Seems being the operative word. This thing isn’t scheduled to be signed until Friday.
I can’t wait for the spin on this one. Right wingers were downright apoplectic when Obama unfroze a couple hundred million dollars. We’re now in tens of billions of dollars range.
I believe they’ve agreed to negotiate an agreement. Supposedly they’re going to come to terms in 60 days (never mind that the Obama agreement took 2 years to finalize)
More importantly, Israel hasn’t agreed to any ceasefire.
Israel doesn’t honor ceasefires, so their agreement or lack of it doesn’t matter.
I wonder what advantage would accrue to Iran to sign-off quickly? For the US, certainly. But surely the regime would get greater concessions by spinning negotiations out for weeks, months, years.
Am reminded of the Paris Peace Accord to end the Vietnam War signed in Jan-73 have begun (after many delays) in May-68.
A concession from someone you can’t trust to keep their side of a deal is no concession at all. Much better to end the war now and rely on Trump trying to memory-hole the entire disaster as he chases some other target.
Iran has no advantage in signing off quickly. The Persians have been around for a few thousand years, and like the Chinese (another long-established civilization), they know how to be patient and to play the long game. That’s what they seem to be doing.
This is what Trump doesn’t get. He wants results now, and he feels that the Iranians should also, so they should accept whatever he offers. That’s Trump’s style of negotiating: here’s my offer, take it or leave it. But the Iranians are patient, unwilling to accept any deal unless it benefits them somehow, which is forcing Trump to actually negotiate (cf. Rick Harrison on Pawn Stars) in a way he’s not used to.
In other words, Trump has very little experience in giving a little to get a little, such that both parties benefit. The Iranians are forcing him to learn that lesson.
Here’s an early medium term prediction - because of this war, and the actions of Israel over the last few years, the next US administration will start the process of disconnecting the US from ME regional allies, and especially Israel.
Russia will step in to fill that void—isn’t that the fear?
China, not Russia I think, but yes.
Right, that has been the issue for over a century — of course these peoples cannot just be allowed to rule themselves to their best interest, they MUST align with the interest of one or another of the Great World Powers and we can’t let it be The Other Guys.
Even if they don’t, a bunch of countries are looking around right now and wondering if it was worth it to have a US base on their soil.
It’s Tuesday. The war is supposedly over. The agreement is going to be signed on Friday.
Actually, let me correct myself. It’s not an agreement. It’s a “memo of understanding”.
I predict that the memo will be vague and unbinding (except for the financial concessions made to Iran), and we’ll still be subject to Trump’s sporadic bombing, and incessant saber rattling, all the way through the midterm elections.
And he will boast the MOU contains or means a whole bunch of things, and both the Iranians and Israelis will promptly jump in and say “no it doesn’t”.
Below is an article that does a good job of summarizing what is known about the Memo of Understanding (I find it notable that this has already been electronically signed, but its actual text has not been disclosed)
From what I can tell, the biggest difference in what the two sides are claiming concerns the amount and extent of financial concessions being made
There’s also a black hole where the details concerning nuclear inspections need to be (something Obama successfully negotiated).
And the little matter of peace in Lebanon.
But at least the Strait will re-open.
That’s something, right?
I wonder whether some devious sod in the Gulf is thinking, that were the US to sign a peace agreement including specific undertakings to lift all oil and other sanctions levied on Iran, what would happen if Iran started selling good Iranian crude in Euros or Yuan or Yen rather than USD?
Al Arabiya English with (reoortedly) the full memo.
The 300 billion number is callee out specifically. Unfreezing 25bil in Iranian assets is a separate concession. Iran has no real commitment on its nuclear program.
I’ll say tthis - paying reparations to get an end to the conflict is a lot better than giving Iran a tollbooth on the strait. i was worried Trump would go for the latter as it’s less embarrassing. This whole framework is a huge concession to Iran, which is unsurprising as they won the war.
That said if they get the chance to vote on it Democrats should vote against the 300 billion - it’ll be the most politicalby embarrassing thing Trump has asked for in his entire tenure and congress never got a real chance to actually endorse this conflict in the first place - not their job to bail Trump out of his mistake.
I thought the $300 billion was a biased exaggeration. But here’s the text from that link:
The most positive (for US taxpayers) reading is that the $300 billion will be coming from corporations interested in investing in Iran. But that doesn’t sound likely to me. And even that reading entails removing all, or almost all, economic sanctions intended to pressure Iran into not supporting terrorism.
Edit: a little more reading confirms that the money is intended to be private sector:
I can understand unfreezing Iranian assets, but what’s the 300 billion for? Reparations? As in “Oops, sorry about that thing that we didn’t have to do in the first place”?
In the Franco-Prussian war, with the German army besieging Paris, the French basically surrendered but asked the Germans to supply food to the starving capital.
Bismarck at first categorically refused, saying something like “If they want us to feed them their army should be besieging Berlin!”.
I wonder what the old bastard would’ve thought of Donald “Kaiser Wilhelm but without the charm” Trump’s marvelous Iran misadventure were he ends up paying his enemies 300 billion dollars…
Would’ve made perfect sense to him. Countries exerting direct control of trade routes, and demanding reparations from the losers of a war wascthe norm back then. Not to mention incompetent leaders being baited into starting wars that actively benefited their enemies. All of those things were big factors in his strategies for German reunification.
Absolutely, but he would’ve been blistering in his criticism of The Donald.
** cough ** Napoleon II ** cough **