As promised, below is some analysis relating to the current negotiations with Iran. I have tried to provide some balance, with some criticism, and some praise. There are 4 articles in total. I hope that they put current events into some perspective. Enjoy!
America’s failure to understand totalitarian regimes could be fatal
Trump’s attempt at Iran deal a perfect example
BY: Don Feder, The Washington Times (June 7, 2026).
President Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “crazy” in a phone conversation last week about Israel’s strikes against Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Lebanon.
To get a deal with an enemy, he insulted a friend.
Try to imagine Mr. Trump’s response if the cartels were raining missiles and drones on us from Mexico every night. Hezbollah’s strikes have depopulated dozens of communities in northern Israel.
Our president is piqued by Israel’s defensive action, which he believes gets in the way of his pursuit of a paper peace with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Despite his reputation as a hard-headed businessman, Mr. Trump seems not to understand that the art of the deal does not work with communists and Islamists.
As we wait for an illusory peace with Iran — as well as the outcome of indicting Cuban leader Raul Castro and the next chapter of our relationship with Red China — we need to come to terms with this reality: You cannot do business with totalitarian thugs. Their mindsets are alien to the citizens of free societies.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s Munich mistake was a failure of imagination. He could not conceive of how someone who had witnessed the carnage of World War I could risk another global conflict for territorial gain. He did not understand the ruthless determination of Adolf Hitler.
For 47 years, Iran’s Islamist regime has shown itself impervious to reason and as much our enemy today as it was when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in 1979.
In the recent bombing campaign, which took out much of Iran’s leadership, the president believed that if he hit enough targets and offered sufficient inducements, the regime would come to its senses, surrender its fissionable material, open the Strait of Hormuz and unicorns would amble by.
If it came to a choice between sacrificing half the population or ending its nuclear program, Mr. Trump apparently believed, the regime would not hesitate in choosing the former.
Totalitarians have a different calculus than the rest of us. The trains that Hitler used to send Jews to death camps could have been used to transport troops and material, improving the prospects of a German victory in World War II. Yet killing Jews was a higher priority for the Nazis.
Cuba should be begging us for help and offering any reforms necessary to secure it. The people are starving, garbage is piling up in the streets, and hardly any fuel is left in the country.
Still, Havana does not care how much its people suffer. It will not accept any arrangement that imperils communist rule.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini said, “Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” That encapsulates the totalitarian mindset.
For communists, the party is everything. At the Stalin purge trials, old Bolsheviks went to their deaths believing that if the party said they were guilty, then they must be guilty.
In Arabic, Islam means “submission” or “surrender.” Throughout the course of history, conversion to Islam was mainly by the sword.
When Mao Zedong came to power, his cadres did not ask the populace: “Hey, you want to be part of our people’s republic?” For totalitarians, it is always submit or die.
Negotiations with totalitarian regimes are a subterfuge. Iran and Cuba are playing for time. Both have histories of broken promises going back to their beginnings.
When he took power in 1959, Fidel Castro swore he was not a communist. After the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini said he looked forward to good relations with the United States. Both avowals were intended to avoid conflict while the regimes consolidated their power.
We fall for it every time.
It is Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football all over again. Despite fantasies of a deal, Iran will snatch away its fissionable material at the last minute, leaving poor Uncle Sam flat on his back.
In 1958, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote a book about communism: “Masters of Deceit.” Islam has a principle called taqiyya, which allows lying to infidels to advance the faith.
Still, we go right on pretending that we can do business with ideological killers, whether it is Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or communist China. We think we can somehow change their essential nature.
Yet the only way to deal with our enemies today is the way the Allies dealt with the Axis powers in World War II: Accept nothing less than unconditional surrender.
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Victor Davis Hanson dissects how critics completely misread the Iran deal
Historian details how crippling sanctions, severe infrastructure damage broke Tehran’s leverage
BY: Madison Colombo, FOX News (June 21, 2026)
Historian Victor Davis Hanson called out critics of the newly signed U.S.-Iran preliminary agreement, arguing that they are misreading American leverage in negotiations.
Speaking on Jesse Watters Primetime, Hanson disputed what he described as misconceptions about the deal and said the military conflict dismantled Iran’s infrastructure, leaving Tehran with no cards to play.
“They’ve suffered probably a half a trillion dollars to their nuclear military industrial complex that took them 50 years to build,” Hanson said in response to what he called “unhinged” arguments that Iran is better off now than before the conflict.
The Trump administration’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran was released this week, laying out the terms of the deal reached by both parties for a 60-day ceasefire and a framework for negotiations.
The deal itself has drawn criticism from both sides of the political aisle, with critics arguing that it does not include aspects like an immediate dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure or the removal of enriched uranium stockpiles.
Hanson also pushed back against critics who have cited difficulties moving oil out of the region due to Iranian actions in the Strait of Hormuz.
