Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.The details of Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal with Iran have now been released, and it’s exactly what we expected. Trump got nothing of any significance. And a surprising group of people are now admitting this—Trump’s MAGA allies. Some Fox News figures and right-wing media figures are taking apart the deal in surprisingly harsh terms. Meanwhile, Trump let out a few tirades today attacking Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, even though all indications thus far are that Trump has fared substantially worse than Obama did.We think the big story right now is this: everything we know right at this moment strongly suggests that the next stage of the negotiations with Iran will be even worse for Trump.We’re working through all of it with Sina Toossi, an Iran expert at the Center for International Policy. Sina, good to have you on.Sina Toossi: Hey, Greg, thanks so much for having me on.Sargent: So both sides have released the agreement. Here’s the short version. Strait of Hormuz reopened with no charge for passage, but that’s only for 60 days. U.S. blockade lifted—a victory for Iran. Iran also gets relief from sanctions. Iran reaffirms it won’t procure or develop nuclear weapons, which it has already said in many other instances. The U.S. is working with regional partners to open up $300 billion in reconstruction aid to Iran. Sina, what did the United States get here? And what do you make of this deal?Toossi: Yeah, so I think the most important thing is that this is not a nuclear deal. We’re already seeing comparisons to the Obama-era nuclear deal, the 2015 deal. This makes no nuclear obligations of Iran. That most critical issue has been deferred to this 60-day period of negotiations. And what this deal really is, is just a framework deal outlining the ostensible end of this war.And as part of this deal, the most important thing really is the U.S. lifting its blockade on Iran and Iran lifting its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz—this problem that did not exist before the war. But as part of that, Iran is actually getting upfront concessions. Most significantly, these oil waivers to sell oil during this period of negotiations, as well as access to its own frozen money that’s been frozen due to sanctions, as well as a region-wide ceasefire, including Lebanon. And these are major upfront concessions that Iran is now receiving as a result of this war.Sargent: Just to boil this down in really simple terms, basically what happened here is that Trump said, we’re opening up $300 billion in reconstruction aid to Iran, provided you meet a bunch of conditions later, but we are opening it up—in order to undo the mistake I made in launching this war in the first place and closing the Strait of Hormuz and bringing the global economy to its knees. Is that what happened?Toossi: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it straight up says that there’s this $300 billion investment fund. It’s worth being skeptical about whether that will actually materialize. But what Trump has agreed to right now is, yeah, on paper, such an investment fund is being created. And for a deal that was already on the table in the past that he left—and then he launched his dumb war and only created this big quagmire.Sargent: So let’s talk about the nuclear component for a second. As you pointed out, what it does is defer the discussion. But in the deal, there’s some text, not much. Iran agrees not to procure or develop nukes, but that is what it has always said. It said the same thing in the 2015 Obama nuclear deal. The deal now requires Iran to dilute its enriched material but doesn’t require it to ship the material out of the country—and that was in Obama’s deal, right? And so now the details on the constraints on Iran’s nuclear program have to be negotiated. Is that about the size of it? And what’s your take on all that?Toossi: Yeah, I think if this does lead to a nuclear deal, by all accounts—and this text also reinforces this—it’s going to look something similar to what Obama got. And what was actually on the table before this war, because Trump himself in his second term was engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran. And in the middle of them, they launched surprise attacks on Iran, both last June and again in February.And in this February track, we actually had this British national security advisor who was there. And he himself said that the deal was basically at hand. And the Omani intermediary at this time said that it was at hand too. But yeah, basically the contours of this deal, much like the JCPOA, seem to be Iran accepting more intrusive transparency mechanisms, inspections mechanisms, committing to get rid of its large stockpiles of enriched uranium. So right now it has 60 percent enriched uranium. It’s agreed to dilute this within Iran—or at least that’s what the idea of this agreement is—as opposed to sending it abroad. Iran has many political constraints. And so it seems like Trump has accepted that this dilution can occur within Iran, and previously has said it should come to the U.S. or something.But yeah, it’s basically a very intrusive compromise nuclear deal to enhance the transparency of the nuclear program. But it is a compromise. It’s not like they’re destroying their nuclear capabilities, giving up their nuclear capabilities. They’re still going to be allowed to, much like the JCPOA, operate a basic nuclear program. And the Iranians are very intent on what they say is their rights within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to basically produce their own nuclear fuel. And in the long term, this may very well still give them that ability. But in the shorter term, it seems like they’re agreeing to very intense restrictions that can prevent them from having a pathway to nuclear weapons.Sargent: I just want to pick up on one thing you said there because it’s so batshit insane. We could have had this set of negotiations before the war started. I think people don’t really realize how absurd Trump’s handling of this has really been. Just one more time—Iran and the U.S. were talking about this stuff before Trump launched the war. And it probably wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for them to have negotiated to the very point we are at now without the war happening. Is that right?Toossi: Absolutely. Again, before the war, from the records we have, the British national security advisor said a deal was at hand. The Omanis said a deal was at hand. If anything, Iran’s position is much stronger now after the war. The card that the U.S. always had hanging over Iran, which is the military card, the threat of military action—now they used that card. They launched 13,000 airstrikes against Iran, 13,000 sorties, an unprecedented aerial campaign.At the end of it, what do