The reviews are coming in for Trump’s Memorandum of Understanding with Iran and the general consensus seems to be that it was largely a capitulation on his part, a grudging recognition that the grand aims that he outlined at the beginning of his and Israel’s war could not be realized with force and that he had to scale back his goals, even to achieving less than what had been in the previous JCPOA that was signed in 2015 and that he threw out. As Patrick Wintour, the Guardian‘s diplomatic editor, writes:

Only a man with an unparalleled ignorance of history such as Donald Trump would have signed America’s peace treaty with Iran at Versailles, the byword for national humiliation. And only a man with an impish sense of humour such as Emmanuel Macron would have suggested it.

It is easy to cast Trump in the role of the humiliated and hurt German Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau. The treaty of Versailles after all was based on 14 points, just as the memorandum of understanding has 14 clauses.

But the memorandum is not a full-scale surrender document; it is an admission that America could not achieve what it sought through war.

If the memorandum, taken with Trump’s remarks at his hour-long press conference at the G7, is compared with the final document the Americans tabled in 2025, it is possible to see how far the US has been forced to retreat. Red line after red line has been erased.

The 2025 document was tabled by the US immediately before Israel – with US support – began the 12-day war culminating in the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. Under its terms, Iran would have had no domestic enrichment capabilities beyond the limited enrichment for medical and agricultural needs; all nuclear supply would be imported from outside Iran; all enriched uranium stockpiles would be shipped out of Iran immediately upon signing the agreement; all enriched stockpile material would be down-blended to 3.67%; Iran would not build any new enrichment facilities; and Iran would dismantle all programmes capable of uranium conversion. Instead, a consortium including Iran, the US and the Gulf states would undertake enrichment outside Iran.

But the MOU shows that it achieved far less than those goals.

What is worse from the US perspective is that all these concessions have been made to try to secure the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war, but even that may not be achieved.

So why did Trump agree? It was because even he could see that prolonging the closure of the strait of Hormuz was going to have lasting adverse repercussions.

Trump was very frank on Wednesday: the risk of a worldwide recession and oil reserves running out in a matter of weeks. He said: “The one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover,” referring to the president blamed for the Great Depression that wiped out savings and pitched millions into poverty. “I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened.”

Inflation in the US has risen to 4.2% according to the latest report and even the new chair of the Federal Reserve did not do what Trump wanted him to do which was lower the interest rates. The 60-day deadline for many of the features of the MOU pushes the date to mid-August. It is clear that Trump and the Republicans are fretting over the electoral consequences of high inflation and are no doubt hoping that the end of the war and the resumption of oil flows will bring the inflation rate down in time for the mid-term elections.

But reducing the rate of inflation usually takes a long time. Furthermore, even if the rate goes down, prices will not go down, although Trump has promised that prices will decrease rapidly. That is not how these things work. Widespread and rapid reductions in prices only occur in periods of deflation and recession, which would create massive unemployment. Even if costs go down for manufacturers, they will try to keep their prices high to inflate their profits because people have been paying those prices, so people likely will be stuck with high prices, including for gas, for a long time.

Other analyses paint an even bleaker picture of the deal. This article analyzes each of the 14 points in the MOU, many of which defer final agreement for 60 days. This analysis described the right-wing discomfort with the MOU.

As Playbook detailed yesterday, the only concessions the U.S. has actually extracted so far represent a return to Iran’s pre-war positions — promising not to pursue a nuclear weapon, and allowing ships passage through the Strait of Hormuz. In return, Iran gets massive new financial investment, desperately needed sanctions relief and the now-certain knowledge that its leverage over Hormuz can deliver big geo-strategic and economic wins.

Beyond the MAGA cheerleaders, nobody seriously views this as a U.S. victory. The WSJ editorial board decries “the surrender of the Strait to the dictates of Iranian foreign policy.” The NYT’s veteran White House and national security correspondent David Sanger writes that “the Iranians emerged from a confrontation with the world’s most powerful military having not only survived, but with much to celebrate.” Israel is stunned. Tehran is gloating. And the oil industry is deeply unhappy, as POLITICO’s James Bikales and Carlos Anchondo write today for Pros.

It is clear why Trump tried to keep the details of the MOU secret for as long as possible, right up until the signing. He wanted to create a fait accompli, so that critics could not derail it and his allies had to sign on, however grudgingly. That may be the main tactical victory he got, despite all the deaths and destruction and suffering of ordinary people.