As Donald Trump signed the “Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran” – the document he had spent months referring to simply as “the deal” – French President Emmanuel Macron leaned forward to offer a crisp “bravo”. Trump handed the papers to Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, who applauded. Around the room at the Palace of Versailles, others joined in.
The applause came easily. Congratulatory messages quickly followed. And Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hailed a “peaceful resolution”. Across much of the Western world, leaders welcomed an end to four months of war.
But if you listen closely, you’ll hear relief – not celebration. After all, relief has a way of lowering standards. To misquote former prime minister Theresa May, a new doctrine has emerged during this war: that a bad deal is better than no deal.
Viewed through the long arc of US-Iran relations – the kind of historical timescale that Versailles itself invites – this was, on its face, a poor bargain for Washington. It leaves the United States in a weaker position than when the war began and offers a path to renewed empowerment for a very regime whose “total surrender” Trump had demanded only weeks earlier.
Yet by the end of the conflict, the alternatives looked so dangerous that even an off-ramp made of cardboard appeared attractive. Trump effectively acknowledged as much on Wednesday. “I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” he said. “If you kept this going, that could have happened.”
The Memorandum of Understanding was not so much a triumph as an exercise in disaster avoidance. The war was fought in the name of preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon. “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon” became one of the defining refrains of the conflict. Yet the agreement’s central nuclear provision amounts largely to Iran restating a position it has maintained for years: that it does not seek to develop one.
In that sense, the deal appears to validate the argument that Iran remained some distance from acquiring a bomb rather than confirming the imminent threat used to justify military action.
Tehran has agreed to work with the United States on disposing of or diluting enriched nuclear material – but the language remains vague. Many of the most contentious questions surrounding the programme have been deferred to further negotiations over the next sixty days – postponing some of the hardest decisions and the toughest negotiations in order to secure a ceasefire today.
Iran is also expected to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. A breakthrough. Yet even this commitment already appears fragile. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker and one of the deal’s key architects, has warned that conditions “will not return to pre-war conditions”.
In return, Tehran receives something far more tangible: relief from sanctions on its oil industry, the lifeblood of its economy. Waivers covering crude exports, petroleum products and some associated banking transactions will ease pressure on a regime that had spent years operating under severe financial constraints. It’s not clear where – or to whom – that extra money will go.
Supporters of the agreement on the US side argue that much of this oil was already reaching China through discounted and indirect routes, and that this arrangement helps counter that. But critics will see something different: a financial reward for the regime and a significant reduction in American leverage.
Then there is Lebanon. The agreement commits Iran, the United States and “their allies” to a withdrawal by both Israel and Hezbollah. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was conspicuously silent as the deal was signed. His government has already signalled that it does not regard itself as a party to these negotiations.
Israel is unlikely to withdraw from southern Lebanon unless Hezbollah is disarmed – a condition that could prove difficult, if not impossible, to meet within the next sixty days. The success of this part of the agreement may therefore depend less on the text itself than on the increasingly complicated relationship between Trump and Netanyahu.
“Bibi [Netanyahu] is a good man,” Trump said this week. “We have an amazing partnership. We are the big partner and he is the very small partner.”
Such remarks may have been intended as a reminder of who holds the stronger hand. But public humiliation has a habit of producing unintended consequences. With elections looming in Israel, Netanyahu may feel a greater need to demonstrate independence rather than compliance.
None of this means the deal should be dismissed outright. Faced with an adversary capable of placing its hands around the throat of the global economy, Trump may have concluded that this was simply the least bad option available. Most of those applauding in Versailles understand that. They know this is not the “total surrender” once promised by the White House.
Indeed, the comparison that lingers is another agreement signed in Versailles more than a century ago – a treaty greeted with applause that ultimately left a hostile state capable of returning to the contest.
For all the memorandum’s language about sovereignty, military operations and regional stability, there is another striking omission. The Iranian people barely appear in it. As Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince of the former monarchy of Iran, told me this week, the Iranian people had been “absent” from the negotiations.
After months of rhetoric about liberation and regime change, Washington appears to have stepped back from both. Point two commits each side to “refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs”. For the civilians who have endured imprisonment, repression, and intimidation at the hands of the regime, that sentence may prove one of the most consequential in the entire agreement.
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