Republicans have turned on Donald Trump over his plan to end the war with Iran, accusing him of making the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades”.
The U.S. released the 14-point interim agreement on Wednesday as Trump signed the documents in Versailles, France. The terms included stopping the conflict and reopening the vital shipping route, the Strait of Hormuz, but also financing Iran’s recovery with a $300bn fund and scrapping sanctions.
“Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” said Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy on Wednesday, referring to the former president Trump admires.
“Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future.
“Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 [US] service members were still alive. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped.
“This is the worst foreign policy blunder in decades,” he added, after the U.S. and Iran signed the interim memorandum of understanding.
Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under the first Trump administration, asked why Washington appeared to be offering to help rebuild Iran as part of the deal, with Trump still presenting the outcome as a victory.
“This regime chants death to America, murders our troops, and attempts to assassinate Americans on U.S. soil,” she wrote on X.
“They believe they have an obligation to destroy us. Now, we plan to unlock billions of dollars and lift sanctions, with the promise of even more money.”
Trump insisted on Wednesday that the U.S. would not invest in the $300bn fund and said he has not pressured Gulf states to contribute, following backlash over reports Washington could have signed up to help finance the Islamic Republic’s reconstruction.
Marc Thiessen, a Fox News contributor, said the idea of handing Iran $300bn was “a disaster” akin to offering Germany a Marshall Plan “while the Nazis were still in power”.
Texas senator Ted Cruz echoed the thought, telling the Daily Wire: “History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a bad idea.
“Under the terms of what’s been released, somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion will flow to the Ayatollah immediately before they make even a single nuclear concession.”
Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence also issued a rare criticism of his former boss, arguing the Memorandum of Understanding “does smack of the kind of appeasement that our administration rejected in the Obama-Iran nuclear deal”.
“I would urge the President to take a step back, continue the blockade and pursue a negotiated settlement that commits Iran to dismantling their nuclear program, dismantling this missile program, ends support for terrorist proxies and opens the strait.
“Failing that, we should let our Armed Forces finish the job on our terms,” he wrote on social media.
Trump told reporters in France at the end of the G7 summit Wednesday that it would be “unfair” if Iran were not allowed to keep “some” ballistic missiles.
When he first announced the U.S. was undertaking “major combat operations in Iran” on 28 February, he pointed to the regime’s continued development of “long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies”.
He said the U.S. was going to “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground”, adding: “It will be totally, again, obliterated.”
The deal also reportedly created some friction within the Trump administration. Axios reported this week that secretary of state Marco Rubio, who has been notably quiet on the Iran front in recent days, expressed concerns and raised questions about the MoU, along with defence secretary Pete Hegseth.
Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, boasted in comments to state TV that the deal had given them even more than they set out to achieve.
“Everything we sought to achieve through military action, we obtained several times over through negotiation; it was not even comparable,” he said.
Defending the deal, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told Axios: “Following the historic destruction of Iran’s military capabilities through the successful Operation Epic Fury, President Trump and his negotiating team have brokered an excellent, performance-based MOU that advances the interests of the United States by ending the fighting, reopening the Strait of Hormuz to significantly lower energy prices, and forcing Iran to commit to abandon its nuclear ambitions.”
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