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The Memo of Understanding That No One Understands

The massive ambiguities in the framework for an Iran peace agreement all leave Tehran with the upper hand.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian displays his signed copy of the memorandum of understanding establishing a framework to end the US war with Iran

Just two weeks after it was signed, the memorandum of understanding between Iran and the United States to wind down Donald Trump’s feckless war is in such serious trouble that diplomats are now gathered in Qatar trying to contain the damage. This, like all the other follies associated with this purblind imperial errand, was an entirely foreseeable development: the agreement-in-process seeks to secure the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for near-total American capitulation on decades of policy red lines for the United States, from the empowerment of regional proxies for Iran to the continued development of ballistic missiles and ongoing nuclear-enrichment initiatives.

Still, underneath the daily violence, turmoil, and confusion in and around the Strait, the outline of a settlement remains legible. But it can only be realized if the Trump administration is willing to accept what amounts to a stinging strategic defeat: namely, by transforming the deliberately ambiguous memorandum from a mostly empty piece of Trumpian diplomatic theater into a real, binding document capable of delivering lasting calm.

Given the significant stress that the months-long Hormuz closure placed on international commerce and growth—as well as its role in engineering President Trump’s acute humiliation at hands of bunkered theocrats he had quite recently threatened to eradicate—the stakes are as high as they were when the memorandum won US approval two weeks ago. Yet even though representatives of Iran and the United States spent months putting the agreement together, no one seems to agree on exactly what’s in it. The Americans clearly believe they agreed to lift punishing sanctions on Iran and authorized a release of frozen Iranian assets to the tune of $12 billion in exchange for Iranian forces’ to open the Strait for 60 days. Meanwhile, the Iranians interpret the broad language of the memorandum as granting them the right to dictate shipping routes and attack ships that operate outside of them. To cite an Internet meme from a more innocent time, America sees a white-and-gold dress, and Iran sees a blue-and-black one.

Together with the simmering Lebanon-Israeli conflict, which Iranian negotiators succeeded in formally linking to the memorandum, the precise shape of the Hormuz reopening is emerging as the biggest threat to the framework for an end to the Iran war. This, in turn, presents a major obstacle for Trump and his MAGA allies in the Republican Party, who well understand that they have little choice but to bring the Iran crisis to an end before the US midterm elections in November in order to continue holding power in Congress.

Any fair reading of the actual terms in the memorandum confirms that they lend themselves to these harsh outcomes for American negotiators for one simple reason: the US team got played by their more motivated, clever, and emboldened counterparts. If the memorandum is to lead to a durable settlement, it will be on terms that Tehran could only have dreamed of when the American and Israeli bombing started in February. The only relevant question going forward is whether Trump can accept that his little misadventure failed.

Last weekend’s tit-for-tat violence, which the Trump administration........

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