President Trump might have thought that negotiating an interim diplomatic understanding with Iran was going to be the hard part. But selling the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding to the public is proving to be just as laborious.
Less than 24 hours after the document was released, virtually nobody is particularly satisfied with it. Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, normally deferential or wholly supportive of Trump’s agenda across-the-board, are already expressing nervousness at the terms and demanding a full briefing from the administration about how the White House plans on executing them. Iran hawks who didn’t want diplomacy with Iran at all are irate that Tehran is effectively given sanctions relief on the front-end, before it has to do much of anything. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is worried about how Iran will use the cash. And the Gulf Arab states, which never thought the war was a good idea in the first place and unsuccessfully lobbied the Trump administration to double down on diplomacy instead, are upset that Iran’s missile program isn’t addressed at all.
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