No one gets a Nobel peace prize for ending a war he started, let alone for a pointless war of aggression that set back the causes that supposedly prompted the conflict. No amount of Donald Trump’s spin can obscure the fact that his newly announced deal with Iran is one big lesson in why this war should never have been launched.

The text of the deal, a 14-point memorandum of understanding, underscores its emptiness. The tyrants of Tehran are undoubtedly celebrating.

Trump’s political challenge is to show that his deal is better than the one negotiated by Barack Obama in 2015 and abandoned by Trump in 2018 – that Trump’s bombing produced a result superior to Obama’s diplomacy. The problem for Trump is that it didn’t. He did worse.

Trump will likely spotlight two supposed “victories”. First, Iran “reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons”. But it made that pledge in the Obama accord and many times since then. The key issue is whether the steps that could lead to a nuclear weapon are curtailed.

To that end, Obama imposed severe restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program. Trump can only hope to secure similar limitations during negotiations that are supposed to be concluded over the next 60 days. But such complex issues are unlikely to be settled so quickly, and the deal allows for the deadline to be extended by mutual consent.

Still........

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