Trump’s Iran Deal: Billions Up Front for Leading State Sponsor of Terrorism

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Monday, June 15, 2026

 

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration is still not publicizing its memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the jihadist Iranian regime.

 

It is laughable, of course, to speak of an agreement (or “understanding”) with Iran, which has a long, undeniable history of breaking agreements, in particular about its nuclear weapons ambitions. And while President Trump either doesn’t grasp or can’t be bothered to address the regime’s ideology, a core principle of sharia supremacism, including Iran’s Shiite version, is that lying to the enemy is a key part of warfare (“War is deception,” said Islam’s prophet in an oft-quoted hadith). This, for example, is why — even as the overwhelming evidence shows it was advancing its nuclear weapons program — the regime insisted that its leader, the now-departed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had issued a fatwa (a sharia law edict) against nuclear weapons. This would have been hilarious had not the Obama administration adopted it as part of its rationalization for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

 

It is the long-standing position of American administrations of both parties to pretend that the Iranians negotiate in good faith and are serious about such arrant nonsense. The Trump administration is no different. In fact, Vice President JD Vance is crowing that the incumbent administration negotiates directly with the regime — we are evidently to celebrate that they now lie to our faces rather than through intermediaries . . . progress!

 

Since the administration is trying to dizzy us with spin about the MOU rather than just showing us the MOU, it’s important to understand: There is not an agreement. The MOU is an agreement to talk about an eventual agreement (and talk, and talk, and talk, as the Iranians have mastered doing) rather than to make binding commitments on matters of vital American interest.

 

The only thing that seems clear is that the world’s leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism is going to get lots of money — we might even analogize it to “pallets of cash” — for nothing more than opening the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had not closed until Trump decided to launch a war he had no intention of fighting to victory and to wave off advisers who warned him that Iran could close the strait. The figure under discussion is $24 billion up front — that’s before we get to astronomical sums down the line.

 

On this score, the Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo reports the Trump White House’s emphasis that Iran is merely getting “its own money back,” not American taxpayer funds. How stupid do they think we are?

 

Iran’s funds are frozen based on sanctions imposed, in part, due to its terrorism support, in addition to its nuclear weapons work, its ballistic missile work, human rights abuses, and targeting U.S. military and civilian vessels on the high seas. If the U.S. could keep funds from Iran but is now instead allowing the funds to be paid to Iran, that is material support to a state sponsor of terrorism — which the Iranian regime has been since 1984 under a formal State Department designation. It doesn’t matter that the funds are supposedly Iran’s rather than a payout from the U.S. treasury. Our government is giving access to billions of dollars in funds to an entity our government concedes uses its funds to underwrite the arsenals and deadly activities of its terrorist proxies.

 

Here’s the State Department’s most recent report on Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism. In case anyone wanted to know where the money goes.