"Only stupid people think I lost the war" [View all]

Last edited Thu Jun 18, 2026, 08:07 AM - Edit history (1)

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/us/politics/trump-iran-deal-nuclear-program-strait.html

Trump Demanded Iran’s ‘Unconditional Surrender.’ He Got a Surprise Instead.
While the Iranians suffered substantial losses in the war, they emerged from a confrontation with the world’s most powerful military having proved they can use economic chaos as a weapon.
By David E. Sanger
June 17, 2026

It was less than 15 weeks ago when President Trump, at the height of his bravado about how the war with Iran would end, declared “there will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”

When the text of the deal intended to wind down the conflict was finally released on Wednesday, read aloud paragraph by paragraph by a senior administration official who stopped to defend each section, it read nothing like a surrender document. Instead, the Iranians emerged from a confrontation with the world’s most powerful military having not only survived, but with much to celebrate.

It starts with the resumption of Tehran’s ability to reap billions of dollars in oil sales, lifting pressure on the struggling regime even as negotiators prepare to begin haggling over a far more lengthy and critical document: the one Mr. Trump insisted in an interview on Sunday will arrest Iran’s nuclear program for the next 15 or 20 years.

For a president who prizes leverage above all else, that decision is just another mystery of the war. But the wording of the “Memorandum of Understanding” also suggests that, over time, Iran may negotiate some permanent way to exercise sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. That seems in contradiction to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s declarations just a few weeks ago that anything other than the kind of free passage through the strait that the world knew before the war was “not acceptable” and “cannot happen.”

And the memorandum, signed on Wednesday evening by Iran’s president and Mr. Trump, describes a pathway in which Iran could begin receiving billions of dollars in assets that have been frozen for years. Mr. Trump insists the money will only be released in return for “good behavior.” But it is essentially the same concession that Barack Obama made 11 years ago, and that Mr. Trump has savaged ever since.

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