“They keep saying, ‘Well, the strait was open before, and now it was closed, and now we had to negotiate to get it open.’ It was only open because they chose not to cause trouble,” he said.
“They chose to not cause trouble because the last seven presidents said, ‘We don’t dare touch you. We’re not [going to] interfere with your nuclear programs.'”
Hanson argued that sanctions on Iran and its oil distribution efforts have put pressure on the Middle Eastern nation and given the U.S. leverage.
“They think time is on Iran’s side. Time is not on Iran’s side,” Hanson said, referencing the burden imposed by sanctions.
He suggested that Tehran is concerned about America’s upcoming midterm elections and the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Hanson argued that if the conflict goes past the midterms, Trump will be less constrained by electoral considerations.
“They are terrified that if he wins the midterms and the price of gas goes down, he’s got a free hand, and he already has a free hand now,” Hanson said.
“They are afraid that Donald Trump is [going to] drag it out because if he drags it out after the midterm, after the 250th anniversary, he’s [going to] have a lot more options than he does now when he’s worried about gas and the midterm. So the dynamic is all upside down. They are the ones that have the time clock.”
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Trump achieved a historic victory in Iran. His deal risks squandering it.
His agreement is nothing like Obama’s, but it gives the regime an opening to recover.
BY: Marc Thiessen, The Washington Post (June 19, 2026)
Former president Barack Obama has predicted that President Donald Trump’s deal with Iran would not be “significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place.”
I can think of more than 13,000 differences: That’s the number of U.S. military strikes that Trump launched during Operations Epic Fury and Midnight Hammer. Unlike Obama, Trump buried Iran’s nuclear material so deep that, senior officials tell me, Iran has indicated the United States will have to dig it up because it can’t reach it to hand over. He also took out over 85 percent of Iran’s defense industrial base; sank its navy; grounded its air force; damaged its centrifuges; and decimated its ballistic missile capabilities, conventional military forces and infrastructure of repression. An Iranian journalist relayed to me that her mother was taken into a police station for questioning because of the journalist’s reporting on the war. Days later, she said, the station lay in rubble.
Before the war, Trump warned he would kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if he did not bend to U.S. demands. Trump delivered on that promise. The U.S.-Israeli combined force not only eliminated Iran’s supreme leader, it also took out dozens of other senior Iranian officials. That is in addition to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s terrorist mastermind, whom Trump killed in his first term. Today, thanks to Trump, Iran’s top leadership has been annihilated, the regime can no longer project power in the Middle East and it possesses only a “nuisance” capability, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command. No president in 47 years has done more damage to the Iranian regime than Trump has. He deserves enormous credit for this.
Because of these strikes, Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran — which sets in motion negotiations over how to fulfill Iran’s pledge to end its nuclear ambitions — is backed by the credible threat of U.S. military force. As Trump put it this week, “if [a final deal] doesn’t get done … we go back to bombing.” Obama, by contrast, failed to act after Syria repeatedly violated his red line against using chemical weapons on its people, responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by giving Ukraine blankets and meals ready to eat, and pioneered the concept of “leading from behind” during the U.S. war with Libya.
So, no, this is not the Obama nuclear deal redux. As former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice recently explained, “Iran is far weaker today than it was in February. No amount of Iranian propaganda can mask this reality.”
Here’s the problem: We need to keep Iran in that weakened state. The deal Trump signed this week does the opposite; it helps Iran get up off the mat. After weeks of bombing, Iran is debilitated, but it is not chastened. The regime is determined to rebuild what Trump destroyed. It knows that Trump is only president for another 2½ years, so it simply needs to survive long enough for Americans to elect another weak president like Obama or Joe Biden.
This MOU not only allows the regime to survive, it gives it the means to recover and rebuild — without having to do virtually anything in return.
In paragraph four, the U.S. agrees to “fully end the naval blockade within 30 days” while in paragraph 10 it agrees to “immediately … issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation.” In other words, the damage done by the blockade will be immediately erased, as the regime will gain access to tens of billions in oil revenue just for signing the MOU.
Moreover, in paragraph 11 the U.S. promises to immediately “make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran upon the implementation of this MOU.” Full implementation isn’t defined, but count on the Iranians to interpret it to mean they’re entitled to immediate access to all frozen assets — a $24 billion windfall — and are justified in closing the Strait of Hormuz again if they don’t receive it.
Finally, paragraph five implicitly authorizes Iran to impose tolls on ships transiting the strait by obliging Tehran to allow toll-free passage “for 60 days only.”
None of the money that Iran will receive can ever be reclaimed. The damage will be permanent and irreparable. Moreover, by giving Iran this immediate cash infusion and relief from the U.S. sanctions that have been in place for decades, Trump virtually guarantees that he will be unable to win meaningful concessions in the follow-on negotiations. By giving away his economic leverage now, he will have nothing left to offer Iran as he negotiates the dismantling of its nuclear program.
