Between Surrender and Betrayal: A Deal on Iran Draws Fierce Criticism

The article says a historic agreement with Iran may be signed today, and denounces it as both a surrender to the Tehran regime and a betrayal of the Iranian people. In the writer’s view, the deal would grant international recognition to the regime, ignore Iran’s ballistic missile program, and leave intact its regional reach through Hezbollah, the Houthis, Shiite militias in Iraq, and Hamas, all described as operating under Iranian patronage and funding.

It argues that Iranians who protested against the ayatollahs were abandoned after tens of thousands were killed, despite encouragement from Donald Trump to keep fighting and his promise that help was coming. The article says the likely agreement, if it follows the American version, would resemble the 2015 JCPOA, which the writer says enabled Iran’s regional buildup. Trump called that deal “bad” and “rotten,” withdrew from it in 2018, and imposed harsh sanctions that damaged Iran’s economy.

The piece says Joe Biden reversed those sanctions about two weeks after taking office in January 2021, and now Trump would be following that path by returning to a similar deal and lifting sanctions again. That, the article warns, would allow Iran to advance on ballistic missiles, arm its proxies, and continue regional subversion. It also says the West shows its “miserable” double standards by reacting loudly to Palestinians but staying silent on Iran, even as Iran was elected in April to a major UN committee overseeing human rights, women’s status, and counterterrorism, with support from Canada, France, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, Britain, Finland, Austria, and Switzerland.

The article adds that Israeli tactical cooperation with Trump, including joint strikes in Iran, did not produce strategic alignment. It concludes that Trump failed to achieve his stated goal of destroying the Iranian threat and will leave that task to a successor.