Iran War Hawks Are Rightly Unhappy With U.S. Concessions to Iran But Willfully Blind to their Role in Giving Iran the Leverage that led to Them

Just over a week ago, President Trump described the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran that at that point had not yet been made public as "achiev[ing] everything we set out to accomplish - everything, and much more. Ending the current conflict, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon."

It was obvious that that statement was false when Trump made it. The various stated goals of the war the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran included regime change and eliminating the threat posed by Iran's nuclear and missile programs. "Ending the current conflict" was not one of the original goals because there was no direct military conflict before the war began. Nor was opening (or reopening) the Strait of Hormuz because it was open before the war. 

Now that the MoU's full text is publicly available, it is even more obvious that the U.S. achieved none of Trump's objectives. Consider the MoU's declaration that "Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons." The "reaffirms" language is key. Iran has long maintained that it was never attempting to procure or develop nuclear weapons, even as it did so clandestinely. The hard part has never been getting Iran to promise not to develop nuclear weapons. The hard part was putting in place an inspections and sanctions regime that verified the promise. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that President Trump abandoned in his first term did that. The MoU commits Iran to "down blend" its enriched uranium stockpiles under IAEA supervision and to "discuss" limits on future enrichment. That's not nothing, but it's hardly the guarantee that Trump boasted.

Meanwhile, Iran gets sanctions lifted, the U.S. blockade ended, the ability to export oil, the unfreezing of its assets, the possibility of charging tolls on Strait passage (after 60 days and with the cooperation of Oman), and "at least" $300 billion from a fund to be developed by the U.S. working with "regional partners." And of course, there has been no regime change in Iran. If anything, the war strengthened the existing regime's grip on power, albeit with changes in personnel.

Why did the Trump administration roll over in this way? Trump is not the master negotiator he is portrayed as in his ghost-written books, but the reason the MoU favors Iran is not primarily a result of poor negotiation by his emissaries. Rather, it is because the war was a terrible idea from the start. Bombing doesn't really ever lead to regime change. It was especially unlikely to do so in this case, given the Iranian regime's willingness to kill its own people. The regime could afford to absorb enormous damage without risking popular revolt over the suffering the war entailed. Meanwhile, Iran discovered that it has power over the global economy by choking off the Strait of Hormuz. The MoU favors Iran because, entirely predictably, Iran has much greater leverage than the U.S.

Given Trump's character flaws, it would be unrealistic to expect him to do anything but characterize the MoU and the war itself as a great success. But in a different world, one might have expected something else from more ordinary human beings. Yet, while Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and some other Iran hawks who are also Trump bootlickers have expressed concerns about the MoU, what such characters have failed to do (unless I somehow missed it) is to say something like this: Wow. We sure gave up a lot in the MoU just to get Iran back to the negotiating table. We would have been way better off if we hadn't gone to war in the first place. It looks like I was badly mistaken in supporting the war.

Cruz is a particularly egregious example. Here is what he said on February 28:

Today’s action will enhance the national security of the United States and our allies. I applaud our Armed Forces, our intelligence community, and President Trump for their capabilities and resolve to eliminate these threats, and I am deeply appreciative that our Israeli allies are fighting alongside the U.S. on behalf of our mutual interests and against our mutual enemies. May God protect our servicemembers.

And here is what Cruz said late last week:

History demonstrates that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is an exceptionally bad idea, and I think unfortunately the president is receiving some really bad advice on this deal.

As one would expect in a monarchy in which lèse-majesté is punishable by the Sovereign's support for a primary challenger, Cruz didn't say that King Donald himself had an exceptionally bad idea, instead attributing the MoU to unnamed bad advisers. But put that aside. The important point is that neither Cruz nor any of the other prominent Republican Iran hawks are prepared to acknowledge that the MoU was a result of negotiations in which the U.S. had no leverage because it had already executed another exceptionally bad idea: the initial attack on Iran that the hawks enthusiastically supported.

Sadly, in failing to admit their blunder, the Iran hawks are acting as one expects of most elected officials, who rarely confess error. The question is why not? Trump changes course all the time, all the while denying that he has done so, and his followers go along, so perhaps for the Leader, there is no reason to admit error. The followers don't see it, believing the Leader if he tells them that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. But, while I have never understood Trump's appeal as a charismatic leader, whatever it consists in, Graham, Cruz, and their ilk lack it. So why don't they admit error?

The puzzle seems all the greater when one considers that people typically get credit for admitting error. A minor personal example serves here. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an essay for this blog in which one of the main ideas I proposed was based on an error I made about James Madison's originally proposed First Amendment. When a reader called it to my attention, I reread the relevant text carefully, realized the reader was correct, and noted my error on the blog. I edited the original blog post to include the confession of error at the top. I subsequently received several emails and social media messages praising me for admitting my error. I appreciated the praise but the fact that readers were so moved to write me under the circumstances suggests that frank admission of error is unusual, even among non-politicians.

To return to the Iran hawks who supported the attack but dislike the MoU, it's possible that they are not simply avoiding admitting an error. It's possible they don't realize they made an error. Maybe the Senators who now criticize Trump's advisers for capitulating think that the U.S. could have gotten the Iranians back to the bargaining table with fewer concessions or, despite the evidence to the contrary, think that a return to full-blown hostilities would be beneficial. But if so, that seems more likely a result of cognitive biases than of any sober-minded objective analysis of the mess created by the doubly unlawful war they supported.

Trump and his backers have placed the U.S. in a much worse position relative to Iran than before his war and in a much much worse position than before he withdrew from the JCPOA for no other reason than that Obama had entered into it. However, we are where we are, which is why we opponents of the war can agree that the MoU is a shameful capitulation but think that there might be no better path available.

All of that may be moot in any event. The very first sentence of the MoU calls for both Iran and the U.S. "and their allies in the current war" to cease "military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensur[e] the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon." Neither Hezbollah (Iran's ally) nor Israel (an ally of the U.S.) has agreed to those terms; the MoU is extremely unpopular in Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu needs to win re-election to avoid prison; and already the ongoing Israeli military actions in Lebanon have emerged as a potential sticking point in the negotiations in Switzerland.

Although it is therefore unclear if, how, or when the U.S.-Iran military conflict will end or on what terms, we can be sure that no matter how badly it ends, Trump will claim a great victory and those of his enablers who are unhappy with the resolution will find some convenient scapegoat to blame, while refusing ever to acknowledge the historic blunder they supported that led to the result they decry.

-- Michael C. Dorf