I came, I blinked, I surrendered
The aftermath of the US-Iran deal.
Operation Epic Fury started like veni, vidi, vici — I came, I saw, I conquered: rapid and successful. I still believe it was necessary and overdue. Iran was close to developing nuclear weapons and had sworn to wipe Israel off the map. It had been fomenting terrorism, fueling regional instability, and attempting to assassinate US political leaders on US soil.
Some will argue that the 2025-26 bombing raids became necessary only because Trump exited the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) in 2018. Under the 2015 JCPOA, monitoring by and large seemed to work and had slowed Iran’s nuclear progress. The JCPOA, however, was time-bound, and at its expiration in 2025 Iran could have swiftly built a nuclear bomb. The JCPOA also did nothing to stop Iran from building large missiles stockpiles, or from using terrorist proxies across the region. In my view, these limits would have made military intervention inevitable anyway — but when the US unilaterally abandoned the agreement, it gave Iran a good excuse to stop complying and accelerate its nuclear program.
We can disagree on whether we should have started this conflict. But I think we can agree this is not how we should have ended it.
Surrender
With the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding, the US front-loads major economic concessions, getting nothing in return, and postpones all difficult issues, notably on the nuclear program. It throws Israel under the bus and bolsters Iran’s strategic position. This is not a deal — it’s a thinly disguised surrender.
Comparing this new agreement to the JCPOA is like comparing apples and oranges. The JCPOA was a detailed non-proliferation agreement, replete with technical specifications. The MOU punts the nuclear issue forward, and technical thoroughness is not this administration’s strong point. Still, today’s apples look a lot worse than yesterday’s oranges: it seems quite likely that Iran will have greater freedom to pursue its nuclear ambitions than under the JCPOA, though it will need quite some time to rebuild the program, given the destruction of the enrichment facilities, the elimination of leading scientists, and the fact that the enriched uranium might be hard to recover.
Operation Epic Fury had brought a much better outcome within reach. The degradation of Iran’s economic infrastructure had made the regime more fragile. But now the US has pledged to provide it with the financial resources it needs — together with a major gain of prestige.
And with a new weapon. Pierre Lellouche, former French Secretary of State for Foreign Trade and a sharp geopolitical mind, notes that this MOU leaves Iran with a second nuclear weapon: the Strait of Hormuz. Iran now knows that it can blackmail the global economy at will.
Emboldened
Islamist and communist regimes assume they will ultimately prevail because the West is too soft. We’ve just proven them right.
This is by far the biggest damage. The US — and the West at large — has shown a very limited tolerance for pain. Everyone in the West bears responsibility. The Europeans’ protestations that “this is not our war” were cowardly. But the US’s capitulation is even more cowardly given that it had suffered very limited economic damage. It didn’t help that the US proved itself again deeply divided, with both sides looking at the conflict as a way to score partisan points: Trump boasted that he was correcting his predecessors’ mistakes; the Democratic opposition all but cheered for Iran.
Iran will now be emboldened. Islamist and communist regimes assume they will ultimately prevail because the West is too soft. We’ve just proven them right. Warren Zevon’s song about boxing captures it well:
Some have the speed, and the right combinations. If you can’t take the punches, it don’t mean a thing.
Iran will continue to pursue the same aims: dominate the region, harass the US, destroy Israel. The only way to stop it would have been to crush it. We did not have the stomach for it.
Where does this leave us?
The Middle East is the biggest loser. The modernization path taken by the UAE and Saudi Arabia appears much more fragile. Iran has shown it does not appreciate anyone charting a less fundamentalist approach to Islam; if it reasserts its role as regional hegemon, it will be a severe setback for Middle East stability and growth.
Europe and Asia, heavily dependent on energy imports, get a reprieve as oil prices fall. If they’re smart, they will use it to bolster and diversify their energy supplies. I’m not convinced, however, that this will accelerate progress towards renewables. Iran can be appeased much more easily than the capricious gods of climate change.
The temptation is to conclude that Iran is an outright winner, and oil is the new enriched uranium — but that would be too simplistic.
This episode carries two important lessons for the global economy: It is yet another reminder that we operate in a highly complex and vulnerable ecosystem, where shocks travel fast and wide in unexpected ways. But this complex ecosystem is also developing new degrees of resilience. The International Energy Agency called this “the worst energy crisis in history”, but looking at global growth you wouldn’t know it. The US economy kept powering ahead, and the rest of the world muddled through successfully, thanks to re-routing of Middle-East oil supplies through pipelines rather than ships; increased supply by some producers; and tapping of strategic reserves (especially by China), all in a context of greater energy efficiency. And we still had in reserve a potential ramp-up in US shale extraction. We caved because we were slightly uncomfortable standing up, not because we’d been brought to our knees.
We should also not forget that when the Iran threat crossed a critical threshold, the US and Israel pulverized its defenses and leadership in the blink of an eye. The fact that we did not capitalize on it doesn’t negate that fearsome demonstration of intelligence and military superiority. Iran and China will need to bear this in mind.
Still, this MOU is a sign of US weakness, and US weakness makes for a more volatile, perilous world. The US proved shortsighted by starting this conflict without the strength to see it through. Those cheering this end to the conflict are equally shortsighted.
I think the most important and consequential argument in your post is how weak the West has proven. And not only with Iran... there's Russia and, especially so, China, which has observed from the quasi-sidelines the quasi-zero-tolerance-for-pain that the US has shown and the zero political engagement that Europe has proved capable of (once again). And how easy it is to pit Europe and the US against each other. For me, this Iran affair proves not only the weakness of the West as a political coalition, as a geopolitical entity.... but also two other matters: real power in the West (the US) is in businesses and politicians will always do what businesses want; and the decline of a whole idea of high politics, diplomacy, balance of powers... Something new is coming.
PS: It's astounding to see European powers, for example the Meloni-Macron 'reconciliation', still acting as if they matter and as if they are an entity to account for and to count on. Europe is a mere vassal, terrorised by the return of fascism and Nazism, which their incompetence has revived. The US should think carefully about whether to leave it on its own, once and for all (not that sticking to it would change outcomes). I suggest you listen to "You'll be back": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5JAjAR_AjY.
Everything has been clear since the end of the nineteenth century.
"the elimination of leading scientists"..... Marco, they were not "eliminated", they were assassinated. Thanks.