I suppose most readers got the memo. The memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran, I mean. The document Donald Trump variously described as a historic victory for the United States.

To read the MOU is to be struck by the conspicuous absence of clearly ascertainable “wins” for a nation which, by the accounting of its own military, spent nearly $30 billion waging war in March and April alone. (A war budgeting expert from Harvard, Linda Bilmes, contends the all-in cost of the war with Iran will “certainly” reach $1 trillion.)

But it’s important to take a step back and assess this situation in a comprehensive way, uncolored by the (understandable) temptation to judge all Trump undertakings as abject failures.

The cost of intermittent, open conflict with the US and Israel for Iran since the drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani and Mahdi al-Muhandis in January of 2020 is incalculable. The personnel losses across the IRGC broadly, the Quds specifically, Hezbollah, the PMF in Iraq and Hamas, are existential.

Soleimani’s regional network-building project, which at one point counted a trio of client states in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, is dead, just like the general himself and the other three men whose faces would be carved into a “Resistance” Mount Rushmore, if such a monument existed: Al-Muhandis, Hassan Nasrallah and, of course, Ali Khamenei.

Also gone: The bulk of Iran’s conventional military capabilities. I doubt seriously that the regular Iranian armed forces could fight a traditional war right now on a head-up basis. In any such conflict, they’d be Ukraine, which is to say compelled to resort to asymmetric warfare and what I’ll call “modern guerrilla” tactics to preserve their sovereignty.

So, if the question’s whether Iran “won,” the answer’s me laughing. Because no. Just no. Of course they didn’t “win.” Iran and its proxies have incurred grievous losses on a regular basis for over half a dozen years. The regularity of those losses picked up considerably since October 7, 2023, crescendoing in the events of the past 12 months, a period during which Israel and the US set about delivering the coup de grâce.

But — and if you go back and read my voluminous coverage of the lead-up to Trump’s 2026 intervention, you’ll discover that I harped on this point obsessively — an Iranian loss in any iteration of “gloves-off” conflict with the US and Israel was a foregone conclusion. That means success or failure wouldn’t be measured by the number of bones broken if Pete Hegseth commenced to kicking a severely injured nation while it was down, with its proxy network crumbled.

Rather, success would be measured by the extent to which burning through US taxpayer dollars to fund strikes on Iranian military targets and strategic infrastructure, as well as defend Israel and the Gulf monarchies from retaliatory drone and missile fire, resulted in the unequivocal achievement of easy-to-understand goals, preferably without rekindling US inflation.

Ironically, the Trump administration seemed to understand that, even if they had a difficult time articulating any actual goals (they’re not a bunch known for eloquence and candor). What they didn’t understand, seemingly at all, is that the goals they had were unrealistic.

For example, it seems clear now that The White House thought popular discontent in Iran was sufficiently close to critical mass that killing Khamenei would be a tipping point. Failing that, Trump thought he could literally replicate the Venezuela setup by finding an actual Delcy figure. Some reports described a convoluted plan to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for example.

The truth is, Trump had what he needed almost immediately after assassinating Khamenei: An IRGC military junta. That’s a terrible outcome for the Iranian people, but Trump could’ve done a lot with it. Just not what he did in Venezuela. The Guards were never going to be docile and compliant. Someone should’ve told Trump that so he could’ve calibrated his expectations accordingly.

Also, Trump’s fixation on the physical removal of Iran’s enriched uranium to sate his appetite for theater was, and remains, an impediment to a lasting resolution. Even if he could’ve convinced the IRGC to participate in spectacle for the sake of it — i.e., “Look, I’m leavin’, but I gotta get a photo of somebody hauling off a mound of dirt so I can post it on my social media site” — the logistics of that are impossible on a short window. Frankly, I’ve yet to hear anyone explain how such an operation and transfer would work in the (extremely) unlikely event everyone on all sides agreed to it.

Now here we are four months later with an MOU that reads, in places, like an American surrender, and in others like the groundwork for a war reparations contract. Consider these three provisions, for example:

• The United States undertakes, together with its regional partners, to create a comprehensive plan agreed upon by both parties for the rehabilitation and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran, While ensuring financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.
• The United States commits to ending, on a schedule to be agreed upon as part of the final agreement, all types of sanctions currently facing the Islamic Republic of Iran, including resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and all unilateral US sanctions, both primary and secondary.
• The United States undertakes that, in light of the progress of negotiations towards a final agreement, frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be released and made fully available.

Again: You’d be forgiven for asking how those terms can possibly be squared with the notion that America won the war.

If you know the background story — if you can pen an encyclopedic account of the losses incurred by Iran and its network since 2020, and particularly since late-2023, and if you account for the severe degradation of Iran’s air defenses and military industrial capacity over the past several months, to say nothing of its decimated conventional fighting capabilities — you understand this MOU for what it actually is, namely a settlement that acknowledges a dead end.

Israel can always find something else to bomb and someone else to kill. For America’s purposes, there’s just not much left to gain from perpetuating this melee.

Critics of the Trump administration — a camp to which I generally belong — will call the events of the past four months an unmitigated disaster. That’s not entirely true. The notion that Iran’s “stronger” or has “a better hand” now than they did, say, in 2022, is patently absurd.

To see that, ask yourself the following question: Is Iran better off operationally, as a purposeful state actor pursuing a set of strategic regional goals, for having its proxies decimated, its military ranks hollowed out, its dictator assassinated and its infrastructure and nuclear program bombed?

I doubt it, even if, in the process, the Guards learned that in fact, they can close and exact tolls from the world’s most important maritime energy chokepoint.

(And by the way, how long do you think it’s going to be before the Gulf monarchies resolve to re-route a majority of their energy exports to avoid that chokepoint? You might say that’s a logistical impossibility, and maybe you’d be right. The UAE begs to differ, though. “We’re moving toward having zero Hormuz dependency and that’s regardless of whether it’s open or not,” a high-ranking Emirati official told Bloomberg this week.)

You could argue, I suppose, that this was all worth it for Iran to secure sanctions relief and free up tens of billions in frozen assets. But I think that’s a ludicrous stretch. And $300 billion in US-facilitated FDI isn’t going to turn Tehran into Doha, not overnight and, let’s face it, not ever.

The Guards will make all sorts of claims in the days, weeks and months ahead about how the nation’s sacrifices were worth it to prove something both about the unshakable resolve of the people and the eternal nature of the Revolution, proper noun.

I can assure you such bluster will ring every bit as hollow to most everyday Iranians as Trump’s jingoistic propaganda sounds to two-thirds of the American public.