The US-Iran Deal Raises More Questions

On June 17, 2026, the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) meant to formally end the war between them. Officials on both sides called it historic. But a close reading of the document — and of what has happened in the days since the signing — tells a more complicated story. Beneath the ceasefire language sits a set of trade-offs that look better for Tehran than for almost anyone else involved, including ordinary Iranians.

Five threads in particular are worth pulling on: what the deal actually says about Iran’s nuclear program, who really controls the Strait of Hormuz now, who is expected to pay for Iran’s reconstruction, what happens to the unresolved fight between Israel and Hezbollah, and whether the regime that signed this deal is stronger or weaker than the one that started the war.

A Nuclear Promise Already Broken

The memorandum has Iran reaffirm, again, that it will not build a nuclear weapon. That promise is not new. Iran made similar commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal and has long cited a religious decree against weapons of mass destruction, all while enriching uranium far beyond what any civilian power program requires. More relevant to this moment: after the 2025 strikes that hit Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, Tehran did not abandon the program — it rebuilt enough of it to be back at the negotiating table over the same issue within a year. This new agreement, according to CTP-ISW’s analysis of the leaked text, freezes the program where it currently sits rather than rolling it back, and pushes any real dismantlement into a “final agreement” that does not exist yet. A freeze backed by a promise is not the same as a constraint backed by verification.

Rewriting the Rules at Hormuz

Roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, it is an international strait — every nation’s ships have a right to pass through it without paying anyone for the privilege. Iran spent the war treating that rule as negotiable, restricting and threatening shipping it didn’t approve. The new memorandum doesn’t reassert the old standard; it postpones the fight. Iran agrees to a fee-free window for 60 days, then is free to negotiate a permanent administration scheme with Oman. Iranian officials have already said, in public — according to CTP-ISW’s reporting — that they intend to resume charging vessels once the window closes. Letting one state negotiate the terms of its own exception to a global maritime law is not the same as restoring that law.

Gulf States Funding Their Own Attacker

Among the memorandum’s most striking commitments is a reconstruction package worth at least $300 billion, to be developed by the US “with regional partners.” In practice, that almost certainly means the Gulf Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain. These are largely the same governments whose territory absorbed Iranian missile and drone strikes earlier in the war, when Tehran retaliated against the US-Israeli campaign by hitting air bases and naval facilities across the Gulf. Asking the states that were attacked to help fund the attacker’s rebuilding is, at best, an unusual definition of fairness. The realist case for it — regional stability, oil markets, fear of a third round — is real. It doesn’t make the arrangement look any less lopsided on paper.

A Stronger Regime, Weaker Safeguards

Two loose threads run through the whole agreement. First, Israel never signed it and has continued operating against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon — exactly the kind of activity Iran is already citing as grounds to suspend its own compliance. The clause meant to end the war “on all fronts” was contested before the ink was two days old. Second, independent analysts tracking the war, including the Institute for the Study of War, have concluded that Iran exits this conflict in a stronger strategic position than it entered it. The same agreement that unlocks fast economic relief for Tehran contains no provision addressing how the regime treats its own population — a mutual non-interference clause guarantees the opposite. A government with more cash, an intact nuclear program, and no outside pressure on its domestic conduct is not obviously a safer government to live under.

Ending the shooting matters, and nobody should dismiss that. But a ceasefire is only as good as the terms underneath it, and these terms reward ambiguity over clarity at almost every turn. The deal may stop the war. Whether it makes the region — or Iran itself — safer is a separate question, and on the evidence so far, the honest answer is: not yet.

Photo: Melika Hazrati via Pexels