The longer-term damage is even worse. The MOU pledges that, as part of a final agreement, “the United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and that the U.S. will facilitate the delivery of this reconstruction assistance by granting “all required licenses, waivers and permissions used for the relevant financial transactions.” This is like launching the Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany while the Nazis were still in power — except the Marshall Plan was worth only about $130 billion in today’s dollars.
Trump insists that, unlike with the Marshall Plan, the U.S. is not obligated to contribute a dime. It doesn’t matter. The money is part of an agreement signed by the president of the United States and possesses his imprimatur. Yes, Iran gets nothing if it does not reach a final deal with the U.S. But there is no concession Iran could make — even if it allowed the U.S. to come in and take all of its enriched uranium and centrifuges and fly them to Oak Ridge, Tennessee — that is worth giving $300 billion to the unrepentant Islamic terrorists who rule Iran. Moreover, Trump never delivered on his threats to destroy Iran’s energy and civilian infrastructure, focusing instead on military targets. So, what exactly does Iran need $300 billion to reconstruct?
Further, in paragraph seven, the U.S. agrees that as part of a final deal it will “terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, i.e., IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary.” This includes sanctions related not just to Iran’s nuclear program but also its support for terror, ballistic missiles and human rights violations — none of which Iran will have agreed to give up. Trump will not be able to do most of this unilaterally. U.N. sanctions can only be lifted by action of the U.N. Security Council, and many U.S. sanctions — especially primary sanctions that limit trade with and investment in Iran by Americans — can be removed only by Congress.
The U.S. pledges in paragraph two to “refrain from interfering in [Iran’s] internal affairs,” which effectively gives Iran carte blanche to commit whatever heinous acts it wants against protesters. Trump promised the Iranian people that “help is on its way.” Instead, this deal puts a U.S. seal of approval on their continued repression.
Trump says if Iran does not agree to a final deal, he will bomb again. This threat is itself a violation of paragraph one, which obligates him “not to initiate any war or any military operation … and to refrain from the threat or use of force” against Iran.
That is the bad news. Here is the good news: I don’t believe that Trump will let Iran get away with stonewalling him in the final negotiations. Vice President JD Vance said in a recent interview that “if they don’t comply with the deal, the straits are still open, we’ve still done incredible damage to their nuclear program, and we can get on with our lives as a country.” High-level sources in the White House have assured me that this is not Trump’s position. His position is: They’ll comply or they will get blown up. Trump will insist that Iran either hand over or permit the supervised destruction of all its fissile materials — not just its highly enriched uranium — or he will resume military operations. Iran believes that the U.S. midterm elections give it leverage. But once the midterms are over, that leverage disappears. Trump will be free to resume military action.
I have been clear about my view from the start: Trump would be better off ending the war without a deal, with a final 10-to-14-day bombing campaign that completes the destruction of Iran’s military capabilities — and then declaring victory, ending combat operations and launching a covert effort to arm the Iranian people and help them overthrow the regime in time. Because so long as the regime remains in power, the incredible military gains he has made will be temporary and reversible.
Right now, the deal Trump signed not only allows the regime to survive, it helps Iran get back on its feet. He had a historic opportunity to reshape the Middle East for a generation. This deal risks squandering all the gains he made on the battlefield. It’s a mistake. But fortunately it’s not the end of the story.
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Trump is showing the world, G7 leaders who’s the ‘boss’ and deserves respect for his deal-making
BY: Miranda Devine, The New York Post (June 17, 2026)
“I’m the boss,” President Trump joked when he arrived a bit late to a meeting with G7 leaders in France Wednesday.
He is.
That’s what his detractors forget.
America is “the boss” again, the colossus.
Iran doesn’t bully us.
Israel doesn’t instruct us.
Europe can sneer at Donald Trump all it likes, but it’s a supplicant.
China respects us.
Canada bows.
Trump understands power, and it rests easy on his shoulders.
He joked about it at the G7 in his relaxed American fashion, and European leaders now get it.
They laughed along, but they understood.
By the time he had emerged from a glittering dinner at Versailles to fly home, he had signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran that has the great and the good worked up into a symphony of hysterical catastrophizing.
While they hyperventilate, Trump casually shrugs and says it’s just a framework for negotiations toward a deal, and if it doesn’t work, he’ll just bomb Iran.
“If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, OK?” he told the media on the sidelines of the G7.
What the naysayers don’t understand is that the 14-point memorandum Trump signed is not a deal.
It’s a political document setting out terms agreed by both sides for negotiating a final deal that would result in Iran agreeing never to produce or procure nuclear weapons, with strict oversight.
In the meantime, the MOU gets the Strait of Hormuz open and gas prices down before the midterms, easing domestic political constraints on Trump.
The period of negotiation toward the hoped-for final deal is nominally 60 days, but senior administration officials agree it could take longer — in other words, until after the midterms.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 