INTO THE FRAY: Et tu, Donald?

By MARTIN SHERMAN

Iran: Has Trump lost the plot?

The floated proposal makes no sense. Worse, it is dangerous. It would reward a maniacal regime not for reforming, not for compensating its victims, and not for abandoning terror as an instrument of statecraft. – Christopher Ruddy, CEO, Newsmax Media, June 16, 2026

So, the infamous US-Iran MOU has been signed. As far as Israel is concerned, the deed is done. The betrayal is complete. What remains is but to confront its consequences.”

From “hand-in-glove” to “slap-in-the-face”? 

Indeed, perhaps the most apt and accurate way to characterize the dramatic metamorphosis that seems to have taken place in the US relationship with Israel and Donald Trump’s association with Benjamin Netanyahu, is from “hand-in-glove” cooperation to “slap-in-the-face” repudiation.

On the face of things, this breathtaking U-turn seems almost inexplicable. After all, virtually all the factors that precipitated the joint Israeli-US strikes on Iranian military and infrastructure installations are no less valid today than they were when they were launched,

Moreover, for anyone aspiring to attain the stature of a towering global leader, dominating world events, keeping prices at the pump stable is hardly the stuff of which storied presidential legacies are forged. On the other hand, vanquishing the single greatest peril to Western democracy is undoubtedly the stuff of which such legends are crafted.

After all, the Islamic Republic of Iran today is no less ominous than it was before the outbreak of hostilities. It is no less infused with baneful and baleful ill-will towards the non-Islamic world, just as antithetical to the American ethos of individual liberty, equality, and religious freedom as expressed in the US Constitution.

Qatari compliant realtors?

This, of course, raises the trenchant question of how anyone could seriously entertain the childlike belief that a regime that could nonchalantly massacre tens of thousands of its own unarmed citizens can be counted on to fulfill its MOU obligations. Indeed, even senior Administration officials, personally appointed by Trump, have cast grave doubts on the Iranians’ intentions to honor their MOU undertakings. These include such consequential figures as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, all of whom are, prima facie, eminently more qualified than Trump’s more pliant advisors, the Qatar-compliant realtors Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who reportedly favor this perplexing and perturbing memorandum.

Yet, as hard as it is to understand the logic behind the professed strategic rationale underlying the MOU, it is even more difficult to fathom the personal rationale of the US figures, who promoted and  permitted its formulation (concoction?)

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

For, as on all the other fronts in this post-2023 conflagration, Trump has imposed a premature cessation of fighting. However, in this case, the stakes are much higher, and the blunder of snatching inexplicable defeat from the jaws of imminent victory, much more abstruse. After all, lower gas prices and mid-term elections, almost six months away, seem a flimsy excuse for a second-term president to abandon the stature of a valiant conqueror for that of a pliant supplicant. Indeed, the deadly defects in the document relate not only to flawed and faulty strategy, but to grievous moral corrosion. It reflects not only an abandonment of a loyal ally, but of the Iranian people, who must now surely despair of ridding themselves of the yoke of the theocratic and tyrannical regime under which they have suffered for decades. For not only does the MOU constitute a renunciation of virtually every previous Trumpian pledge, but perhaps most egregiously, of his wildly premature, and now permanently, unfulfilled promise to the regime’s opponents that “help is on the way”. Tragically, tens of thousands of them were slaughtered while waiting vainly for the promised aid, by the very regime that Trump has now chosen to sustain, despite reports that it conspired to assassinate him !!

A maelstrom of criticism

Indeed, one can only shake one’s head in disbelief at the possibility that the Administration could truly believe that such a renegade regime would not renege on its MOU commitments, rendering the document worthless.

In the maelstrom of criticism across the political spectrum, apologists for the MOU reject the parallel being drawn between it and Obama’s appalling 2015 JCPOA.

In one sense, they are right. The routes by which the two documents were arrived at, are very different. But in another—and more important ways—they are wrong. In terms of their substantive content, they are very similar—if not identical. Indeed. Even if the apologists are right, and the US can revert back to military action if Tehran violates the MOU, why resort to such a circuitous and unlikely route, allowing the enemy time to regroup and improve its capabilities, making any future victory commensurately more costly? 

It is not easy to conjure up a persuasive reason for Donald Trump to dramatically morph into an Obama-like clone.  In fact, all those that do come to mind—from moral bankruptcy, via craven cowardice, to unbridled avarice—have a distinctly ominous and/or odious ring to them.

 “A date which will live in infamy

The freshly signed MOU has a lamentably familiar ring to it. It evokes sentiments expressed by FDR after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, when he proclaimed it “a date which will live in infamy”. Indeed, Trump and his Administration would do well to heed the profound words of warning of Winston Churchill in “The Gathering Storm”, his epic account of events that precipitated WWII: “… if you will not fight…when you can easily win, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure…you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you.”

Sadly, such a moment might well come.