Tired Trump Makes Pathetic Iran Deal Sales Pitch

President Trump is defending America’s tentative deal with Iran, claiming that the U.S. is not “investing any money.”

Trump told reporters at the G7 summit in France Tuesday morning that unlike with 2015 JCPOA agreement with Iran, the U.S. was not transferring cash to Iran, ignoring the fact that reports of the still-unpublished deal include Iranian access to $300 billion in reconstruction funds and releasing $25 billion in Iranian assets.

“We’re not investing any money. We have the right to if we want, but we’re not investing any money. We didn’t pay for it like Obama did. He paid billions of dollars, he paid $1.7 billion from an airplane, all green cash. I watched that, I couldn’t believe it,” Trump said. “But the one that’s happening that’s of note, frankly the only thing that matters to me is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

The JCPOA also included a commitment from Iran that it would not pursue a nuclear weapon. Plus, it included the U.S. lifting sanctions and sending Iran $1.7 billion to settle decades-old failed contracts between the two countries. In Trump’s new deal, the funding sources for the $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran are unclear, although Vice President JD Vance said Monday that they would come from the “Gulf coast coalition.”

Is that some combination of Persian Gulf countries and the U.S., or did Vance actually mean to refer to the Gulf Cooperation Council? If some of that money does come from American taxpayers, that’s not going to go over well with most of Congress, except a few of Trump’s most sycophantic supporters.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe and others within the Trump administration don’t think Iran is being serious about its promise not to develop or attain nuclear weapons, according to anonymous sources from Axios.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Ratcliffe each voiced their doubts regarding Iran’s commitment to the memorandum of understanding announced on Sunday, as each detailed “intel” that led them to doubt Iran’s side of the MOU agreement.

“The intelligence reflects that the Iranian intentions are not in line with their commitments under the deal,” one source told Axios.

While the full text of the deal has yet to be released, it is understood that the MOU requires that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days and refuse to develop nuclear weapons, while the U.S. must end its blockade of Iranian ships in the strait and Israel must withdraw from Lebanon. It’s important to note that the strait was already open before the war, and this commitment to no nukes from Iran was already in the original deal from 2015—a deal that Trump canceled in 2018.

It’s also not clear just how seriously Trump will take this “intel” from Rubio, Ratcliffe, and Hegseth, as his son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff are supportive of the MOU.

After nearly four grueling months, President Donald Trump is trying to end the war he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off in February—but neither Republicans nor Israeli officials are happy with the “Art of the Deal” guy’s dealmaking.

Trump gloated that a deal to end the war was complete on his 80th birthday on Sunday. “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” he wrote on Truth Social.

But despite the president’s insinuation that he had just created peace and opened a vital trade route with one social media post, the deal isn’t actually done. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Trump is actually hoping to open the Strait and finish his peace deal on Friday. Trump appropriately backtracked in comments to reporters. “Ships are starting to go out now, and on Friday it will be completely opened,” he said.

And Trump may still be promising a shorter timeline than he can actually achieve. Senior U.S. officials told reporters on Monday that it could take over two weeks for the strait to fully open. The officials also said the text of the deal between the U.S. and Iran would be released by Wednesday—Trump said he expected it to be released Friday.

But the inconsistent statements don’t end there. While the White House has been saying for weeks that Iran won’t get financial relief until it dismantles its nuclear capabilities, Trump said on Sunday that the nation will be allowed to export oil and open its ports immediately after the peace deal is signed. Iran has alleged the deal will give it a whopping $12 billion in relief before negotiations even begin, and that the U.S. has agreed to support reconstruction efforts worth $300 billion down the line. American officials have denied this.

Trump’s contradictory messaging, as well as his perceived reconciliation with Iran, has annoyed Netanyahu—one source told the Journal the Israeli leader is seeking a meeting with the president ASAP—and Republicans back home, who have criticized the president’s refusal to release the details of the peace deal he claims is complete.

“If you want people to stop speculating about the [Memorandum of Understanding], release the MOU,” Fox News host Mark Levin wrote on X. “Don’t brief a few anointed ones to control the narrative and expect everyone else to sit silently. That’s not how our country works.… Controlling the narrative can only last so long.”

The editors of National Review, a conservative magazine frequently critical of Trump, chimed in with an op-ed titled, “Release the Text of the Iran Deal,” lambasting the president for the disparities between his public statements and those from Iran.

“There is the possibility that Trump would return the U.S. to Obama’s failed Iran deal that Trump rightfully tore up in his first term, which would have all the makings of a humiliation after all of the president’s tough talk,” the piece reads.

No less than James Lindsay, an author and mathematician who made a name for himself posting far-right conspiracy theories on social media, called the agreement a “very bad deal built on a very fundamental misconception.”

The Trump administration doesn’t appear to have its story straight on the tentative peace deal between the U.S. and Iran.

President Trump said on Monday that “the deal is already signed and the strait is already partially opened,” referring to the Strait of Hormuz. “Ships are starting to go out now, and on Friday it will be completely opened.” But senior U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal at the same time that it could take over two weeks for normal shipping traffic to resume in the strait. On top of that, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry said that a “maritime service fee” would still be charged for ships traversing the strait.

Those same U.S. officials also said that the full text of the deal would be released within two days, contradicting Trump, who said he expected the full text of the deal to be released by Friday.

A major sticking point for Iran, the end of Israeli strikes on Lebanon, is being disputed by Israeli officials. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday that the Israel Defense Forces wouldn’t withdraw from southern Lebanon, and far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that “Israel is not subordinate to the United States, and we are an independent and sovereign state.”

“We must not withdraw from any territory that our fighters have occupied and cleared of terrorist infrastructure,” Ben-Gvir added. Trump already criticized Israel on Sunday for airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut “on a special day when we are so close to a Peace Deal with Iran.”

Trump and Vice President JD Vance digitally signed the tentative deal on Sunday, and a formal signing ceremony is scheduled to take place in Switzerland on Friday. But no U.S. allies in Europe, or the G7, have seen the full text, nor has Israel or anyone in Congress. Their objections could still hamstring the agreement, especially if Trump has made unacceptable concessions.

There can only be one Dan Sullivan.

A top Alaskan election official ruled Monday that a man sharing the same name as Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan is ineligible to participate in the Last Frontier State’s Senate primary in August.

In a letter addressed to the challenging Sullivan, Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher wrote that his declaration of candidacy was “not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot’s fairness or neutrality.”

Beecher said she had reached that conclusion based on evidence that the 69-year-old retired teacher had “never used” the moniker Dan Sullivan and had similarly “never before professed” a Republican Party affiliation.

“Indeed, I conclude that the preponderance of the evidence is that you chose this new nickname and party affiliation because that name and party affiliation happen to be the name and party affiliation of another candidate in the race,” Beecher wrote.

She added that he had 30 days to appeal the decision but noted that ballots for the August primary would be printed on June 28, a timeline that will likely shut him out of the race altogether.

The new Sullivan filed to run as a Republican in the Senate primary last month, days before the filing deadline. State Republicans have since argued that Sullivan worked with Democrats to cook up the scheme, accusing him of attempting to snatch votes from the two-term senator in a flagrant bid to aid Mary Peltola, a former U.S. representative and the leading Democrat on the ballot.

In a social media post Sunday, Sullivan said he believed he “met the qualification” to run.

“I entered this race because I am unhappy with the 12 year record of the current Senator and I feel we need a change,” he wrote. “It’s that simple.”