The mixed martial arts fights at President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday party showcased the power of dominance and unequivocal victories.

The White House event beneath stormy skies formed an extraordinary backdrop to an announcement by Trump that he’d clinched a memorandum of understanding to end the Iran war.

But any parallels Trump was drawing with his own kinetic brand of politics went only so far, since the Middle East stalemate between the US superpower and its weaker rival lacks the clarity of knockout blows landed in the octagon on the South Lawn.

The understanding would halt fighting for 60 days, release Iran’s stranglehold on oil shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz and end the US naval blockade. It’s due to come into force after a formal signing ceremony in Switzerland on Friday.

Vice President JD Vance told Fox News the agreement contains an assurance that Iran will never produce, procure or buy a nuclear weapon. And he told ABC News on Monday that the memo had already been signed electronically.

The news fuels hopes that an energy crisis caused by the war, which had devastating global economic consequences, may dissipate and ease pressure on consumers.

Any agreement to end conflict — especially one that rocked the global economy, killed 13 US service members, an unknown number of Iranian civilians and revived Lebanon’s grim lot of being caught in other peoples’ wars — is a welcome development.

But a dearth of details and the terms that are known left Trump facing three immediate questions that will dictate the future strategic balance of the Middle East; the war’s place in history; and how all of this affects Trump’s presidential legacy:

► Do the opening of the strait and the end of the blockade signal only a return to the pre-war status quo, since the critical nuclear question is still undecided?

► Is Trump any nearer to securing a nuclear deal superior to the internationally backed and monitored pact negotiated by the Obama administration, with which Iran was complying until Trump tore it up in his first term?

► And most fundamentally, beyond a downgrading of Iran’s conventional military capacity, did a war that a majority of Americans didn’t want and that triggered huge global hardship achieve any results that justify its cost?

Longer-term implications also loom — should the memo hold — including over how Iran will use its demonstrated leverage over the strait in the future and whether it will seek to monetize that leverage.

The failure of the US and Israel, after killing Iran’s previous Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to destroy the Iranian regime — which defines itself by hostility to the US and wants to eradicate the Jewish state — also seems to augur future tensions that could restart the war.

Inside Iran, if wartime conditions ease, attention will turn to whether the remnant regime has been critically weakened by the war and the US blockade or has been bolstered by its survival and is primed for a new era of repression.

More broadly, the war’s aftermath will show whether Trump’s bid to impose military might was effective or whether it led to another US humbling in the Middle East that will fuel perceptions, especially in China, that American power is in decline.

It was significant that, after weeks of Trump touting apparently imminent peace deals, Sunday’s memo was also recognized by the Islamic Republic.

“Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me,” Trump declared on social media, in an apparent attempt to whip up a narrative of triumph to fit a celebratory mood on his birthday.

Vance added, “what the president has really set us to do is to certainly eliminate the nuclear threat of Iran. That’s done.”

That’s a big claim. But if the president and vice president’s optimism is borne out by future negotiations and a final deal, Trump will be entitled to credit for solving a showdown with Iran that has bedeviled presidents for nearly 50 years.

Such historic validation, however, is distant for now.

The most critical issue — the one that led to the war — is the future of Iran’s nuclear program and its stocks of highly enriched uranium. That question is left by the memo for what are likely to be highly complex and tense talks. Iran has often said it doesn’t seek nuclear weapons, so a fresh assurance that it will not do so doesn’t amount to much.

Vance’s remarks on Monday make clear that the credibility of the memo rests on such undertakings — at least until the talks start. Iran appears intent on using its nuclear program to secure significant financial concessions from the US that ultimately may end up bolstering the revolutionary regime.

But the vice president described this US message to Iran: “If you guys negotiate in good faith and you make that long-term commitment not to develop nuclear weapons, then we are going to make sure that your country is successful,” he told CNBC.

This is not a stance likely to appeal to Israel, since as long as Iran is ruled by a radical Islamic regime, Israel will consider itself under mortal threat.

