Ryan Costello
The U.S. and Iran were at war for more than one hundred days, and it was an unmitigated disaster. Thousands of Iranians were killed and injured as tens of thousands of U.S. and Israeli bombs were dropped on the country, destroying and damaging 100,000 housing units along with schools, hospitals, bridges and other vital infrastructure. American soldiers needlessly lost their lives, military bases were decimated by Iranian missiles and drones and key munitions were expended to prevent far worse damage. The American people, who opposed the war from the start, were paying tens of billions of dollars out of their own pockets on higher gas prices and rising inflation even after the main fighting receded. A majority in Congress finally voted to end the war.
Now, there’s a deal to end the war. So why is Washington in an uproar over its terms, decrying it as everything from a surrender, to a betrayal, to the worst agreement ever negotiated?
.jpg){kind=link}
The reality is that the agreement has real promise for both Americans and Iranians alike, and is far better than continuing to pursue a war that never should have been waged in the first place and was hemorrhaging American power and sapping the purchasing power of the American public. An offer of serious sanctions relief was always going to be part of an end to the war when it became clear that the war was not going to be the cakewalk sold by its backers. Having made the wrong decision to enter the war, it is entirely reasonable for President Trump to use key U.S. leverage in the form of sanctions relief to secure its end and even get some key nuclear concessions along the way.
The core terms of the agreement are either mutually beneficial or have significant upside, even the ones being decried, denounced and misportrayed.
Opening the Strait of Hormuz and ending the U.S. naval blockade will mean gas prices in the U.S. will fall down after spiking considerably. The U.S. was likely facing an even worse crisis in the months to come after emergency measures to tap the nation’s strategic oil reserve kept gas prices below $5/gallon, but lowered the reserve to its lowest level in more than 40 years. Despite this, Americans have spent a whopping $60 billion of their own money on inflated gas prices alone, and are now contending with the biggest spike in inflation since the post-pandemic economy under President Biden. Continuing on in a fruitless war or in search of slightly better terms would mean more economic suffering here at home, which is not what the American people signed up for.
The economic relief made available for Iran is a genuine concession, yet it is one that will have benefits for the beleaguered people of Iran who suffered under hyperinflation triggered by “maximum pressure” since 2018 before bombs ripped apart their country. The net result of the sanctions campaign was the decimation of Iran’s middle class, with millions falling into poverty, even as the Islamic Republic became more repressive. This was a devastating blow to Iran’s organic, grassroots movement for change as countless Iranians had to focus on survival rather than the hard, uncertain path of organizing a sustainable movement for political change. The future they would face without some form of economic recovery is akin to what Iraqis faced after their country was devastated in the first Persian Gulf war, and would be just as hostile to political evolution.
The net result of releasing Iranian frozen assets and waiving oil sanctions as envisioned in the Memorandum of Understanding is likely to be an improving Iranian economy and a stabilization of the currency. Yet given the extent of the damage during the war, Iran is in a far deeper economic hole than what such relief can cover. This makes the major financing plan - envisioned to cover as much as $300 billion - so important. Even before the war, Iran needed major economic investment to repair its poor energy infrastructure, which led to regular power outages in the summer and energy conservation in the winter. Now add to these costs needed investments to rebuild the destruction of energy infrastructure, residences, schools and hospitals, and it is little surprise that this was a key concession to convince Iran to end the war. Providing such funding will put more pressure on the Iranian government to direct it to true needs, and may make Iran more interdependent - and less likely to attack - many of its neighbors.
For those in Washington, the key question to ask is whether this deal is better than the status quo ante. Given the abject failure of the war and the mounting costs on U.S. security, all with Israel escalating and risking another return to full-blown conflict in recent days, the clear answer is yes.
No deal was possible that didn’t factor in Iran’s own tumultuous politics. The negotiators of the deal - including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf - are being berated in hardliner rallies in Tehran for supposedly betraying the nation. In the eyes of the organizers and the participants, diplomacy is a path for fools who want to open the nation to attack, as was demonstrated in June 2025 and February of this year. For them, it has been hard Iranian power in the form of missiles and drones, not negotiations, that restored Iranian security after years of setbacks. These voices aren’t fringe cranks - they are a real constituency and a key base of the Islamic Republic’s remaining support.
Iranian decisionmakers did not have an incentive to back down until real sanctions relief was on the table. They figured, likely correctly, that Iran could outlast the U.S. in a war of attrition with its own national survival on the line, and demonstrated repeatedly that they had more missiles and drones to deploy. They got part of the sanctions relief they sought in the Memorandum of Understanding, and will likely only get more if they part with a significant part of their nuclear leverage in the negotiations to follow. This will likely entail retrieving and downblending the uranium stockpile that has been buried in bombed-out nuclear facilities around the country, restoring international inspections and making commitments to sharply limit its nuclear ambitions. Yet even a renewed commitment not to pursue nuclear weapons now or in the future under the new Supreme Leader is a notable development that can be built upon.
Time will tell if this memorandum can survive the caustic politics in Washington and Tehran that have accompanied any lessening of tensions between the U.S. and Iran, and ultimately deliver relief that is sorely needed. There is real risk baked into the pivot away from war, and the expected application of the ceasefire to Lebanon will be fiercely resisted by Israel and many Israel-aligned voices in the United States. Yet, what has been started is not a threat to American security, it is a threat to the Washington mindset that any U.S.-Iran outcome is ultimately zero-sum and that Iran’s gain is an American loss. The U.S. will benefit if our nation moves off the path of war with Iran. That will be accomplished by the memorandum and the steps that it entails.