Contributor: The best Trump can do with his Iran deal is to blame it on Vance

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Donald Trump has been the greatest, most clear-eyed and most transformative foreign policy president of my lifetime. But Trump is also the famed businessman who wrote “The Art of the Deal” four decades ago. There has therefore always been the risk that the president’s novel and often-unorthodox approach to foreign policy could be subsumed by a greater dealmaking imperative.

Prudent statesmanship on the world stage requires setting clear ends and then working backward to calibrate the appropriate means — diplomatic, economic, military or otherwise — to achieve those ends. Because of his dealmaking background, Trump — despite all his foreign policy successes — was always uniquely vulnerable to confusion of means and ends, prioritizing a deal itself above any end that a deal might be meant to secure.

That is how we got to this troubling week in U.S. foreign policy — namely, the deeply flawed new “memorandum of understanding” between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran, which represents the single greatest subsumption of noble ends into politically convenient means in at least a decade of American diplomacy.

The Iran appeasement, primarily negotiated and championed by Vice President JD Vance but ultimately bearing Trump’s signature, raises at least two crucial questions. First, can Americans somehow believe that Iran will uphold its commitments, given its history of deceiving and lying at every turn? Second, what does this mean for Trump’s legacy and successor plans, as it pertains to the Middle East and 2028 presidential hopefuls?

We shouldn’t mince words on the first issue. To place trust in Iran’s fanatical Islamist leadership is not merely naive — it’s delusional. For decades, Iran’s apocalyptic Shiite theocracy has demonstrated a consistent pattern of deception and hostility, undermining any notion that it can be a reliable partner in Western diplomacy. The history of Iranian negotiations is littered with broken promises, yet the administration — with Vance as its most prominent salesman — somehow argues that this time will be different. There is zero reason for thinking that will be the case. The mullahs are still in charge, after all. As Roger Daltrey of the Who famously said in the hit 1971 song “Won’t Get Fooled Again”: “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.”

This current memorandum looks shockingly similar to President Obama’s catastrophic 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — a deal that Trump, shortly before withdrawing the United States from the pact in 2018, correctly excoriated as the “worst deal ever negotiated.” Under the guise of diplomacy, the plan said nary a word about Tehran’s formidable ballistic missile arsenal, allowed Iran to continue its nuclear ambitions and provided the regime with a windfall — or more accurately, literal pallets — of cash to fund its regional terror proxies.

What exactly is different with the current deal? The mind reels. The memorandum, with its quixotic presuppositions, risks repeating all those same grave mistakes. At its outset earlier this year, Operation Epic Fury had four reasonably clear goals: a truly free Strait of Hormuz, an end to Iran’s funding of its sprawling terror proxy network, an end to Iran’s ballistic missile threat and a final resolution of the nuclear issue. The current agreement fails to achieve a single one of those American goals.

The Iranian regime, long guided by the sharia doctrine of taqiyya, has always viewed negotiations with Western powers as a strategic tool to buy time while advancing its nuclear capabilities, exporting jihad and sowing discord across the region. To imagine that Iran will suddenly embrace a spirit of good-faith cooperation is simply preposterous. No one actually believes that — including Trump’s own CIA director, John Ratcliffe.

We should also consider how this appeasement affects Trump’s Middle East legacy and, looking toward 2028, possible successor plans. Up until the April 8 ceasefire, Trump evinced a life’s work of consistent toughness toward the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism — a regime whose revolutionaries’ very first action, in 1979, was to storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and commence a 444-day hostage crisis. To cap off the fiery and effective Epic Fury on such a limp note, without a single American goal having been achieved, is to jeopardize that legacy.

What is the point, after all, of winning the war but losing the peace? On Wednesday, Trump celebrated the signing of the agreement at a dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron at Versailles. The profound symbolism of having that particular dinner at that particular location, intimately associated as it is with tragically flawed peace accords, cannot be ignored.

It seems, then, that Trump is placing a high-stakes wager on his Middle East legacy on his credulous vice president. As Trump said at the G-7 summit earlier this week in France: “If [the Iran deal] works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.” Perhaps Trump meant that comment in jest — but perhaps he didn’t. The buck stops with the commander-in-chief, but maybe this has also been a trial run for Vance as he gears up for a likely 2028 run. If so, it has not been a particularly impressive one. No intellectually honest person can deny that Iran comes out the big winner from yet another futile exercise in kicking the nuclear (and missile) can down the road.

Throughout this ordeal, many Iran hawks have asked, “Where is Marco Rubio?” Rubio, like Ratcliffe and War Secretary Pete Hegseth, allegedly lobbied Trump against the deal. Perhaps the answer, in a possibility raised by the Los Angeles Times on Thursday, is that Rubio is deliberately missing in action: He is letting Vance “take the fall” if (when) the deal inevitably implodes. If Trump cares about preserving his legacy on the world stage, then, ironically, his best remaining hope may well be for Rubio to clean up this mess.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer

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Ideas expressed in the piece

• The article portrays Donald Trump as a historically transformative and clear-eyed foreign policy president whose long-standing weakness is an “Art of the Deal” instinct that can confuse means and ends, leading to an overvaluation of striking deals for their own sake rather than securing durable strategic outcomes.

