How To Cope With The Memorandum Of Misunderstanding Through Hard Power Analysis
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the penetrating bombs
Are you tired yet? I too am tired. Getting Iran to ‘yes’ is exhausting. The whole world is coping with the apparent outcome of ceasefire negotiations. I said it would be exhausting and I hate being right.
On the internet, ‘cope’ refers to excuses, rationalizations, and comforting lies to deal with an undesirable situation, especially a grievous loss. Iran has lost both military and economic power since 28 February, and many Iranians are still coming to terms with the reality that Iran must come to terms.
The Farsi phrase for ‘cope’ is حریف شدن (harif shodan), with two other phrases, کنار آمدن (kenār āmadan, ‘to come to terms with something’) and از عهده برآمدن (az ohde bar āmadan, ‘to manage or handle something’) being useful equivalents.
In Iran, avoiding loss of face is paramount. The Farsi term for the humiliation of defeat is aberu (آبرو, ‘water of the face’). To experience aberu is catastrophic to the individual, their family, and their larger group identity. Shi’a Islam intensifies this cultural taboo against the tears of defeat.
This Friday, Iranians must nevertheless shake hands with the Great Satan on a deal to make a deal. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has therefore become a new battleground of informational warfare. Today, apologists for the regime and enemies of the regime are united in casting the MOU as a total sellout to Iran. Everyone seems dissatisfied with Trump, who seems eminently satisfied.
Conservatives wonder why the the full text of the MOU was not released immediately. The short answer is Pakistan. Vice President J.D. Vance also says Qatar was worried about “sensitivities in the Arab and Muslim world.” This is a polite way of saying that fundamentalist Shi’as will cry at some point (‘water of the face’) before “the deal” is finished.
The longer answer is flexibility. Trump does not want to be pinned down by language when he has power. Everyone is trying to pin down what will happen next according to their pet theory of Trump. All predictions assume the impossibility of honest dealing with Persian rug salesmen. Being clear-eyed, because I watched the Iran-Contra hearings, I genuinely identify and empathize with this point of view.
Hard power is not magic
For an example of a legitimate complaint amid the din of confusion and disappointment, I cannot improve on this framing by Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment and Georgetown.
The Memorandum of Misunderstanding between the US and Iran:
The US believes Iran will restore the Strait of Hormuz as a secure international waterway, make significant nuclear concessions, and potentially abandon its revolutionary ideology--including its opposition to the US and Israel and support for regional proxies--in exchange for major investment from the same Gulf countries that have just been on the receiving end of thousands of Iranian missiles and drones.
The Islamic Republic of Iran believes it will continue to control the Strait of Hormuz, receive tens of billions of dollars in upfront sanctions relief and unfrozen assets, make no concessions on missiles, drones, or proxies, while potentially offering to suspend uranium enrichment for the period of time they need to reconstitute their bombed nuclear facilities.
Let us entertain this argument: the Trump administration is making one set of assumptions while Iran is making another set of assumptions, and the agreement is loose enough to entertain both interpretations by both sides. In that case, hard power will determine the outcome.
There is no neutral judge calling balls and strikes, here. There is only power.
Despite earnest puffing-up, the Islamic Republic has not gained any military advantage in the last 72 hours. Tehran will not have a new advantage by Friday, or even November.
Perhaps the best example of where this line of argument breaks down is an anonymous “intelligence source” telling reporters that the United States “actually gave Iran de facto control over the strait, a weapon more powerful than any nuclear weapon.”
Set aside the hyperbole (“nuclear weapon”). What does this “de facto control” consist of, exactly, that Iran did not already claim when they were blockading the strait, like, today?
Did the US Navy disappear on Monday? Did American forces suddenly lose their capabilities to shut down the Strait of Hormuz to Iranian traffic again, at will, whenever the president pleases?
The answer of course is no. Not a bit. This is magical thinking. CENTCOM has in fact clarified they are not dropping the blockade or lowering their level of readiness until after Friday, at the earliest. Hard power is not magic. It does not vanish. Trump is no illusionist.
Nor has the American intelligence picture of Iran suddenly evaporated this week. A “senior administration official” tells Daily Wire reporter Mary Margaret Olahan that “hourly, if not daily interactions between sides” will ensure “good behavior”. There will be a constant dialogue with Iran. There will be no laboring under delusions, this person says. Emphasis added:
"We come in with the full expectation that they will lie and they will cheat," the official says. "So it's not just coming to agreements. It's also coming up with the mechanism for how we're going to both monitor and enforce those agreements. And again, we have a lot of concessions that we can make for them and we told them we're willing to, but we're not going to do it for symbolic things.