There was little mention from the US side about curtailing Iran’s support for terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah or restraining its missile programs and efforts to restock an arsenal depleted by war. Both are huge issues for Israel and, left unresolved, could tear the understanding apart.

Gaps are already forming between the US and Iran on memo’s meaning

Differing perceptions of the meaning of the memo are already emerging. The US insists any release of Iranian assets or lifting of sanctions will be tightly tied to Iranian compliance. Tehran said the 60-day clock will only start if Washington starts disbursing billions of dollars of its frozen funds. Such is the mistrust between the US and Iran, and so high are the tensions between Israel and Tehran, that it will be a major achievement if the agreement lasts until a deal is signed.

“This is essentially a temporary pause in what has been a hot war between America and Iran. And we’re going to go back to being in a cold war state with Iran,” said CNN global affairs analyst Karim Sadjadpour.

“But it does not resolve the conflict. The thorniest issues have been deferred for future negotiations, and I’m not terribly optimistic that they’re going to be resolved in a 60-day time frame,” Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told CNN’s Omar Jimenez.

The mutual suspicion that hampered negotiations and could overshadow future talks was obvious on Sunday. Iran delayed an announcement until the clock ticked past midnight Tehran time, a US official said. The sequencing allowed Iran to avoid marking Trump’s birthday, but allowed the president to claim a timely gift.

The memo will boost market optimism that a period of intense economic disruption will ease, especially if scores of oil tankers trapped inside the Persian Gulf for months can begin to move. The energy shock caused by the war has sent gasoline prices soaring worldwide and helped juice rising inflation, worsening an affordability crunch facing millions of Americans.

But analysts have warned that, while oil prices may begin to fall, it will take months to repair the damage to supply lines and the economic fallout. Iran’s vow to impose tolls on vessels transiting the strait is also a factor.

“You can say that Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz or that the US blockade did, but it was really the insurance companies,” Tom Kloza, chief energy analyst for Gulf Oil, told CNN. “Until they’re very confident that things are going to transit and exit that strait, they may not choose to insure some of these incredibly huge vessels.”

Politically, Trump needs things to move fast. If oil prices fall, gasoline prices could tumble, too, slaking some heat from inflation. The president’s failure to make good on his 2024 campaign vow to cut high prices for groceries and housing has slammed his political standing with crucial slices of the electorate. GOP leaders, who had long feared losing control of the House in this November’s midterms, now face a potentially difficult battle for Senate control, too.

Republicans claimed Trump was taken out of context last week when he said, “I love the inflation,” but the remark was politically careless however it was meant, and cemented an impression of a president indifferent to Americans’ financial struggles.

But it’s debatable whether Trump will secure a significant political benefit for ending a war that polls show most Americans opposed and that he struggled to explain. This makes the success of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program and the capacity of the memo agreed on Sunday even more crucial to his ability to demonstrate Americans got something for their pain.

But Tehran has shown that it understands the political pressure facing Trump at home throughout the conflict — which began in February — and it has a long history of stringing along negotiations.

Democrats will try to tie Trump’s often erratic public messaging over Iran, and his reneging on his pledge to start no new wars abroad, to the economic anxiety that is oppressive for many American families.

Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN that ending a war that had such a devastating impact on the world was a “huge positive.” But he argued that the war “accomplished nothing for the US. … It’s back right where we were on February 27, and only in a worse shape because we’re fighting over opening the Strait of Hormuz. It really points out that the folly of having started this war in the first place.”

The reality that Trump is celebrating an agreement that in its first stipulations would merely reopen the Strait of Hormuz — which was open before the war — undercut White House attempts to spin up a great victory for Trump.

And the administration’s underestimation of Iran’s willingness to close the strait, which every expert and former foreign policy official in Washington knew was all but certain, raises questions about a governing culture in which Trump’s risky hunches are rarely challenged.

History may conclude differently if the coming weeks of talks with Iran deliver a verifiable end to its nuclear ambitions. But Sunday’s agreement on its own does not yet end Trump’s search for an unequivocal win and an exit ramp from his war.

This story has been updated with additional information.