Until the full text of the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran is signed and released, any final judgment would be premature. In moments like this, every side tries to impose its own narrative. Washington will speak of a “diplomatic victory,” and Tehran will speak of “resistance” and of forcing the US and Israel to retreat. Global markets, meanwhile, will look more than anything else at oil prices and the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz. But even before the text of the agreement is released, one thing can be said is that if this memorandum of understanding is really what reports suggest, it is less a comprehensive peace agreement or nuclear deal than an urgent mechanism to stop the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, end the naval blockade or maritime restrictions, and buy time for more difficult negotiations in the future.
In fact, this memorandum of understanding appears to have been designed for several immediate purposes: first, to silence the direct war and prevent it from spreading across the region; second, to restore the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz and reduce pressure on global markets; third, to create a ceasefire period and a negotiating track for discussions over enrichment, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, sanctions, and perhaps part of the Lebanon crisis; and fourth, to provide a political exit route for the Trump administration without openly admitting that the war did not achieve the larger goals for which it was initially launched.
In reality, if the goal of the war was to fundamentally change Iran’s behavior, completely destroy its nuclear capacity, weaken Iran’s regional networks, or even bring the Islamic Republic close to a rapid collapse, this memorandum of understanding confirms that the US and Israel did not come close to those objectives. The war may have imposed heavy costs on Iran, but the survival of the Iranian government under heavy US and Israeli attacks has given Iran a powerful political message. The Islamic Republic can now claim that it not only did not collapse, but also managed, by using its geographic position, especially the Strait of Hormuz, to transfer the cost of the war from the military battlefield to the global market.
The Strait of Hormuz was at the heart of the past several months of conflict, and it is now also the central issue in this memorandum of understanding. Before the war, this vital route for the global economy was open. Now its reopening has become part of the deal. This means Iran has managed to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a real instrument of pressure. When Iran has been able to threaten the flow of energy, raise oil prices, alarm Asian and Western economies, and put the US government under domestic pressure, it has successfully used the Strait of Hormuz not only as a military lever, but also as an economic, political, and psychological one. From this perspective, reopening Hormuz is very good economic news for the world, but it creates a difficult question for the US that why was a war started whose end now appears to be a return of the same situation before the war, but this time at the cost of concessions?
Politically, this memorandum of understanding is also not easy for Trump and Netanyahu to sell. If the declared or undeclared aim of the war was to break Tehran’s will, fundamentally change Iran’s behavior, or even bring the Islamic Republic closer to collapse, the current outcome looks more like an emergency American retreat than a victory. Tehran can now claim that it stood against the combined pressure of the US and Israel, turned the Strait of Hormuz into a real instrument of force, and forced US to the table to negotiate. For Netanyahu, too, this agreement is bitter, because a war that was supposed to increase pressure on Iran and its allies and destroy the Islamic Republic may end with restrictions on Israeli attacks in Lebanon and Iran breathing again. That is why the risk of this agreement falling apart is high, because the three sides enter this memorandum of understanding with different goals and conflicting narratives: America wants to call defeat a victory, Israel does not want to lose the battlefield, and Iran wants to show that its resistance has paid off. These contradictions could make the memorandum of understanding fragile from the very beginning.
On the nuclear issue, the picture remains even more unclear. So far, it does not appear that the memorandum of understanding is a complete nuclear agreement. Reports speak more about negotiations over Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, a halt or suspension of enrichment, and discussions over verification mechanisms, not about a final, precise, and binding framework. The resolution of the nuclear issue, which should have been the central part of this agreement, still remains vague, and that is a positive point for Iran. Iran has shown in the past that it can turn long negotiations into a field of political exhaustion: taking phased concessions, buying time in technical details, and using the diplomatic space to reduce pressure. For this reason, the major risk is that this memorandum of understanding becomes a noisy “phase one” agreement, while the later phases never reach a conclusion. In such a scenario, the war ends, part of the sanctions are reduced, part of Iran’s assets are released, and the Strait of Hormuz reopens, but the main issue, Iran’s nuclear capability, which was the original reason for the war, is left to an uncertain future. If that happens, the final result may be weaker than what could have been achieved through diplomacy before the war.
