In a June 18 press briefing with The New York Times, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, addressing critics of the Iran deal, turned his ire on Israel. Responding to barbed comments from right-wing Israeli ministers, Vance declared that, “You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have,” adding that negotiations were needed for the long term.
He was correct in an obvious sense. Military victories alone do not bring lasting triumphs. Instead, the victor leverages tactical success to build strategic gains.
The problem for Vance is that America is learning the reverse lesson. With its new Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, America has just snatched a catastrophic strategic defeat from the jaws of military victory, empowering the very regime that the United States went to war with and jeopardizing Israel’s security in the process.
Indeed, so grave are the implications of this deal that one can now see why the Trump administration refused to engage the Israelis or show them the document in advance.
Consider the minimum Iran is being asked to do. It has to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, taking its foot off the windpipe of the world economy and providing for much-needed relief for the energy markets. The short-term benefits are obvious: lower inflation, reduced petrol prices and cheaper business costs.
But all this is doing is reverting to the status quo of Feb. 27, the day before the war started, though there is no long-term commitment to keep the Strait toll-free in line with international law. But in return, Tehran gets a level of financial largesse that is frankly extraordinary.
It is being given immediate waivers for the export of oil and petroleum products, as well as banking, insurance and transportation services. Allowing billions of dollars to flow into Iranian coffers each week eliminates, at a stroke, America’s leverage over the Islamic Republic. A country that was reeling from the six-week war and the counter-blockade now has an essential lifeline—a lifeline that pretty much guarantees its long-term survival.
Then there is the $300 billion reconstruction fund, which should be called the reparations fund. It will be lost on no one (except Trump’s team) that this is something normally forced upon a defeated power by its victorious adversary. How appropriate, then, that this debacle was signed at Versailles, even though this time, it is the United States and not Germany that is the supplicant.
Naturally, all of this is a horrendous, tragic and morally reprehensible betrayal of the Iranian people, who were told, as the bombs fell on Feb. 28, to rise up and reclaim their country. The regime that has slaughtered tens of thousands of Iranians, jailed and tortured dissidents, executed homosexuals, murdered religious minorities and repressed its women will now cement its repressive apparatus, cowing whatever remains of an opposition and strengthening its terror proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen.
Now consider what the MoU is silent on. It says nothing whatsoever about the Iranian ballistic-missile threat, even though eliminating this was one of the four stated goals of this war. The missile program is an existential threat not just to Israel, but also to the Gulf states, which have witnessed firsthand its destructive potential. The agreement does nothing to confront the proxy system, with Iran already making it clear that it will rearm Hezbollah with its newfound wealth.
The MoU does state that Iran will not have a nuclear-weapons program. Under Article 8, Iran “reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons” and that the “fate of enriched material and the fate of all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues” will be discussed in a final agreement. But again, the devil is in the details.
Washington’s red lines appear to have shifted—from insisting on zero enrichment and the external dilution of Iran’s highly enriched uranium to allowing Iran some enrichment (3.67%). It is also not clear what will happen to the stockpile of 20% enriched uranium, which can be turned into weapons-grade material in the future, or what sunset clauses and verification standards will be placed in any deal.
Critically, none of Iran’s nuclear assurances mean a thing. Based on past behavior, a history of concealment, evasion and deception, as well as its undying ideological desire to annihilate Israel, Iran will seek to revive its nuclear program in the long term. That is why the only sure bet is to insist on the elimination of the architecture of enrichment, along with the enriched uranium. Yet right now, the United States has surrendered its cards to Iran.
The worst thing from an Israeli perspective is the tying together of the Iranian and Lebanese battlefronts. The MoU says that both Iran and America, “together with their allies in the current war,” declare “an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertake not to launch any hostile action against each other.” That would be news to Hezbollah, which just carried out a lethal attack killing four Israeli soldiers.
Perversely, America seems to have accepted Hezbollah as part of Lebanon’s status quo, even though the terror group has murdered hundreds of Americans in the past and colonized swathes of the country. Doubtless, Iran will demand the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Lebanon, including its security posts in the south, as the prelude to a wider agreement. But this requires a grand settlement involving Hezbollah’s disarmament, not just words on paper.
All the signs so far suggest that Trump will genuflect before Iranian demands, encouraging further terror attacks in northern Israel.
Already, Trump has imbibed a hostile narrative on the Lebanon war, lambasting Israel for “fighting Hezbollah too long” and saying that “too many people are being killed.” Instead of condemning Iran’s proxy for cynically and ruthlessly embedding itself in Lebanese civilian infrastructure and attacking northern Israel incessantly since Oct. 8, 2023, he has turned on Israelis for having the temerity to defend themselves. It is one thing to end a war by giving concessions to an enemy. It is another to adopt that enemy’s talking points as one’s own.
The most disastrous thing of all is that the ayatollahs sniff American weakness and desperation. These masters of negotiation know they can string out these talks for weeks and months, as per Article 1, calculating that the United States will be unlikely to resume the war while the midterm election campaign continues.
Any resumption of U.S. force would lead to another blockade of Hormuz, which would, in turn, trigger further economic turmoil. Tehran knows it can paralyze the world economy at will and force Washington to comply with its demands, no matter how unreasonable they are. Put simply, Iran’s economic terrorism has been amply rewarded.
Meanwhile, the annihilationist goals of the Islamic Republic remain unchanged. Iran’s chief negotiator has just vowed to avenge the death of slain former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the “liberation of Jerusalem.” It was exactly this fanatical mindset—this derangement about Israel—that formed the backdrop to the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, and all the wars that have followed. Just as Hamas vowed to repeat that atrocity—and Hezbollah threatened its own such attacks on Israel’s northern communities—so, too, Iran’s hardline leaders will continue their quest to destroy the Jewish state.
Thus, the Israelis can and must defy Trump on Lebanon. They cannot be placed in a position where they must seek permission to defend their northern border from Hezbollah and effectively live at the good graces of an American president. Trump’s vindictive response will doubtless be fearsome. According to Maariv, Israeli officials are said to fear that continuing defiance could result in arms shipments being delayed, leading to an eventual arms embargo. How Israel navigates that problem remains to be seen.
All of this comes back to Vance. The vice president, a friend of former Fox News host and current podcaster Tucker Carlson, lamented that Israelis were attacking “the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.” He added that “two-thirds of the defensive weapons” that protect the Jewish state “have been built by American hands and paid for by American taxpayers.”
There was an implicit warning here to the Jewish state: Stop criticizing the man on whom you are dependent, obey his dictates or face the consequences. It is a chilling sign of where the U.S.-Israel relationship is right now. Even worse, it signals that the Trump administration can no longer differentiate between its allies and its enemies.