Only “verifiable” compliance will be rewarded, according to the White House. I take this seriously rather than literally. President Trump retains the power to do whatever he wants to Iran whenever he wants to do it. This basic condition has not changed. Misunderstandings on this point from the Iranian side will likely result in renewed kinetic action, followed by renewed pressure, just as we have seen throughout this entire conflict. I am not suggesting anything new, here.
Donald Trump brags about the resolution of Space Force cameras in orbit: “If somebody walks in and he's got a badge with him name on it, like, ‘Mohammad something’ — which is about a 50/50 guess. ‘Mohammad something.’ They can tell the name, they can give you a serial number, we can see things you wouldn’t believe”, enabling success.
More than a brag, it is a communication to Iran: We are watching every move you make.
All-domain superiority matters
Nothing in the agreement says that American firepower will never get used in the next 60 days. I do not think we have seen the last flurry of IRGC targets being hit, or Trumpian threats to destroy things. Iran seems to want to give him the excuse. The IRGC has launched drones at ships in the strait every day since the MOU was electronically signed. CENTCOM keeps shooting them down.
“I don’t want to bomb Iran again, but might have to”, Trump reportedly said today. I take him both seriously and literally on this statement. This is not how a man about to surrender his negotiating objectives talks.
The details on each discrete issue are TBD. Lack of transparency is a condition of the Persian rug bazaar. I am waiting to see what horses come before which carts. Uranium is probably easier than Lebanon. Iran wants Trump to negotiate on behalf of Israel, but he has made it clear he will not. Whatever happens now, Iran will not be able build, or re-build, a military advantage in the next 60 days.
According to the hawks, Trump is supposed to use his own military power infinitely, right now. American forces should use up the other half of their interceptor stocks and land on Kharg Island. Trump is not supposed to apply military force with any kind of restraint or strategy. Instead, he is supposed to bomb the regime until Iran turns into Libya.
Doves say that the war should never have happened in the first place. What Trump was supposed to do was give Iran the money first, and then expect good behavior, and then be very disappointed, and then give Iran more money. That is what everyone has become used to, but this president never pays his own money up front for anything. He leverages other people’s money, in this case the Arabs’ money.
‘Be normal’
Trump is offering Iran the chance to be treated like a normal country if they act like a normal country. The Arab princes have in fact done a ~relatively good job of liberalizing their societies and building civilizations, which is what makes Trump a natural partner for them. Arabs who live in the oil states enjoy a kind of normal that is lacking in societies around them that are ruled by militant Islamists, such as Iran. They have the most to lose from military confrontation. Of course their influence is stamped on the MOU. It has to be.
According to both the hawks and the doves, Iran is too abnormal to act normally. Perhaps they are right. Iran has spent its oil fortunes on proxy wars to make life miserable in Arab states instead of building a society where someone might want to live. The ‘market style’ of the Persian rug bazaar is certainly not transparent, either, which is always an advantage for the regime.
Or perhaps Trump’s negotiating partners in Iran must learn, maybe are learning, how to be normal, now, because Trump punishes Iran with military power whenever they don’t act as expected. The learning starts with reciprocity: give me the thing, to get the thing. This will take time to instill as a habit.
But any new ‘normal’ will take time to achieve in any case. While very large capacity (VLC) tankers were lining up out of the far east yesterday in hope or expectation of a reopening, traffic has not returned to the strait. Hormuz will not reach prewar traffic levels very soon, nor will Iran suddenly export a flood of oil in the next minute, because the insurance market has still not come back — and that is in no small part due to Trump’s deliberate policy.
Reopening the strait was never a priority for Trump. Declaring a win was his priority. Despite his pronouncements, this condition has not changed, so no, the strait will not suddenly reopen and restore business as usual, this Friday. An MOU is not a peace deal that leaves the strait open. It is a deal to open peace negotiations over opening the strait. The strait is not actually open according to either combatant, yet.
Altogether, US forces have disabled 9 non-compliant vessels and redirected more than 135 vessels away from Iran since 28 February. This was a massive economic blow to the regime that can be repeated any time.