Trump is now trying to place this memorandum of understanding against the JCPOA and claim that what he has achieved is better than Obama’s deal. But such a comparison is, for now, more political than real. The JCPOA, despite all its weaknesses and the criticisms made against it, was a detailed technical agreement with specific limits, timelines, monitoring mechanisms, and clear commitments. The current memorandum of understanding, at least based on the available information, is more of a framework to stop the war and begin future negotiations. Therefore, until it becomes clear what will happen to Iran’s uranium stockpile, to what level and for how long enrichment will be stopped, how inspections will be carried out, and in return for what verifiable steps sanctions will be lifted, no serious comparison with the JCPOA is possible.
At the same time, there are also similarities that critics of the JCPOA cannot ignore. If this memorandum of understanding says nothing about Iran’s ballistic missiles, creates no real restrictions on Iran’s proxy groups in the region, and opens the path to sanctions relief only in return for future nuclear promises, then many of the same criticisms that were made for years against the JCPOA will also apply to this agreement. The only difference is that this time, the likely signature will be under Trump’s name, not Obama’s.
The regional dimension of the agreement is also very important. From the beginning, Israel viewed this war with a different calculation. For Netanyahu, continuing military pressure on Iran and its regional allies, and destroying the Islamic Republic, was a strategic goal. For the US, however, a long war, with rising energy prices, domestic pressure, the risk of a wider conflict, and the approaching midterm elections, became a political burden. All of this created distance between the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv and made an understanding with Iran possible. This gap was an opportunity for Tehran. Iran was able to use it to stop the war, bring the issue of Lebanon into the ceasefire framework, and turn Lebanon from a secondary front into an important part of this war’s calculations. Although all the details have not yet been confirmed, it is said that the memorandum of understanding also includes a halt to attacks in Lebanon. If so, this would be an important political gain for Hezbollah and Iran, because it would show that Iran’s regional influence has now become part of America’s calculations.
Across the region, this influence has also been accepted, to a large extent, as a reality. Even in Lebanon, many people do not see their own fate as separate from Iran’s fate and from Iran’s war with the US and Israel. Last week, when I was in Lebanon, many people were hoping that by the end of this week they would hear good news about an agreement between Iran and the US. In a café in Beirut, an elderly man told me that if news of a final agreement came, he would go into the street and dance. That itself shows how Iran’s war is no longer only Iran’s war. For parts of the region, from Lebanon to the Gulf, Iran’s war has become a question of the future of states and the daily peace of ordinary people.
In Iran’s neighborhood, countries have also gradually accepted the reality that Iran cannot be removed from the region’s security equations. The United Arab Emirates is an important example. Reports emerged that Abu Dhabi might, within the framework of the new diplomatic atmosphere, help facilitate the release of billions of dollars in Iranian assets, although the UAE has denied those reports. But the main point is that even countries that have had serious tensions with Tehran in recent years now understand that continued war with Iran can directly threaten their own economic security. Likewise, now that I am in Saudi Arabia, nearly all political news coverage in the media since last night has carried a positive and celebratory tone toward this agreement. For this reason, for many governments in the region, reducing tension with Iran is not driven by affection for the Islamic Republic, but by cold security and economic calculation. In this war, Iran managed to transfer the cost of the conflict from the military battlefield to the economy of the region and the world. That ability makes Tehran’s position heavier in any future understanding. Many Gulf countries now prefer to maintain channels of communication with Iran rather than base their entire security on predicting the behavior of Washington or Tel Aviv. This shift in the regional atmosphere may be one of the most important outcomes of the war: not a complete victory for Iran, but the consolidation of the reality that Iran cannot be removed from the region’s security equations.
But there are also challenges for the US and Trump. First, if Israel does not consider itself bound by this agreement and continues to preserve military freedom of action in Lebanon, Syria, or Gaza, the risk of the memorandum of understanding collapsing will exist from the very beginning. In addition, inside the US, this memorandum of understanding will also be politically sensitive. Trump must show the public that he has ended the war and lowered energy prices, while also proving to the more hardline factions of his own party that he has not given Iran dangerous concessions.
Natiq Malikzada is a journalist and human rights advocate with an MA in International Relations (Middle East) and an LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex, where he studied as a Chevening Scholar. Since 2013, his work has focused on challenging religious extremism and advancing democracy, pluralism, and civic freedoms. In 2020, he co-founded Better Afghanistan, an initiative committed to countering extremism, supporting education, documenting human rights abuses, and strengthening civil society. Better Afghanistan also serves as a platform for Afghan women’s rights activists to organize, build dialogue, and advocate for freedom and justice. His work has also appeared in The National Interest, The Diplomat, BBC Farsi, and others.
This op-ed reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Amu TV.
