Ever since releasing a memorandum of understanding last week that appeared heavily slanted toward Iran, the Trump administration has kept claiming Tehran agreed to other major concessions in ongoing negotiations.
The problem is that none of them appeared in the MOU — and Iran keeps denying them.
And given the Trump administration’s own demonstrated credibility problems, it’s not at all clear whom to trust.
The nuclear inspections
The biggest example came Tuesday morning, when President Donald Trump made the massive claim that Iran has already agreed to major nuclear inspections in perpetuity.
“… Iran has fully and completely agreed to highest level Nuclear inspections long into the future (Infinity!!!),” he wrote on Truth Social. “This will insure (sic) ‘Nuclear Honesty.’ If they did not agree to this, there would be no further negotiations!”
Similarly, Vice President JD Vance at a press conference Monday in Switzerland cited a “major milestone.” He said Iran had agreed to admit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
But Iran has rejected the idea there had been any significant movement on this front.
It instead said that its work with the IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, would continue “under the current procedures.”
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Iran had not agreed to let inspectors examine its heavily damaged nuclear sites and that it had made “no new commitments.”
Indeed, despite Vance’s claim of a major advance, the IAEA already has limited access to Iran. So merely being allowed in isn’t, in and of itself, a major step forward.
Fuller inspections were also a major piece of the Obama administration’s Iran deal that Trump pulled out of.
But Trump didn’t back down Tuesday afternoon while on his way to an event in Pennsylvania. “They’re wrong, they’re wrong,” he told reporters of the Iranians. “We have it down: 100% inspections. And if they were right, I’d cancel the meetings right now.”
Using unfrozen assets on US goods
The Trump administration has also claimed this week that the many billions in Iranian assets that would be unfrozen as part of a peace deal would be used on American products.
It has made this claim as it attempts to combat criticisms that Iran could ijuuse the money, along with at least $300 billion in reconstruction funds from Gulf countries, to rebuild its military or fund terrorism. Even many conservatives have complained about the extensive financial concessions to Iran in the agreement.
Vance said Monday that lead negotiator Jared Kushner had devised a plan under which the spending of the money would be approved by the US and Qatar. He said that “then the money would actually go to buy American soy, American corn and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people.”
“If Iranian assets are ever unfrozen, they are going to make American farmers richer and help feed the Iranian people,” Vance said.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz said later Monday on Fox News that “they’re going to buy American crops.”
Trump added Tuesday morning in his social media post that the money would be “controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States.”
But when Fox’s Laura Ingraham pressed Waltz on how ironclad the agreement was, Waltz suggested it was still being worked out. He said that “how we control” the money is “being negotiated right now as we speak.”
And Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ali Bahreini, on Tuesday rejected the idea.
“Iran is the only country to decide what to do with its assets,” Bahreini said. He added, “I reject any claim about that if there would be any role for any other country to have an influence on those decisions or on those processes.”
A toll-free Strait of Hormuz
The MOU says that vessels will be allowed to transit the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has gained great leverage by closing, “with no charge, for 60 days only.”
What happens after that, the two sides can’t agree.
Trump said last week at the G7 summit in France that the strait would also be “toll-free” beyond the 60 days.
“Somebody said, oh, it’s toll-free for – no, no, its toll-free, period,” Trump said last Tuesday. “When it opens permanently, it’ll be toll-free.”
He added Monday that “we have an agreement where it’s going to be open, and it’s toll-free. We had a little argument on that; it’s toll-free.”
Trump previously made a similar promise in an interview with The New York Times’s David Sanger, saying the strait would be “permanently toll-free.”
But Iran has not said that. In fact, it has previewed a plan under which it would charge “fees” for certain services. And The New York Times reported Tuesday morning that it has already set this plan in motion.
The mere fact that the MOU only makes the strait free of charge for 60 days would suggest this is a real sticking point.
And the dispute is apparently still serious enough — despite Trump’s assurances — that this weekend he threatened to “take over” the strait and have the United States charge for passage.
Whom to believe?
The answer to that question is usually a pretty easy one — especially when dealing with authoritarian regimes like Iran.
But Trump’s tendency to make wild and false claims makes it more complicated.
This is a president, after all, who suggested more than three dozen times over more than two months that an Iran deal was right around the corner. He said more than two months ago that Iran had already “agreed to everything” he was demanding — when it clearly hadn’t.
Similarly, Trump and his administration claimed last year’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites had “obliterated” its nuclear program. Trump went so far as to say the strikes had also obliterated the “future nuclear capability of Iran.”
But CNN and others reported that early US intelligence assessments did not back up these claims. And sure enough, eight months later, Trump was launching a war by citing, yet again, the supposedly imminent nuclear threat that Iran posed.
Put plainly: The Trump administration has major credibility problems, too.
And that also applies to the known terms of the current negotiations.
For instance, before the MOU was released last week, Trump was asked if it included “a $300 billion fund funded by Gulf allies.” He said that was “false.” But sure enough, the MOU contains such a reconstruction fund.
Vance and the administration also broadly dismissed claims about the MOU from Iranian media as “propaganda.” A White House spokesman also said a draft version of the MOU published by CNN last week did “not reflect the language of the actual MOU.”
But many of the Iranian claims wound up being echoed in the actual MOU. And the final document was similar to the draft version CNN published, with some language differences.
It’s also worth asking, if some of these concessions to the US side are so ironclad and were able to be agreed to so quickly, why didn’t they appear in the MOU? Why was that document so heavily weighted toward the Iranians?
The Trump administration has suggested that’s because of the delicate politics involved on Iran’s side of the negotiations — and even that there are some secret handshake agreements that weren’t enumerated in the document.
But the politics are delicate in the United States right now, too. And the administration’s just-trust-us approach might not cut it.