On the Iran Memorandum of Understanding

As all who care are aware, President Donald Trump has executed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and Iran that, at least for the moment – certain issues have been deferred to be worked out over the next 60 days — suspends the conflict between the two nations and opens the Strait of Hormuz.  From the United States’ perspective, it got the Strait opened – nothing more.  I have nothing to add to the descriptions of the arrangement’s flaws and omissions being outlined by commentators on any number of outlets.  It’s clear that Mr. Trump started the war upon the expectation – the gamble – that if he did so, the Iranian regime would fall.  As I’ve suggested here earlier, the decision to take the gamble was not entirely without foundation, but Mr. Trump clearly didn’t understand that if the regime didn’t fall, he was going to have to introduce ground troops – engage in a full invasion – to remove the regime.  When the regime didn’t fall, he was stuck in a quagmire, and he was unwilling to clean up the mess his miscalculation had wrought by either accepting the American casualties that would have resulted from a full invasion or absorbing the American and global economic pain caused by waiting Iran out in a protracted stalemate in the Strait.  I can’t fault him for being unwilling to spend American blood in a venture of choice that had completely backfired; but in the end, he made a deal which ended the stalemate because he saw that if he didn’t, the world economy was going to slowly grind to a halt, and he was – as he is first, foremost, and always – concerned with money.  I took particular note of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, standing behind Mr. Trump as the President explained and defended the deal.  Mr. Rubio looked constipated.  Although he has shamelessly kowtowed to Mr. Trump over the last decade, he retains a brain if not a spine; he knows what an egregious blunder this entire foray has been. 

In addition to the enhanced strategic, psychological and economic strength that Iran has gained from this arrangement, this settlement may have shifted the dominant outside diplomatic influence among the Middle Eastern bloc of nations from America to China, since China will arguably be perceived in the future to both have more influence with the Iranian regime than any other nation and have an interest in restraining Iranian aggression in order to maintain global stability.  Even so, there is only so much any outside nation can do to influence the Iranian regime.  I will venture that this MOU simply points to a future day of reckoning when our intelligence makes clear that Iran, despite its current protestations, is close to developing a nuclear weapon.  At that point, the then-President of the United States will have to decide whether to accept such nuclear development or to order a full-scale invasion of a militarily- and economically-stronger Iran that will probably enjoy the support of China — which itself will then be both economically and militarily even stronger than it is now.

On the other hand, I am guessing that this arrangement will be a political winner for Mr. Trump.  He has always understood – and now, over the last decade-plus, taught us – that a few wonks yapping at him about policy nuances from the left, right, or both don’t matter a whit to the average American, who has the attention and retention span of a nanosecond.  (This isn’t the note to provide more than an aside about the financial markets, which are so pathetically deliriously happily micro-focused on AI and the macroeconomy’s apparent condition at any given second that they make the average American look like King Solomon.)  Jeffrey Epstein was in the forefront of the news the day America attacked Iran; now, he’s not.  The Iran excursion, the 13 American lives lost, and the more than 100 Iranian school children who lost their lives on the first day of the war through a disastrously ill-conceived U.S. strike, will be well in the rearview mirror by November.  What Americans will see is that gas prices – the single most important measure of an American president’s popularity – will go down.

There you have it.      

We’ll see what happens.