{"id":2495,"date":"2026-06-20T05:37:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T05:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2495"},"modified":"2026-06-20T05:37:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T05:37:55","slug":"trump-has-fallen-for-the-same-false-iran-promises-as-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2495","title":{"rendered":"Trump has fallen for the same false Iran promises as Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Less than three months ago, Donald Trump was mocking the 2015 deal Barack Obama made with Iran that cleared the regime\u2019s path to a nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey sent Boeing 757s over there, loaded with cash, hundreds of millions of dollars,\u201d said Trump, referring to the cash ransom Obama aides delivered directly to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC, to bribe the Iranians to agree to the phony deal. \u201cThat\u2019s not going to happen with Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet it seems that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening with Trump.<\/p>\n

According to reports, the United Arab Emirates, a key US regional ally, is making $20 billion of frozen Iranian assets available to the Islamic Republic, with $3 billion of it having already been delivered to Tehran, perhaps by a Boeing 757 and maybe even on wooden pallets like those Obama stacked with cash to pay the terror state.<\/p>\n

Emirati officials deny that they\u2019re buying off Iran on behalf of the United States, but if Abu Dhabi thought Trump was going to put the clerical regime down for the count, it wouldn\u2019t be giving money to a neighbor that since March has set fire to high-end real-estate properties with hundreds of missile and drone attacks.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Emiratis are paying tribute to the side that looks like a winner.<\/p>\n

Thus, it seems that what Trump has frequently called the worst deal ever negotiated, and has identified for more than a decade as Exhibit A in the case against American loserdom, has now become the pattern of his own Iran policy.<\/p>\n

And, like Obama\u2019s, the plan is to gorge the IRGC with money and pave the way to a nuclear bomb while restraining Israel from responding to missile attacks by Iran and its proxies for the sake of what it euphemistically calls regional order.<\/p>\n

Vance\u2019s persuasion<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What seems to have held Trump back from green-lighting the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that Vice President JD Vance has negotiated with Iran is his fear that he can\u2019t repackage Obama\u2019s deal as his own big geopolitical win because his base will see through it and think him a loser.<\/p>\n

And so, for nearly a month, Vance, leader of the White House\u2019s \u201crestrainer\u201d faction, has been trying to convince Trump that MAGA is definitely dumb enough to be suckered into believing that the Iran deal his loyal deputy has captained is a historic win.<\/p>\n

Vance is happy to be celebrated by his online friends as the man who stopped the neocon war for Israel, but he doesn\u2019t want his name publicly attached to the deal in the event the Iranians or his boss blow it up. So he briefs the press on background, asking that journalists attribute the information regarding the MOU he\u2019s been negotiating to a senior administration official.<\/p>\n

Last week, the \u201csenior administration official\u201d held a call with reporters to say the deal is close at hand \u2014 or nearly, as he bragged in a May call with the same media cohort. Ninety-five percent done. He was short on details but assured his captive audience that Iran had committed to dismantling its nuclear facilities, destroying and shipping out its stockpiles of enriched uranium and giving up its regional terror proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis; in short, Iran was conceding to every US demand.<\/p>\n

And, the vice president repeated frequently, the Iranians would only be paid when they were in compliance. And to cover all the bases, a strict verification regime would be put in place to make sure Iran was abiding by the deal. After all, neither he nor the president is naive about Iran.<\/p>\n

Vance\u2019s validator calls with the press, influencers and think-tank experts constitute the centerpiece of his communications campaign, which is modeled after Obama\u2019s Iran deal echo chamber but with one big difference. The Obama team set up its comms infrastructure to steamroll Iran deal opponents, like US lawmakers, nuclear proliferation experts, Republican voters and pro-Israel activists. Vance\u2019s only audience is Trump.<\/p>\n

Obama playbook<\/strong><\/h2>\n

By generating positive articles, social media posts and TV appearances celebrating Vance\u2019s hard-fought progress in bending the Iranians to his will, the vice president is amassing evidence to show Trump that his supporters are 100% behind the president\u2019s new policy of accommodating Iran \u2014 Obama\u2019s policy.<\/p>\n

In the call Friday, Vance explained that his working theory of Iran is that the regime\u2019s moderate faction is ascendant, and the way to empower them is to make concessions to them so they can show the hard-liners, the IRGC, that they can deliver the goods to the Iranian people.<\/p>\n

The schematics sound familiar because it\u2019s exactly how Obama sold the Iran deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people most opposed to the deal are the Revolutionary Guard,\u201d Obama said in 2015, \u201chard-liners who are implacably opposed to any cooperation with the international community. And there\u2019s a reason for that, because they recognize that if, in fact, this deal gets done, that rather than them being in the driver\u2019s seat with respect to the Iranian economy, they are in a weaker position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did that work? No, the money Iran won from Obama\u2019s deal went to the IRGC. A fact sheet released by the first Trump administration in May 2018, when the president withdrew from what he then called \u201cone of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,\u201d showed that with the money from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the IRGC \u201cfunded a military buildup and continues to fund its terrorist proxies, such as Hizballah and Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how would it work differently now?<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019re not naive, Vance told the media. The difference between Obama\u2019s deal and the deal Vance is trying to get Trump to sell to his base is that the Iranians get things for performance, and, said the vice president, if we don\u2019t see that performance, then Iran will not get any of the economic benefits of this negotiation.<\/p>\n

Thus, what most distinguishes the MOU from the JCPOA, Vance insists, is that the Iranians won\u2019t get paid up front, the way Obama paid Iran to sit down and negotiate.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s obviously not true. There are two stages to the MOU, and Iran has conditioned its participation in the second stage \u2014 negotiating over the nuclear issues \u2014 on its satisfaction with the concessions it will win in the first stage, negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

So if Vance wasn\u2019t yet bargaining over the nuclear file or even the reopening of the strait, what could he have been negotiating the past month, except how to pay Iran up front?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s taken so long because the trick is making sure that whatever formula he devises for getting Iran paid won\u2019t embarrass Trump by making him look exactly like Obama. Otherwise, the deal may be more than Trump can stomach.<\/p>\n

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Of course, the only part of the MOU that matters to the Iranians is the first phase, when they will get paid more and through multiple channels, including sanctions relief that allows them to sell their oil and petrochemicals, the release of more frozen assets, and \u201creparations\u201d \u2014 i.e., more tribute from the Gulf Arabs.<\/p>\n

Once paid, and confident that the United States won\u2019t return to war lest it jeopardize the negotiations for which it called off military operations, the Iranians can dictate the tempo of the talks and determine how and when, if ever, to begin the second phase. Vance has already shown his willingness to help them keep stringing it out, for six or 12 months or until Trump\u2019s term is over.<\/p>\n

There are serious consequences to losing wars. The last time an American president lost a war, Obama was sent to the White House and struck a deal with a terror state that guaranteed it would have a nuclear weapons program roughly a decade after he left office.<\/p>\n

If his successor hadn\u2019t withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal in his first term and killed terror master Qassem Soleimani, and if he hadn\u2019t in his second term joined with Israel to kill Iran\u2019s supreme leader and the top levels of the regime and destroy most of the country\u2019s nuclear weapons facilities and its ballistic missile program, Iran would almost surely have the bomb right now.<\/p>\n

Opening door for Dems<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s because of Donald Trump that Iran doesn\u2019t have the bomb. Because of the president\u2019s historic partnership with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Iranian regime has been battered. But that doesn\u2019t mean Trump won the war. Not yet, anyway.<\/p>\n

Follow The Post\u2019s coverage on the latest in the peace deal with Iran:<\/h2>\n