• It argues that this vulnerability has now culminated in a deeply flawed new memorandum of understanding with Iran, described as the most glaring example in at least a decade of U.S. diplomacy in which noble strategic ends have been sacrificed to politically convenient dealmaking.

• The piece insists that Iran’s Islamist leadership is fundamentally untrustworthy, pointing to decades of deception, anti-Western hostility and the religiously grounded concept of taqiyya as evidence that any expectation of Iranian good-faith compliance is not merely naive but delusional.

• It draws an explicit parallel between the current memorandum and Barack Obama’s 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which the article labels catastrophic, arguing that the new arrangement replicates core defects: failure to address ballistic missiles, tolerance of ongoing nuclear capabilities and financial relief that will, in practice, underwrite Iran’s network of regional terror proxies.

• The column recounts that Operation Epic Fury began with four clear American goals — a fully free Strait of Hormuz, an end to Iranian funding for terror proxies, an end to Iran’s ballistic missile threat and a final resolution of the nuclear issue — and contends that the agreement fails to achieve even one of these objectives, amounting to winning the war only to “lose the peace.”

• It characterizes the memorandum as appeasement that leaves Iran as the undisputed winner, claiming the deal merely kicks the nuclear and missile problems down the road while squandering U.S. leverage and allowing Tehran to regroup politically, economically and militarily.

• The piece suggests that even within the administration there is little real confidence that Iran will honor its promises, citing Trump’s CIA director as privately skeptical, and portraying public defenses of the deal as political messaging rather than evidence-based judgment.

• It warns that the agreement jeopardizes Trump’s hard-edged Middle East legacy, which had been built on confronting what the article calls the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and likens the Versailles setting of the signing celebration to a symbol of historically misguided peace accords.

• The article emphasizes that Vice President JD Vance, not Trump, is the architect and chief salesman of the deal, treating Trump’s public joke about taking the credit if it works and blaming Vance if it fails as a revealing indicator that the vice president will be held responsible for any adverse outcome.

• Looking ahead to 2028, the column frames the memorandum as an unimpressive trial run for Vance’s presidential ambitions, while speculating that hawkish Republicans such as Marco Rubio are deliberately staying in the background so that Vance “takes the fall” if, as the article predicts, the deal unravels.

• It ultimately contends that if Trump hopes to preserve a foreign-policy legacy centered on strength and clarity, the best remaining outcome may be for a future Republican hawk like Rubio to “clean up” what the article portrays as Vance’s strategic and diplomatic missteps.

Different views on the topic

• In contrast, administration officials and some observers present the U.S.-Iran agreement as a pragmatic way to end an intense and costly conflict, noting that it secures a definitive cessation of hostilities while explicitly preserving the option for Washington to resume military action if Iran violates the terms.[1][4]

• Vice President JD Vance publicly characterizes the memorandum as a “win-win” for the United States, arguing that Iran gains economic and diplomatic benefits only if it fully complies and changes its behavior, and that if it does not, its military and nuclear infrastructure has already been heavily damaged, leaving Washington in a stronger position.[2]

• Supporters emphasize that the pact obliges Tehran to reduce its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and establishes a 60‑day window to negotiate a longer-term nuclear settlement, with Vance underscoring that inspections and verification mechanisms are central to ensuring the destruction of Iran’s existing highly enriched uranium.[1][3]

• In addition, proponents highlight that while the deal lifts U.S. sanctions in a way that allows Iran to export oil, it does not provide any direct cash payments from the United States, and they present this structure as calibrated leverage that ties Iranian economic gains tightly to verifiable compliance rather than as an unconditional financial windfall.[1][2]

• Administration officials argue that the agreement has already produced tangible security and economic benefits by prompting the U.S. Navy to lift its blockade on Iranian ports and restore commercial traffic, with Vance pointing to a surge of more than 12.5 million barrels of oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz in a single night as a sign that global energy flows and regional trade are stabilizing.[1]

• Moreover, Vance and his allies describe the memorandum as fundamentally about regional peace, saying it is designed not only to wind down direct U.S.-Iran hostilities but also to set conditions for deescalation between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and, over time, to open the door to more normalized relations between Iran and its neighbors.[2][4]

• Whereas the article dismisses the framework as naive appeasement, administration defenders contend that the mix of formal provisions and “gentlemen’s agreements” reflects a practical diplomatic toolkit, arguing that such arrangements can facilitate flexibility and rapid progress while technical nuclear details are hammered out during the 60‑day negotiation period.[1][3]

• From the White House perspective, Vance’s emergence as the leading negotiator and public face of the deal demonstrates capacity to manage complex international crises; officials point to plans for the vice president to spearhead follow-on technical talks in Switzerland and to serve as the main liaison to Congress as evidence of sustained, hands-on engagement rather than a misjudged political gamble.[3][4]

• More broadly, some policy analysts quoted in news coverage interpret the agreement as a realist compromise that trades maximalist objectives for an immediate end to fighting, a structured path to nuclear talks and renewed oil exports, arguing that this approach reflects an effort to balance U.S. security interests with domestic war-weariness and pressure from European partners eager to restore stability in global energy markets.[1][4]