” offered this example:

“Marc Thiessen is not a Democrat. He’s not even a Trumpian. He’s a Fox News contributor, a Washington Post columnist and a foreign policy voice close enough to Trump that his calls are said to have helped shape the president’s position on Ukraine. He had dinner at the White House.”

Thiessen likened the $300 billion the White House agreed Iran would receive in reconstruction funds to “proposing a Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany while the Nazis were still in power.” The columnist was “applying the moral logic that conservatives have spent a decade building—constrain a hostile regime, not rebuild it—to a deal signed by the president he helped elect.”

He wasn’t alone. Fox host Bill Hemmer described the situation as “precarious. It’s a tough thing because the history of Iran is to get to this table and drag this thing out month after month and eventually year after year.” “about us being dragged back into a long, deadlocked negotiation,” Hemmer asked.

Many Fox critics conveniently forget that the channel has a large news division.

At work Policy: “President Donald Trump and his team are celebrating the Iran peace deal, which they say will end Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

“But the deal is based on commitments that Iran has not actually made yet. And it may never make.”

axios It reported that CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Trump and other senior officials that “evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raises serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions sought by the United States in any final agreement, according to three sources familiar with these discussions.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “both expressed concerns and raised questions about the memorandum of understanding.”

“Based on this intelligence, Ratcliffe and Rubio said they doubted the Iranians would agree to take the nuclear steps the United States sought.”

NETANYAHU’S ISRAEL GROWS WITH TRUMP-IRAN DEAL WHILE DETAILS REMAIN UNCERTAIN

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to reporters at a press conference on the US-Iran deal on June 15, 2026. (Israeli Government Press Office)

This is quite sobering.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty says: “It’s a well-established model of management that habitually overpromises and underdeliveries. Vice President Vance, who apparently never wanted to start a war, now gets the job of making a deal with one of the world’s most untrustworthy and treacherous regimes.”

Dispatch says: “If the deal is truly finalized… management’s reluctance to share details suggests that the terms are tantamount to capitulation, as many fear. Why not transparently share something you’re proud of?”

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All we have here is an agreement to keep talking. Maybe everything will be okay in the end, but right now it looks like a distant desert mirage.

Trump declares the “deal” a success. But with the arrangement still secret, it’s hard to argue that the 80-year-old president is handling it well.

Footnote: Trump posted a photo of himself with Kim Jong Un over the weekend. What did last time’s visit to North Korea and all these love letters get us? But Trump appears to be signaling that he wants to try again.