The Memo: Clouds darken over Trump’s Iran deal

A storm is growing over President Trump’s deal to end the war with Iran.

The memorandum of understanding agreed on between the two sides is expected to be formally signed in Switzerland on Friday. It has already been signed electronically by senior figures in Tehran and Washington, including Trump.

But no official text has been made public. The vacuum has been filled by fear, speculation and, increasingly, leaks of the text that may or may not be accurate. 

Trump on Tuesday promised he would go through the agreement “word by word” in public — but not immediately, only in “the next couple of days.”

The bottom line is that Republican lawmakers, especially those of a more hawkish worldview, are deeply uneasy, some prominent conservative commentators are incandescent and people around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are making it known that requests to see the deal have been rebuffed, which they cast as extraordinary and shabby treatment of an ally.

Democrats and liberals are mostly content to let the disarray on the right play out. Their stance, in essence, is that Trump plunged into a reckless and unnecessary war from which he is now willing to pay almost any price to escape.

None of this means that the deal will collapse or that Trump will have a fundamental rethink. To the contrary, the president may hold fast to the position that his interests are best served by ending the war, getting oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, and easing the inflationary pressures that have caused gas prices to spike at home.

If Trump’s view is that American voters looking toward the midterms care more about prices at the pump than the finer points of Iranian uranium enrichment, he is likely right. But that doesn’t necessarily mean those same........

© The Hill