On the menu today: This will be the last Jim-written Morning Jolt until Monday, June 22. Next week you’ll be in the capable hands of my colleagues. To hear President Trump tell it, the Iranians have agreed to all American demands, the war is over, and he has achieved peace for our time. Unsurprisingly, no one else in the Middle East is saying the same thing, and the description of the deal from Iranian state media — never a reliable narrator — is that the U.S. has effectively given the Iranians everything they wanted, and a pony. Finally, the president says the Iranians have told him they can’t believe how well they’re getting covered in American newspapers. Read on.

President Trump Announces That with Iran, He’s Secured Peace for Our Time

At 1:28 p.m., the president announced, via Truth Social:

Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening. Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others. The Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized — Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.

Last night, Trump spoke at a “tele-rally” for Burt Jones, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia. During the call, Trump said, “I don’t know if you heard, but we ended the war with Iran today and they have agreed never to have a nuclear weapon, something that we, we insisted on. That was a whole purpose.”

As of this writing, no government of any country that the president mentioned has confirmed that “discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved.”

Iran International reported, “Fars News, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, dismissed speculation about an imminent agreement with Washington. ‘Any speculation about a signing in Switzerland or a face-to-face meeting is nothing more than a misunderstanding of the proposals and American wishful thinking.’”

Separately, Mehr News, a news organization run by the Iranian regime, published a report indicating the draft includes the following provisions:

1. A permanent and immediate halt to fighting on all fronts, including Lebanon.

2. A US commitment not to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and to respect the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

3. The full lifting of the naval blockade within 30 days.

4. A U.S. commitment to withdraw its forces from areas surrounding Iran.

5. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz within 30 days under arrangements set by Iran.

6. The suspension of sanctions on Iran’s oil sales, petrochemical products and derivatives, along with full Iranian access to the resulting financial resources.

7. A requirement for the United States and its allies to present plans for Iran’s reconstruction worth at least $300 billion.

8. A 60-day negotiating period aimed at reaching a final agreement covering nuclear issues and the complete removal of US primary and secondary sanctions, as well as United Nations Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors resolutions.

9. A reiteration of Iran’s commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty not to produce nuclear weapons.

10. During the negotiation period, the United States would not deploy additional forces to the region or impose new sanctions.

11. The release of $24 billion in blocked Iranian funds during the 60-day negotiation period, with half of that amount to be made available to Iran before negotiations begin.

12. The establishment of a monitoring mechanism to implement the agreement.

13. Approval of the final agreement through a United Nations Security Council resolution.

14. Final negotiations would not begin before the release of half of Iran’s blocked funds, the suspension of Iran’s oil sanctions and the lifting of the naval blockade. The final agreement would focus exclusively on the fate of enriched material and enrichment activities, sanctions relief and plans to rebuild Iran’s economy. Discussions regarding Iran’s missile program and support for resistance groups would be definitively excluded from the agenda.

If accurate — and it’s coming from the Iranians, through one of their state-run news agencies, so take it with copious grains of salt — points two, three, four, five, six, seven, ten, eleven, and 14 would represent major concessions by the U.S. government and its allies. Add them all up, and it would amount to something in the ballpark of an American surrender in the region.

On Thursday morning, during one of his freewheeling phone interviews with Fox and Friends, President Trump said of the Iranians, “They’ve been ripping off our presidents and other countries for years. They’ve been — they played Obama for a fool. The JCPOA is the worst, one of the worst deals I’ve ever seen — other than NAFTA, the NAFTA trade deal, which was maybe the worst deal ever made. But the JCPOA was a road to a nuclear weapon. Mine is a road to no nuclear weapon.”

The Obama administration’s Iran deal, as bad as it was, did not include an agreement to withdraw U.S. forces from “areas surrounding Iran” (boy, does that vague wording sound like a disagreement waiting to happen), or restrictions on the U.S. deploying forces in the region.

“Even though Israel is not a party to the memorandum of understanding, the Prime Minister expressed his appreciation for President Trump’s commitment that the final agreement at the conclusion of negotiations will include the removal of enriched material, the dismantling of enrichment infrastructure, limits on missile production, and the cessation of Iran’s support for its terrorist proxies in the region,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a released statement.

As of this writing, the Qatari foreign ministry has not issued a statement about the claimed agreement.

(According to the Washington Post, the Qataris were always interested in negotiating their own separate, secret side-deal with Iran: “Seeking to protect its economic crown jewel, these officials said, Qatar approached Tehran at the start of the war to present a mutually beneficial arrangement: Iran would refrain from hitting Ras Laffan, and Qatar would halt gas production unilaterally — a move that would send energy prices soaring and put economic pressure on the United States and Israel to shorten the war.” Iran did not take the deal, and Iran struck the Ras Laffan gas complex March 18.)

When President Trump says, “They have agreed never to have a nuclear weapon,” note that Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, pledging to never attempt to acquire or build a nuclear weapon, and has violated it repeatedly. As I noted in April, Iranian officials publicly brag about how easy it is to fool international inspectors, and how gullible their enemies are.

• In 2004, Iran’s so-called “moderate” former president, Hassan Rouhani, boasted that he had duped European negotiators while converting yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride at Iran’s Uranium Conversion Facility at Isfahan.
• In 2012, Fereydoon Abbasi, a nuclear scientist who was the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, declared in a newspaper interview that “we presented false information sometimes in order to protect our nuclear position and our achievements, as there is no other choice but to mislead foreign intelligence.” He was also quoted as saying that “sometimes we present a weakness that we do not in fact really have, and sometimes we appear to have power without having it.”
• In January 2016, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “Just yesterday, the foreign minister (of Iran) reported to me that the calandria [core] of the plutonium nuclear reactor is now out and in the next hours it will be filled with concrete and destroyed.” The image of the reactor filled with cement was (rather amateurishly) photoshopped. In January 2019, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization chief said in a television interview that the calandria core was not filled with cement.
• In late February, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pledged during a TV appearance, “We have limited the range of our missiles below 2,000 kilometers intentionally,” a few weeks before Iran fired a ballistic missile nearly 4,000 kilometers.

When you write things that are critical of the president, his fans will often insist, “Don’t pay attention to what he says, pay attention to what he does.” But the president’s words matter. Last night, the president answered the phone call of New York Post reporter Caitlin Doornbos and declared, “It’s pretty much all wrapped up.”

During that Fox and Friends interview, Trump lamented, “Iran is very good at publicity, but they’re not good at fighting. I took a look and, I must tell you, they can’t believe the press they’re getting. They can’t even believe it. And they told me, they said, it’s amazing how well we’re doing in the papers, we’re not doing so well.”

The president did not specify which Iranian official had been reviewing American newspapers and told him that they can’t believe how good their publicity and coverage is.

ADDENDUM: The August issue of the print magazine is now online and on its way to your mailboxes and newsstands, featuring Ramesh’s essay on where “freedom conservatives” and “national conservatives” can, and can’t, find common ground, and the long, detailed, sauna-describing report on my travels in Eastern Europe and Russia’s hybrid warfare against NATO.