Trump’s Prompt and Utter Humiliation

By Philip Klein

Thursday, June 18, 2026

 

It is impossible to describe President Trump’s deal as anything other than total humiliation.

 

You could argue that he had no choice, that it was in America’s best interest for him to cut his losses, and that he had to suck it up and do whatever it took to reopen the Strait of Hormuz (which, by the way, is only temporarily reopened under the current deal). But there is no credible way to argue that what has happened represents anything other than surrender.

 

To claim that this isn’t an embarrassment for the U.S. requires ignoring months of Trump statements before and during the war about his red lines and war aims. People are getting too focused on the text of the memorandum of understanding itself, when the text needs to be viewed with the added context of Trump’s public statements, in which he gave away the store on just about every major point of contention he claimed he had with Iran until very recently.

 

Trump, either in his words or in the MOU, abandoned his positions in favor of the Iranian position on: supporting anti-regime protesters; allowing the enrichment of uranium; removing Iran’s enriched uranium; and on its ballistic missile program.

 

To review:

 

• In January, Trump urged Iranian protesters to “keep protesting” and to “take over your institutions,” promising them “help is on its way.” He vowed “very strong action” if Iran executed its protesters. Iran then massacred 30,000 protesters. When Trump launched the war on February 28, he said, “To the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”

 

In the text of the MOU that he signed, the U.S. and Iran pledged to “refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.” After agreeing to the Iran deal, Trump said, “I never really cared about regime change.” And he claimed the new leaders of Iran were “not radicalized.” Yet just this week, Iran executed two more protesters.

 

It is perfectly defensible for an American president to argue that democracy promotion shouldn’t be the job of the U.S. military. But Trump himself was the one who encouraged protesters to rise up, claiming he would help them.

 

• Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff said when talks broke down before the war that the major sticking point was that the Iranians asserted a right to enrich uranium and the Trump administration was insisting on no enrichment. Trump wrote on Truth Social in April that “there will be no enrichment of Uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) Nuclear ‘Dust.’” Yet at the G-7, Trump said it would be unfair if other countries were able to enrich uranium and Iran was not. Furthermore, the MOU said instead of being removed, the enriched uranium would be downblended and remain in Iran — the same standard that existed in Barack Obama’s Iran deal.

 

• As I wrote in more detail yesterday, for nearly a decade, going back to his first term, Trump criticized Obama’s Iran deal on the basis that it allowed Iran to maintain its missile program and cited the missile threat as one of the primary reasons why he launched this war. And yet, at the G-7, Trump said it would be unfair to tell Iran it couldn’t have missiles if our ally Saudi Arabia also had missiles.

 

Again, people could have different perspectives on whether Iran should be able to enrich uranium, have ballistic missiles, or massacre domestic protesters. But the record is clear that Trump moved dramatically in the direction of the Iranians over the course of negotiations, rather than the other way around. And in doing so, he unlocked tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief for Iran.

 

As a result of his capitulation to Iranian demands, Trump has degraded his ability to have his threats taken seriously. Throughout the war, Trump spoke in apocalyptic terms about what he was going to do if Iranians didn’t bend to his will. He threatened to take Iran’s oil depot at Kharg Island and knock out its energy infrastructure, and, in arguably the most reckless statement ever made by an American president during wartime, he even claimed ahead of a phony April deadline that “a whole civilization will die tonight.”

 

The Iranians simply ignored Trump and held out for what they wanted, and he caved to them on everything that matters. I suspect that other world leaders will take the same lesson from this debacle.