By admin 
- Prominent Republican hawks fear President Donald Trump gave away too much as he sought an agreement with Iran.
- Conservative voices from Lindsey Graham to Mark Levin are questioning the administration’s announced framework, including why it won’t release the text.
- Critics worry Trump might essentially be reassembling the Obama nuclear agreement he once tore up and derided as too weak.
When President Donald Trump launched the Iran war in February, he risked alienating the non-interventionist base he had spent a decade cultivating.
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As he now tries to extract himself from the highly unpopular war, it looks increasingly like he might inflame the other side of his base — the foreign policy hawks with whom he suddenly found himself in-league.
While there are few hard details of what’s actually in the memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with Iran, those hawks are openly worrying that Trump gave away too much in the name of trying to end the war. They’ve made no secret that they fear Trump signing on to a nuclear agreement like the one struck by the Obama administration in 2015, which they (and Trump himself) derided as too weak for more than a decade.
There were similar reactions after Trump announced a hastily assembled ceasefire in early April, and then when the contours of a potential agreement began to take shape in late May.
But criticisms are ramping up now that an initial agreement appears to be solidifying.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina got the ball rolling on Sunday, in what seemed a rather passive-aggressive post on X.
While praising the effort to reach an initial deal, he said he was “somewhat concerned” that Iran’s version of the details didn’t match the Trump administration’s.
He also emphasized that Congress must vote on such an agreement. And perhaps most strikingly, he called it “imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance and his negotiating partners, be part of the process in presenting the final deal to Congress.”
Vance, notably, has a much more dovish foreign policy than Graham. And Trump allies who don’t like what he is doing will often blame those around Trump rather than the president personally.
Fox News host Mark Levin has also been an influential backer of the war.
On Sunday, he seemed to take exception after Trump decried Israel for targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon amid peace negotiations. Since then, he’s repeatedly wondered aloud why the Trump administration won’t release the text.
“I have asked for days, why can’t we, the people, see the damn MOU?” he said Sunday, adding: “Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like this. If it is a great outcome for peace, then release it.”
(The White House gave conflicting signals on this Monday. Administration officials said the text would be released within 24-48 hours, while Trump said it would be after it’s signed on Friday.)
Levin echoed the same point on Monday, before tangling with a Trump political adviser who accused him of undermining the president.
The editors of the conservative National Review were also curious why the details hadn’t been forthcoming.
They called it “discouraging” that Trump had indicated Iran would still be allowed to enrich uranium for non-military uses. And they criticized early indicators that the agreement would not rein in Iran’s ballistic missile program.
“All told, 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,” the editors wrote, “which would have all the makings of a humiliation after all of the president’s tough talk.”
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Another recent critic of the peace talks, former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was more muted but clearly cautious on Monday.
“I pray that any settlement preserves those sacrifices and secures the interests of the American people,” he said on X.
Others, meanwhile, appeared quite concerned about some new details that are emerging.
After Vance suggested that Iranian leaders had expressed regret about their 47 years of hostility towards the United States, conservative commentator Erick Erickson responded, “FFS” — an acronym that means “for f*ck’s sake.”
(Some prominent Trump allies have cautioned the administration against taking the things Iran says at face value or believing it would abide by the terms of any written agreements.)
“Trump has surrendered to Iran,” Erickson added at another point. “Those who kill Americans love this deal.”
Similarly, Marc Thiessen, the former George W. Bush aide whom Semafor reported Trump has leaned on for advice, warned Monday on Fox News that Trump’s emerging framework looks a lot like Obama’s.
“I’m anxious to see what the details of the deal are and what gets negotiated, but I’m concerned,” Thiessen said.
And after Vance appeared to confirm Monday morning that Iran could have access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund, albeit one not funded with US money, Thiessen called such a sum a “disaster.”
He compared it to offering “the Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany while the Nazis were still in power.”
And all of this is coming even before negotiators even get the meddlesome particulars of what’s actually in the MOU. The devil is always in the details, and there is always something to pick apart.
But it’s been clear for a while that these hawks worried about the direction in which Trump was headed. It was clear that Trump didn’t have the desire to go back to war and really wanted to get the whole thing over with. So that empowered Iran to hold out for a better deal.
It’s hard to be too definitive about what’s in the agreement until officials release text. But right now, Trump is facing an extremely difficult sales job which leaves very few people happy.
And if the narrative on the right winds up being that he just reassembled the Obama nuclear deal that he tore up nearly a decade ago, the war could be an even bigger political disaster for him than it already was.
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