Trump’s memorandum – President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran’s new hardline leadership that critics say abandons the original war aims: toppling the Islamic Republic, ending its nuclear program, removing enriched uranium, and rolling back its missile
By the time President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran on Wednesday, the promise that had carried him into office—avoid regime change wars—was already being tested by the decision he made in February.
Trump joined Israel in launching a surprise war on Iran that began with the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For two decades. an influential band of foreign policy thinkers. politicians. and activists in Washington had pressed for regime change in Iran. and Trump—who ran for president on a false promise of avoiding regime change wars—seemed to be delivering on their long-held objective.
But the new memorandum, signed with Iran’s new, more hardline leadership, has thrown those ambitions into disarray.
Trump, Israel, and neocons tied to the push for regime change wanted a result that went far beyond ending conflict. They sought to topple the Islamic Republic. permanently end Iran’s nuclear program. remove all enriched uranium from the country. end Iran’s ballistic missile program. and debilitate Iran’s military capacities so that it could not threaten Israel. Trump also repeatedly insisted he would only accept unconditional surrender.
None of those aims was achieved.
Instead, the memorandum keeps Tehran under its new hardline leadership. It returns Iran’s nuclear program to an even less stringent set of limits than the status quo ante under the deal reached by President Barack Obama in 2015—a deal Trump withdrew from in 2018. Iran’s position is affirmed again: it won’t develop nuclear weapons.
The memorandum goes further than critics say they expected on the economic and maritime fronts. It expressly allows Iran to control and extract payments for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. a change described as a massive setback for free movement of goods on the seas. It also keeps Iran’s ballistic missile program in place.
On top of that, the agreement provides immediate sanctions relief for oil sales, with further relief promised later. It also raises the prospect of unfreezing Iranian assets and includes $300 billion in financing to rebuild the country.
For supporters of a harsher outcome, that package reads like the opposite of surrender—financial reprieve rather than strategic disarmament.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, a longtime conservative war backer, called the deal a “debacle.” Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen—described here as a former George W. Bush speechwriter and a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute—called it a “complete disaster.”
Mark Dubowitz, head of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and an advocate of Iran regime change, wrote in the New York Post that the memorandum hands the “terrorist regime” the one victory it could never have achieved on the battlefield: “Financial reprieve.”
In Israel, the memorandum has landed with equal force. One TV analyst compared it to a “diplomatic Oct. 7,” referencing the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed nearly 1,200 people and sparked Israel’s expansionist wars in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The parallel. for the analyst. is the sense of betrayal that can follow a decision when the promised endgame doesn’t arrive.
Supporters of the regime-change project have been aiming at Iran for at least 20 years, and the current clash is the culmination of that arc—stretching from the Bush era to the years when Trump’s predecessor tried a different approach.
The push for regime change is traced here back to George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech. through the declaration that Obama’s 2015 nuclear negotiations—designed to limit Iran’s nuclear program—were equivalent to treason. The account extends to how neocons sought only one thing: overthrowing the Islamic Republic “by any means necessary.”.
Campaign memories are part of the anger. In 2008, GOP presidential nominee John McCain—a longtime war hawk and neocon ally—jokingly sang “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb…” Iran, to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.” The record of desire, Dubowitz has said, did not stop at pressure.
In 2012. Dubowitz told Bloomberg that if the United States pursued tougher sanctions against Iran. the goal should be regime change rather than merely stopping proliferation. In 2018, Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President George W. Bush. said. “The more unstable we can help Iran to become. the better it is to actually secure peace if we can get rid of that theological regime one day.”.
John Bolton—former Trump national security advisor turned Trump enemy—wrote a New York Times op-ed amid the 2015 nuclear deal negotiations with the headline “To Stop Iran’s Bomb. Bomb Iran.” Bolton argued then that “Israel alone can do what’s necessary. ” and said such action should be paired with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition aimed at regime change in Tehran.
The core claim from critics is that the strategy didn’t deliver.
Massive pressure through sanctions didn’t work. Neither did bombing Iran’s nuclear sites. Neither did supporting internal dissent. And in the account laid out here, the war itself backfired—despite significant material damage caused by U.S. and Israeli forces, including the killing of thousands of innocent civilians and “more than 100 little girls attending school.”.
The counterpoint is that while the campaign caused destruction. it also allowed Iran to demonstrate it could impose crippling economic damage on the world by seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz. The result. in this telling. was a surge in prices for oil. gas. fertilizer. helium. and aluminum. while using low-cost drones to cause chaos in Gulf Arab states.
So the fury around Wednesday’s memorandum is not just about the text itself. It’s about what it undoes—or fails to undo—after a war that critics say was fought to produce a specific strategic outcome.
As the memorandum keeps Iran’s nuclear limits in a form critics describe as less restrictive than before the Obama-era deal. preserves the ballistic missile program. allows Iran to control and extract payments tied to the Strait of Hormuz. and provides immediate sanctions relief for oil sales alongside promised further relief. potential unfreezing of assets. and $300 billion in financing for rebuilding. supporters of the original regime-change project say the battlefield result they sought has been replaced by a political and financial reset they never asked for.
Their complaint has become harder to miss: after two decades of arguing that force and pressure could bring the endgame they wanted, they now see the project’s most decisive moment—Trump’s decision-making—moving in a direction they describe as capitulation.
For opponents of the war, the memorandum is yet another example that the attempt to engineer regime change through escalating conflict has produced not the hoped-for collapse of Iran’s power, but a prolonged stalemate with costs that still echo in real lives.
United States politics Trump Iran memorandum of understanding regime change nuclear program Strait of Hormuz ballistic missiles sanctions relief Israel conservative critics
So he signed a deal… meaning we’re all just supposed to trust Iran now?
I’m confused because I thought the whole point was no more regime change wars but then it says he undercut war aims? Like which is it, are we fighting them or not. Also Iran has hardline leadership so how is this “peace” lol.
If Trump is ending enriched uranium and missile stuff, that sounds good on paper. But then it mentions an assassination of Khamenei which… wait, was that from a different administration? My timeline might be off, but didn’t we already do the whole regime change thing and now we’re pretending it didn’t happen?
This is just neocons getting embarrassed. First it’s “avoid regime change,” then suddenly surprise war, then a memo, and now everyone’s saying it abandons the original aims like toppling Iran?? Doesn’t make sense. I feel like nobody actually knows what the end goal is, just headlines and talking points.