Nuclear Diplomacy is More Complex than New York Real Estate

To be clear from the start; the flaws in the MOU between Iran and the United States are not nearly sufficient to oppose its signing. In this case, if not always, better to end the war on bad terms than keep it going. But at the same time, the utter unprofessionalism of the US team has had real consequences with respect to the structure of the agreement, and those consequences will make it different to turn the cease-fire into an enduring peace:

Both the United States and Iran want to end the war and have strong incentives to reach an agreement, but the final deal outlined in the memorandum will not happen—not in 60 days, not in a year. The structure isn’t sound; the ambiguities in the text are unbridgeable gaps between the U.S. and Iranian positions, and it is weighed down by commitments from other actors—Israel, the Arab Gulf states, Hezbollah, and Congress—that were not party to the negotiations.

It may fail on its first condition, a ceasefire that extends to Lebanon. Israel has not agreed to end any part of its war with Iran and its regional partners, and Netanyahu said Thursday that Israeli forces will continue to occupy southern Lebanon, continuing a conflict that he has argued is essential for Israel’s security and that remains popular with the Israeli public. The more the United States demands that Netanyahu accede to the terms it has set, the more incentive he has to continue the conflict to demonstrate his policy independence—especially as he prepares for elections later this year. Even before the agreement was announced, critics to his right and left were already using the negotiations and Netanyahu’s relationship with Trump as a political cudgel. Netanyahu is signaling that he will not accept the agreement, and has already demonstrated that he is willing to violate ceasefires even if it means risking more Iranian missile and drone strikes.

There is also the issue of the $300 billion reconstruction fund that is unlikely to find donors. If a final deal is contingent on this pot of money being filled by the United States and its “regional partners,” it will never be signed. Trump stressed on Wednesday that the United States would not be contributing, so who are these unspecified partners? The Arab Gulf states, after being targeted by Iranian missile and drone strikes and having their oil rents slowed to a trickle by Iran’s blockade, will not pony up for a protection racket that they had no say in negotiating. (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf bellwether, is cutting back on spending.) The Trump administration has little leverage to pressure the Gulf states to spend their disposable income rebuilding their regional adversary. It cannot even offer these states deterrent deployments of U.S. forces without undermining negotiations with Iran because a final deal must also, under the terms of the memorandum, include a drawdown of U.S. troops “from the proximity of” Iran.

Finally, the deal might fall apart under pressure from Trump’s own domestic allies. The memorandum not only violates many congressional Iran hawks’ red lines, it would be literally illegal to implement without congressional approval. As Jack Goldsmith and Congressional Research Service analysts Jennifer Elsea and Thomas Clayton immediately pointed out, the administration is running up against the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, a bipartisan bill passed by Congress in 2015 in response to the Obama administration’s decision to sign the JCPOA as an executive agreement rather than as a treaty that would be reviewed and ratified (or scuttled) by the Senate. The law subjects all future agreements on Iran’s nuclear program to congressional review and prevents the president from lifting sanctions without a legislative process. Several Republicans have already expressed their opposition to the terms of the memorandum and direction of future negotiations, and INARA will give them tools to pressure the administration.

Speaking to the New York Times’ Ross Douthat, Vice President J.D. Vance challenged critics, “If you think this is a bad deal: What is your alternative?” The alternative would have been not to launch a war the Trump administration was not willing to prosecute to achieve its objectives, and instead accept the lengthy breakout period for Iran’s nuclear program created by the strikes in June 2025 and let Iran’s regime decay and delegitimize itself as its regional partners diminished and the government massacred protesters to cling to control. But that is a bell that cannot be unrung. 

Some of these problems (Israel) are inherent to the situation. But some (a ridiculously short 60 day negotiating window, the $300 billion slush fund, the ignorance of US sanctions law) are the result of an unprofessional and inexperienced negotiating team. There’s a reason the United States has (or had) a large diplomatic corps with many decades of experience at negotiating complex accords such as this. Folks like to think that “complex” is just smoke and mirrors nonsense that’s intended to obscure the fact that diplomats are drunk or lazy or globalist or what not, but it turns out that super-complicated negotiations between countries that don’t want to be at war anymore are, well, complex. The misunderstanding of this reality persists both within government (the uniformed services really struggle with “why can’t the State Department just get things done?“) and in the general public (“why are they just talking? Can’t they agree on the shape of the table?”). A poorly structured agreement actively increases the chances that conflict will reignite, and this team is no stranger to poorly structure agreements; recollect that just last year Steve Witkoff wanted to entertain a deal with Russia that would have made it unclear whether Polish fighter jets could fly from Polish bases. Let’s hope that the negotiators in the 60 day window, no matter how ridiculously constrained it may be, know something more about nuclear policy than can be learned by a field trip to Oak Ridge.

Anyway, shit may get blown up before JD even gets to sign the deal.

Vice President JD Vance had been expected to fly to Switzerland for talks with Iranian officials, but the White House said late Thursday that his trip would be delayed. The United States was looking forward “to beginning technical talks as soon as possible,” a White House statement said.

At a news conference on Thursday, Mr. Vance issued an unusually direct rebuke to Israeli critics of the deal. “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” he said. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”