The Memo: Debate rages over Iran deal that remains unseen

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The political world is aflame with debate about a document virtually nobody has seen.

The announcement Sunday that the U.S. and Iran had agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) sparked optimism — and lifted financial markets when they opened Monday morning.

But a huge vacuum has been left by the failure, so far, to publish the MOU. Into that gap, American and Iranian officials have sought to push vastly different interpretations of the deal. At home, defenders and detractors of President Trump have done battle as usual.

Vice President Vance on Monday praised Trump’s “unwavering resolve” and insisted that the deal would help bring “peace and prosperity” to the American people.

But Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) countered that Trump’s “war of choice has been an enormous strategic loss for our country and only emboldens Iran.”

One of the few things to be widely accepted is that the MOU kicks the can down the road on some of the most vexing issues.

Specifically, the expectation is that there will be further negotiations, stretching across a new 60-day ceasefire period, on the future of Iran’s nuclear program and the fate of its existing store of highly enriched uranium. The question of whether and how sanctions on Iran will be lifted or its assets unfrozen also remains unsettled.

Trump, buffeted domestically by the rise in gas prices and some of the lowest poll ratings of his political career, has been stressing the immediate benefit from the interim agreement — the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” he exulted in a social media post Sunday moments after Pakistan, which has played an intermediary role, announced the deal.

In the same post, Trump suggested he had the power to “fully authorize” the reopening of the strait. He skipped past the fact that Iran’s capacity to throttle maritime traffic in the vital channel has been its strongest tactical card throughout the conflict.

On Monday morning, Trump kept the focus on the positive. “Ships are starting to move, many loaded up with Oil, out of the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote.

News of the deal powered a stock market rally. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by almost 1 percent while the Nasdaq soared more than 3 percent. The price of oil fell by approximately 5 percent.

That’s far from the whole story, however.

The war was fought ostensibly to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, end its support for proxy groups including Hezbollah and Hamas, degrade its navy and air force, and obliterate its ballistic missile capabilities.

Only one of those four — a weakening of the Iranian navy and air force — is known to have occurred.

On the larger question of whether the U.S. was seeking to topple the Islamic Republic itself, the administration has engaged in frequent rhetorical shifts.

Trump initially suggested that the joint U.S.-Israeli attack, which began Feb. 28, could facilitate Iranian dissidents taking power. At other times, administration officials seemed leery of stating definitively whether they were seeking regime change or not.

Latterly, Trump had been claiming that the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top figures amounted to regime change — despite the fact that Khamenei’s son Mojtaba now holds the top role and the nature of the leadership in Tehran is fundamentally unchanged.

Trump has now made a new turn.

“I never cared about regime change,” he told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

Trump’s call with the Journal appeared part of a broader effort to sell the deal. In a comparable call with The New York Times, he said that Iran would be forever confined to enriching uranium at levels that “could never be used by the military.”

The Times correspondent to whom Trump spoke, David Sanger, also noted, however, that Trump often “seemed to be describing Iranian concessions that the country has not yet made.”

Roughly 6,000 miles away from Washington, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament and a key figure in the negotiations, praised the “historic resistance” of the Iranian people and the “valor” of its military on social media.

“Iran took a great step toward final victory,” Qalibaf wrote.

There is, too, the knotty question of Israel and Lebanon to unpick.

Israel has invaded its northern neighbor in its ongoing struggles with Hezbollah. Iran has insisted that any ceasefire must cover Lebanon too. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want that.

Trump has appeared to acknowledge that peace in Lebanon is necessary to secure a comprehensive deal with Iran.

But a senior administration official said during a call with reporters Monday that Israeli withdrawal from the areas of southern Lebanon it currently occupies is “not a condition” of the emerging deal. It remains to be seen how that goes down in Tehran.

Netanyahu, for his part, said Monday that Israel would remain in what he termed “security zones” for “as long as required to defend our country.”

Trump, in his New York Times interview, called Netanyahu “a very difficult guy.”

Tensions and disagreements over every topic will flare for at least as long as no text of the MOU is publicly available — and probably longer.

Vance said Monday that he expected text to be released this week.

Until then, everyone is flying blind — and the claims, counterclaims and accusations are flying too.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

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Adam Schiff

Ali Khamenei

Benjamin Netanyahu

Donald Trump

JD Vance

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