Embrace the US-Iran MOU, But Understand It's Only a First Step

Early Monday morning Islamabad time, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that “Following intensive talks, we are pleased to announce that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED. Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland.” Pakistan and Qatar had been the lead negotiators, though Qatar’s negotiating team appears to have sealed the deal Sunday with a marathon 14-hour session.

The White House concurred. US President Donald Trump posted that the deal with Iran is “complete” and that he would immediately lift the US blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and is announcing its “toll-free” opening. “Let the oil flow,” he said.

Al Jazeera reports that Iran’s National Security Council announced the end of all military actions, including in Lebanon.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted on an International Criminal Court indictment for war crimes, attempted to derail Sunday’s negotiations by bombing Beirut, an Iranian red line, but this petulant display failed in its purpose. Trump called Netanyahu “a very difficult guy” and insisted that he should be “very thankful” for the deal. Israel was not involved in the negotiations although it began the war in partnership with the US Having lost to Tehran, Netanyahu has been marginalized and is clearly increasingly seen as a problem by Trump and MAGA.

Tasnim, the pro-government news agency, reported that Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi confirmed that the text of the MOU had been finalized, that there has been an immediate end to military actions, and that it will be signed in Switzerland on Friday. Over the next sixty days, he said, issues will be negotiated in the lifting of US sanctions on Iran and the disposition of Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program and its existing stockpile of High Enriched Uranium, which the US and others fear could be enriched to weapons grade.

What exactly has been agreed on? Much less than meets the eye. It is a “Memorandum of Understanding,” not a detailed peace treaty of the sort the Obama administration negotiated in 2015. It is simply an agreement to stop fighting while further negotiations continue.

Although the US says that the Strait is open “toll-free,” the Iranians have changed their terminology and are speaking of collecting an “administrative fee.”

Sharif’s breathless announcement was the first sign of a breakthrough, though the leadership of Israel’s extremist far right government continues to insist that it will occupy and attack Lebanon at will, defying President Trump. Lebanon is one of the Iranian government’s “red lines,” and Tehran’s inclusion of it in the ceasefire is an attempt to project Iranian influence so as to counter Israeli expansion into south Lebanon.

Lebanon is a small country of 4 million people, about a third of them Shia Muslims, the same branch of Islam that predominates in Iran. Those Lebanese Shia live in the south of the country abutting Israel and were brutalized by repeated Israel invasions and attempts at occupation. Their chief paramilitary power is Hezbollah, which subjected northern Israel to repeated rocket barrages in response to the Israeli genocide against Gaza. Israeli politicians have expressed a desire to ethnically cleanse the Shia from the south, and have been destroying entire towns and villages and attempting to depopulate Tyre, the ancient major city of the south. The Israelis have also been bombing the disproportionately Shia Beirut district of Dahieh, killing and wounding civilians. Iran insists that this bombing cease as part of the agreement with Trump.

Netanyahu’s land-grab of fully 1/5 of Lebanese territory and his attempt to do to south Lebanon and parts of Beirut what he did to Gaza remains a wild card in US-Iran relations.

The MOU is good news, but it is only a first step.