How many times did I say, over the past, let’s call it five weeks, that the IRGC should wake up and smell the “covfefe,” where that meant recognize that all Donald Trump requires to settle any given dispute is an MOU?

Quite a few. I said that quite a few times. Verbatim, even, on the MOU point.

Substantially all of Trump’s 2025 trade “deals” were unenforceable, non-binding, one-pagers which even the administration often referred to as memoranda rather than covenants.

The great irony of Donald Trump, self-styled master of deals, is that he possesses neither the discipline nor the patience (complimentary attributes) necessary to engage in serious dealmaking.

I dare say Trump’s never personally closed a real deal in his life, at least not if that means directly participating, from beginning to end, in the often arduous, always painstaking, process of hammering out the specifics of a formal, legally-binding contract.

By now, even the most neophytic geopolitical observer can recognize Trump’s waning interest in the Iran conflict. It’s not that he wants to “wash his hands” of the whole thing — he’s quite proud of this adventure. Rather, his short attention span wants to leave well enough alone and move on, the same way he did after absconding with Nicolas Maduro and declaring a de facto US colony under Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela.

For the IRGC, that’s an opportunity: All they have to do is reiterate Iran’s long-standing contention that the country’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes (that’ll be the same lie it’s always been, but no one besides Benjamin Netanyahu cares anymore), pay lip service to a handful of vacuous “terms” couched in language so nonspecific as to render them meaningless and agree to open the Strait.

That’s all it would take to send Trump’s “armada” on its merry way and get the ball rolling on sanctions relief. In short order, Iran would be flooded with oil dollars, which the Guards would be free to skim as they see fit with no interference from any clerics.

Well, guess what? According to Axios, the generals might’ve finally come around to that reality.

“The White House believes it’s getting close to an agreement with Iran to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations,” a pair of US officials told Barak Ravid. Two additional sources privy to the talks verified that account.

The agreement would be — you guessed it — “a one-page memorandum of understanding” with 14 bullet points including a commitment from Iran to stop enriching uranium, US sanctions relief, phased release of “billions” in frozen Iranian funds and a mutual deescalation in the Strait, which would be reopened to commercial maritime traffic.

Although the length of the enrichment moratorium was still a point of contention, officials said it could be set at 12 years initially. Iran would also forswear a nuclear bomb and, perhaps, promise not to rebuild subterranean nuclear installations.

This could all come to naught if the IRGC insists on recalcitrance, and even if the MOU does in fact materialize, it wouldn’t be in any sense definitive. And indeed, that’s been my point all along: If you’re the Guards, what’s the downside? If you’re not being asked to commit earnestly to anything, and if there’s no compliance regime, then “resistance” is just grandstanding.

The Guards’ posturing would be understandable if there was a credible threat of domestic upheaval (you don’t want to show weakness if there’s an organized internal resistance movement), or if peacocking wasn’t costing them hundreds of millions in lost oil revenue per day, but there isn’t and it is.

In the Axios piece, Ravid went on to say that “many of the terms would be contingent on a final agreement being reached, leaving the possibility of renewed war or an extended limbo in which the hot war has stopped but nothing is truly resolved.” So, a lot like Trump’s trade war(s).

If your question is, “How is this a better outcome for America than the JCPOA which, while flawed, was everything a Trump one-pager isn’t in terms of rigor, enforceability and seriousness of intent?”, I’m afraid the answer’s precisely what you suspect.