ll the pundits agreed that Trump gave away the store to the Iranians with the June 17 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
He pledged to lift sanctions on Iranian oil exports and to release frozen oil revenues. He pledged to encourage Iran’s Gulf neighbors to pony up $300 billion in a reconstruction fund. He even pledged not to interfere in Iran’s domestic affairs.
The Iranians took all of that to the bank.
And then, nothing.
In fact, the Trump MOU set a trap. And Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fell into it. And that is why we’ve had several days of intense U.S. (and perhaps Kuwaiti and Bahraini) bombings of Iran this week.
The MOU was performance-based. You, the Iranians, will get all these goodies, but you have to do some very basic things, the first of which is to guarantee free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days.
And the Iranians—specifically, the IRGC—just couldn’t do it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member