Trump’s deal is a catastrophic capitulation to Iran’s aggressors, leaves Israel vulnerable and constrained |
An earlier version of this Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
On March 2, the third day of the US-Israel war against Iran, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff gave an interview to Fox News in which he explained why the administration’s efforts to negotiate a deal with the regime in Tehran earlier in the year had failed.
He and Jared Kushner, Witkoff recalled, had been tasked with seeking an agreement under which Iran would halt its nuclear program, dismantle its ballistic missile program, cease its support for proxies, and eliminate its navy “so we can have freedom of the seas.”
Far from entertaining a willingness to compromise, despite having been battered in the June 2025 12-day war, said Witkoff, the Iranian negotiators bragged that their obduracy and duplicity had been paying off. On the nuclear front, they gloated, they had amassed 460 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which, Witkoff noted in his interview, could be turned into weapons-grade within 10 days.
“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly — with no shame — that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium] and that they’re aware that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” Witkoff recalled, aghast. The Iranians, he exclaimed, “were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”
They also claimed to have “an inalienable right” to enrich their nuclear fuel,” he noted, saying that he and Kushner had responded, robustly, by declaring “that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you dead in your tracks.”
Fast-forward three and a half months, and the US will on Friday formally sign a memorandum of understanding with Iran, already signed digitally long-distance, that resolves none of the goals of the war — none of the goals that Witkoff and Kushner attempted to resolve in their negotiated effort to avert the war.
According to a draft of the text obtained by The Times of Israel, CNN and Bloomberg on Wednesday, the 14-point MOU potentially grants the regime hundreds of billions of dollars — which it will doubtless utilize to help keep its restive population in line, to massively fund Hezbollah, Hamas and its other terrorist proxies, and to spend as needed on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. (The White House said later Wednesday, without elaboration, that the draft text “does not reflect the language of the actual MOU.”)
The draft agreement provides for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — the vital waterway Iran seized and leveraged to push Trump into this deal — but with no long-term commitment by the regime to keep it open and toll-free.
And it pushes the entire subject of Iran’s rogue nuclear program into a 60-day negotiation period, during which the regime can be relied upon to be as uncompromising and dismissive as its negotiators were when facing Witkoff and Kushner in January.
Incredibly, the draft text of the MOU already rewards the regime for its intransigence: The draft document states that Iran’s “nuclear needs” will be addressed in those 60 days; the US negotiators apparently could not even persuade the regime to include the words “peaceful” or “civilian,” to at least keep up the pretense that it has legitimate nuclear requirements.
During the 60 days, the MOU draft text........