Trump's Alternative Reality on Iran

While we wait to see the actual agreement the US negotiated with Iran, the White House's talking points on the MoU demonstrates the President and his team live in an alternative reality.

The White House has yet to release the 14-point, one-and-a-half page Memorandum of Understanding it reached with Iran over the weekend. It must be a really bad agreement. If it was a good deal, they’d surely would have publicized it by now. In fact, rather than the actual agreement, the White House released a set of talking points that confirms how bad this deal really is.

Here’s what the talking points refer to as the Bottom Line:

Let’s take these points in turn:

• “He blocked Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon.” In the MoU, Iran does affirm that it will not produce nuclear weapons. Tehran first made that commitment in 1968, when it signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and reiterated it in 2015 in the JCPOA. Trump thus got Iran to affirm a commitment it first made 58 years ago. Big Deal.

• “He ended the fighting on every front including Lebanon without another forever war.” It was the United States (and Israel) that started the war against Iran, so ending it was a unilateral decision Trump made.

• “Reopened the artery that carries a fifth of the world’s oil.” The Strait of Hormuz was open until the war. It’s now effectively controlled by Iran.

• “American families are safer and will feel relief at the pump.” Not so fast. Iran is more likely to acquire nuclear weapons because of the war Trump started than before. Prices at the pump have gone up because the United States started a war and ignored the likelihood Iran would shut down shipping from the Persian Gulf. It will take months for oil flows to resume and prices at the pump to come down. Inflation is above 4 percent.

• “There is more work ahead to reach a final agreement.” True. In fact, everything the administration claims to have achieved in this deal remains to be negotiated: a permanent, verifiable end to Iran’s nuclear program, a lasting settlement in Lebanon, and the free flow of commerce through international waterways.

Here’s the reality. The war devastated Iran’s military and decimated its top leaders. But Tehran’s nuclear program is untouched. Its missile forces and proxies remain in place. Its control over the Strait is firm. Its coffers are begin to fill up again as assets are unfrozen and its oil is sold at market prices.

President Trump sees himself as a winner. In this war, he is the loser. But he can’t accept he lost. So he and his aides have spun a tale of victory to hide their stinging defeat. Nothing underscores that better than the alternative reality depicted in the White House talking points.