Washington Handed Iran the Paper and Kept the War

by Pierre Rehov  •  Gatestone Institute  •  July 1, 2026

Pres. Trump, VP Vance and Sec. State Rubio. Screengrab via Youtube

• The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding tells Iran that Hezbollah survives and Israel leaves. The Trilateral Framework says that Hezbollah disarms and that, until it does, Israel stays in Lebanon.

• The negotiations with Iran were led by Vice President JD Vance, who never wanted this war and made no secret of his wish to end it cheaply. He produced the Islamabad MOU, the paper Iran’s regime wanted to hear. The Trilateral Framework was created by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has spent his career treating Iran’s proxy network as a threat to be dismantled rather than soothed.
• Iran negotiated the Islamabad MOU and believed it had won the war. It discovered that the Trilateral Framework, the only binding document, the one with mechanisms, was written to ensure the opposite.

Great powers, losing patience, sign a document and persuade themselves that it is strategy. The Islamic Republic of Iran has watched this habit in Western capitals for over 40 years and learned to feed on it. What it had not yet absorbed is that an administration can run two contradictory instruments at once, letting the weaker one absorb the enemy’s hopes while the stronger one quietly sets the terms.

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