The Text of Trump’s Iran Deal Is Out. It’s Worse Than I Thought.

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Now that the text of the U.S.–Iran ceasefire agreement is widely circulating in the media, it’s clear why President Donald Trump wanted to keep it secret from the time he announced its existence last Sunday—his birthday—until the ceremony where the parties sign it this Friday. (Because of the leaks, a White House official read aloud the final, only slightly altered version to reporters on Wednesday.)

It turns out the “deal,” as Trump called it (though it’s really a “framework” for a deal and a fuzzy framework at that—more like a memorandum of little understanding), is tilted entirely to Iran’s advantage and provides no meaningful leverage for the U.S. to impose demands on Iran in the subsequent negotiations for a permanent peace.

Those negotiations are supposed to begin after the framework is signed in Geneva this Friday and are to last 60 days.

Trump and his aides have heralded as a major accomplishment the eighth of the framework’s 14 paragraphs, which states: “The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons.” Notice the word reaffirms. The Obama-era nuclear deal, which Iran and six other countries signed in 2015 (and Trump scuttled three years later), stated, in its prologue, in almost identical language: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” Even there, Iran “reaffirmed” the pledge because it had made the same promise when it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970. (See Articles II and III of the NPT in particular.)

Maybe the Iranians were lying then, maybe they’re lying now. The point is, in this respect, Trump’s big tout is nothing new.

The framework’s first paragraph declares “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.” Permanent is a big word, especially when it characterizes peace in any patch of the Middle East, where, as Trump said two weeks ago, “ceasefire” means “shooting in a moderate manner.” But let’s take the article at face value. Even if the U.S. and Iran are sincere in this pledge, the war front is explicitly said to include Lebanon, where Israel has been bombing Hezbollah militias and the militias have been firing back. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah was involved in the negotiations of this framework. They will not be included in the signing party. Israeli officials have said they will not be bound by any final treaty’s terms. And while Trump has assailed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “a very difficult guy,” it would be hard to blame Israel’s politicians for retaliating for more missile attacks on their country. One can imagine this scenario: All is well on the Iranian front; Hezbollah fires some missiles at Israel; Israel retaliates; Iran pulls out of the deal, citing the exchange as a violation; Trump publicly blames Israel for sabotaging his peace; anti-Israel sentiments worldwide intensify. This would very much be in Hezbollah’s—and perhaps Iran’s—interest.

The most bizarre paragraph in the framework calls on the U.S. not only to end its naval blockade within 30 days (reasonable) but also to “remove its [military] forces from the proximity” of Iran. It’s unclear what “proximity” means in this context. The U.S. has long maintained massive air and naval bases, patrolled the waters, and occasionally deployed troops in many areas well within Iran’s proximity. Does this mean that, by signing the framework, the U.S. agrees to shut down those bases? If not, what does the clause mean, and why did U.S. negotiators agree to it without explicit clarification? Did anybody on our side of the table read this thing?

There is more still in this page-and-a-half document that’s certain to set off political fireworks—most of all, the four paragraphs involving payments of vast sums of money to Iran. One calls for lifting all economic sanctions against Iran—those imposed by the U.S., other countries, and the U.N. This goes well beyond the Obama-era nuclear deal, which lifted only the sanctions stemming from Iran’s nuclear activities; it kept in place the sanctions penalizing Iran for its ballistic-missile production and its support of terrorist groups. Trump’s deal lifts those sanctions too—while putting no limits on Iran’s missile program or its funding of terrorists.

In another of these articles, the U.S. pledges to develop a plan, along with its Gulf partners, to raise “at least $300 billion” for Iran’s rehabilitation and economic development. (An earlier leaked draft of the memorandum said the U.S. would “secure financing” for this fund. Either this clause has been dropped, or there’s a disagreement over interpretation.) Either way, it’s not clear where the money will come from. Trump has since said the Gulf states will provide it. It is unlikely that those Sunni states will hand over hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild and enrich Shiite Iran. In any case, the whole business is politically awkward for Trump. He has long savaged Barack Obama for giving $1.7 billion to Iran as part of the nuclear deal, calling it a bribe. In fact, Obama was merely returning $1.7 billion in Iranian assets that the U.S. had frozen ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Trump’s framework does attach a condition to the $300 billion fund—it will be put in place “as part of the final agreement,” i.e., only if the U.S. and Iran sign an actual deal after the 60-day negotiation. The same is true of the clause lifting sanctions. That will happen, the memorandum states, in those same negotiations.

However, these caveats are inconsistent with other articles of the framework. For instance, Paragraph 11 states that the U.S. will make Iran’s frozen or restricted assets “fully available for use … upon the implementation” of this memorandum of understanding—in other words, just as the negotiations begin, not after they’re completed.

This point is reaffirmed in Paragraph 13, which states that negotiations for a final deal will be “subject to the beginning of the implementation of Paragraphs 1, 4, 5, 10, and 11 of this memorandum.” (Except for paragraph 1, which mentions the ceasefire, those articles are all about the release of money to Iran.) Negotiations will then begin “exclusively on the other paragraphs” (italics added)—i.e., on the paragraphs that do not pertain to money.

In other words, there will be no final agreement—not even full negotiations toward a final agreement—until Iran at least starts to get its money.

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The subjects remaining to be negotiated mainly concern the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the status of Iran’s nuclear program. On the former, the memo seems clear at first glance: Upon signing the memo this Friday, Iran “will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial passage with no charge for 60 days only.” It does not say whether they’ll charge ships for transit after those 60 days.

On Iran’s nuclear program, the memorandum says nothing beyond the pledge never to “procure or develop” nuclear weapons (which, as noted, is nothing new). Whether Iran will be allowed to enrich uranium, and, if so, to what level; what happens to Iran’s 1,000-pound stockpile of highly enriched uranium; whether international inspectors will be allowed to verify Iran’s compliance with whatever restrictions are outlined—these, among many other questions, are very complicated matters, even assuming good intentions on both sides (which, of course, cannot be assumed by either side).

These sorts of questions took up a good deal of the 20 months that it took the negotiating teams of six countries—the U.S., Iran, Britain, France, Russia, and China—to hammer out the 157 pages of the nuclear deal back in 2015. It is extremely unlikely that such matters can be resolved now in a mere 60 days. The framework does say the 60-day deadline can be extended, with both sides’ agreement—and it is a sure thing, if the talks go on for as long as 60 days, that Iran will stretch it out, so that it can keep reaping the deal’s benefits without making any compromises.

Trump may want to stretch out the talks as well, to avoid any comparisons to Obama’s nuclear deal, which he continues to condemn without evidence. (In his Sunday phone chat with the New York Times’ David Sanger, Trump said that Obama’s deal “was a road to a nuclear weapon” while his own framework “is a wall against a nuclear weapon.” This is total nonsense.)

Trump’s obsession with superseding Obama leads to one other obstacle that Trump may face—Congress, including (in fact, mainly) his Republican colleagues. The 2015 nuclear deal didn’t require congressional ratification because Obama cleverly deemed it a “multinational agreement,” not a “treaty.” In reaction to that, Congress passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which requires congressional review of any accord involving Iran’s nuclear program, no matter what a president might call it.

The INARA passed back in 2015 with strong bipartisan support because many Democrats, as well as almost all Republicans, innately distrusted Iran. This is probably still the case today, especially since Trump revved up the hostility with his war. His continued disparagement of the Obama-era accord will also ensure that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle check whether Trump’s deal is more or less lenient toward Iran than Obama’s.

It’s no contest. Trump’s deal, at least so far, amounts to an outright concession that Iran won the war. Very few, in Congress or among the public, are going to go for that.