Iran has used smuggling tactics to evade sanctions and the blockade. Meanwhile, the US Navy has facilitated similar operations to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. The sea is a lawless place, ultimately ruled by power, not regulatory regimes. The United States is better at this form of warfare, and capable of doing it for the next 60 days, at least.
Iran was not capable of fighting like this at scale anymore. That is how we got here. The idea that American hard power left no impression on the regime is ludicrous. One of Vance’s most important tasks on Friday will be to impress upon the Iranian side that American hard power will be back whenever the IRGC feels the need to screw around and find out, again.
For the Plan™ to work, this must be the new regulatory regime for the regime: pain and punishment for misbehavior, versus reward for good behavior.
The MOU is not an end state
I maintain that Vance going to the MOU signing in Switzerland is a key indicator that we are still far from the end of this. He is the grinder, whereas Marco Rubio is the closer in the Trump administration. Rubio has disappeared this week, leading to rumors and speculations about infighting over the MOU. I expect that if — if there is a peace deal in 60 days, or later, then Rubio will be involved in closing that deal.
White House sources say the consensus for a deal (to make a series of deals) grew out of the president’s priorities. Trump wanted the deal (to make a series of deals) to happen while he still holds all the economic and military leverage, before politics at home can intervene.
Criticizing Trump, Clifford May writes that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has made it clear that “if a diplomatic outcome is more important to Washington than to his regime, his regime will end up on top”. Given the constitutional conditions of the American presidency, diplomatic outcomes will always be preferable to regime change. This is a longstanding strategic calculation in Tehran.
The White House on the other hand set out its goals for the Middle East in their 2025 National Security Strategy. Trump wants to make the region “a source and destination of international investment, and in industries well beyond oil and gas — including nuclear energy, AI, and defense technologies.” Put simply, diplomatic solutions were the only kind that could get America out of the business of patrolling the world’s gas station, and that diplomacy would require hard power.
We can also work with Middle East partners to advance other economic interests, from securing supply chains to bolstering opportunities to develop friendly and open markets in other parts of the world such as Africa.
America will always have core interests in ensuring that Gulf energy supplies do not fall into the hands of an outright enemy, that the Strait of Hormuz remain open, that the Red Sea remain navigable, that the region not be an incubator or exporter of terror against American interests or the American homeland, and that Israel remain secure. We can and must address this threat ideologically and militarily without decades of fruitless “nation-building” wars.
Americans are exhausted with Middle East wars. Iran is the wellspring of Middle East wars. Getting Iran to stop their wars was always going to be an exhausting process, and it was always going to involve some amount of warfighting, because Iran is not a normal country in many important ways. Some important changes had to come from outside.
This process has not suddenly become nonviolent. It has become personal, an affair of princes. Donald Trump’s transactional instincts lean towards mercantilism, an economy ordered by sovereigns. A re-ordering of sovereigns is taking place. Trump wants the G7 to re-impose oil sanctions on Russia. He wants Benjamin Netanyahu to use a “softer touch” in Lebanon. “We are the big partner, and he is the very small partner”, Trump reportedly said today. Court favor is relative to his needs at the time.
This is the way someone talks when he has what he wants. Trump is bragging about how many trillions of dollars of Qatari investment capital will now immigrate to investment banks in the United States. He is getting what he wants. This is not the end, it is the beginning of the end, and he is already moving on.
I never wore a MAGA hat. I have no faith in any person or The Plan. As an American, however, I can only hope that this process works the way Trump personally seems to think it will work. Everyone else seems to think it will work out the way Iran wants, but he has all the personal power to say ‘no’ to them.
If 107 days of kinetic and economic warfare convinced even the hardliners in the IRGC to say ‘yes’ to this MOU, then how long will it take to make Iran behave like a normal country? That is the correct question, now.
The first step in coping with the Memorandum of Understanding is to admit that you are powerless over the process, that it will take months, at least, to complete, and that hard power will be available to President Trump throughout the process. He has proven willing to use it and he has been measured in his use.
The second step is to admit you are powerless over the propaganda and spin that assails the MOU from every side. Disappointment is general because satisfaction is personal. The execution will also be personalized. We must all come to terms with the new normal.
The MOU is not a final peace, so it cannot actually serve as a surrender by either side. It is a loose framework in which the credible threat of continued American hard power remains the decisive variable. Iran and the United States are operating under deliberately divergent interpretations of the MOU. The final agreement, whatever it is, will be settled by power, and Trump’s personal will, rather than text.