we get? According to The New York Times and other outlets that have reported on this, 70 percent of Iranian ballistic missiles are intact. Some similar amount of drones. Their underground missile cities, their ability to hit back in the region, close the Strait of Hormuz. So they’ve withstood everything that Israel and the U.S. threw at them, absorbed that punishment, hit back, exacted a high cost on the U.S. And now this deal is reflecting ultimately the battlefield reality, where the U.S. engaged in what was a regime-change war, engaged in going for the maximalist demands—total surrender, total capitulation. Trump listened to Netanyahu, listened to all these war hawks that are now criticizing him. And what he got was a huge quagmire, inadvertently strengthened Iran’s hand. It was classic hubris, classic imperial hubris.And now he’s giving Iran upfront sanctions relief, trying to get them to let go of the Strait of Hormuz, and is seemingly on a path to accepting a deal that was at hand before the war. Sargent: And is, if anything, probably not as good as Obama’s, or will in the best circumstances be as good as Obama’s. Now, pro-Trump media has been really harsh on this as the details have leaked out over the last few days. Media Matters had a good roundup of stuff. I’m going to read a few. The New York Post says this: “Trump’s Iran deal gives Iran big wins up front—and America nothing.”Ben Domenech said, “This doesn’t feel like a victory.”Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade suggested that parts of the nuclear settlement here are, quote-unquote, “not acceptable” while trying to throw JD Vance under the bus for this failure. Fox host Mark Levin said he’s, quote-unquote, “very skeptical.” Sina, what do you make of all that?Toossi: Yeah, so I would say that within the Trump world, within the MAGA camp, there have been some divisions on this issue. Right now you’re definitely seeing the traditional Republican hawks, the neoconservatives, the very ardent pro-Israel ideologues—they are coming out hard against this. They wanted this war. They got it. So it’s unclear what they wanted—this war to go on more? But it’s easy for them now from the outside to criticize Trump. They have no skin in the game.But I think Trump is ultimately sitting in the situation room. He’s been hit with political, economic, military, and geopolitical reality. It’s not like Donald Trump was someone who—if he could go all the way with Iran, he would have gone all the way with Iran. And he said today at the G7 that, I could have bombed them for many more years. What would have happened is the Strait of Hormuz would still have been shut and we would have been in a global depression.So he was faced with the reality of the situation. And he was, I would argue, ultimately forced to come to this compromise. It’s imperial overstretch. America expended so many munitions that it couldn’t afford to expend. It expended tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, of dollars on this war. And it racked up this immense cost with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, all the knock-on economic effects, the impact on global markets, the impact on global oil reserves, including America’s oil reserve—the latest headlines are that it’s reached the lowest level since 1984, the year it was established. And so this is a critical crisis. And I think Trump is right when he said if this dragged on, it would have led to a recession, a depression.And so this is again part of the reality. But Trump listened to these people. He was all on board until he had to now face—it blew up in his face. And so now he’s forced to try to get this deal. And these people are still attacking him. So we’ll see if Trump can withstand this pressure. Obama got so much pressure in 2015 from similar actors when he got the deal, and he withstood it. He fought hard against it. And we’ll see if Trump can now withstand this pressure.Sargent: Well, Fox News’ Trey Gowdy had another quote criticizing Donald Trump. He said this: Iran is “better off than they were before hostilities began, and that should not be the consequence of war.” Now again, Trey Gowdy is committing the same mistake that all these guys did, and Donald Trump did, which is that America wasn’t going to bomb its way to a successful outcome here. But I think it’s a very profound vulnerability for Donald Trump to have all these figures out there beating the hell out of him for failing, because the base was really sold a bill of goods on this. MAGA was absolutely sold a bill of horseshit on this whole thing by all these people and by Donald Trump.The White House and Donald Trump are trying to sell the story that the great and mighty and glorious Donald Trump subjugated Iran. All of his enemies are always on the run and they’re always losing and he’s always winning. And that’s why I think it’s so lethal for him to have all these figures in right-wing media saying, no, that didn’t happen. Actually, you lost, Donald Trump. And so I think that’s good to see.Toossi: Yeah. And it’s interesting because I remember during the war, he had this one Truth Social post where he really attacked Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and a lot of those right-wing pundits who were against the war. So he kind of threw them under the bus. But now you’re seeing that JD Vance went on Megyn Kelly’s show yesterday and he’s doing the media circuit. So it’s like he’s going to need those people at his back again. So I think he’s going to have to get Tucker back. He’s going to have to get Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens—all these various right-wing personalities that were critical to his rise, but were critical of this war, as opposed to that Fox News traditional Republican establishment machinery that is very much against this deal and is coming out against it.Sargent: That is fascinating. We’re going to really be working hard to mend fences between JD Vance and all those figures, especially with JD Vance’s 2028 run coming up.I want to listen to a couple of things that Donald Trump said about Obama’s nuclear deal. First, he said this.Donald Trump (voiceover): And then we terminated—I terminated the JCPOA. That’s Barack Hussein Obama’s horrible deal. It gave them a nuclear weapon. And I terminated it. And I stopped it.And he also said this.Trump (voiceover): He tried to bribe his way out. I didn’t do that. Nobody mentions that. $1.7 billion and hundreds of millions of dollars. They tried to bribe their way out of it. And you know what the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama and they said he’s a stupid son of a bitch.Sargent: So, Sina, what do you make of that? I mean, there’s just no indication whatsoever that Donald Trump has any idea what was in Obama’s 2015 deal. All he knows is that he’s strong and Obama’s weak. That’s all he knows.Toossi: Yeah. I mean, I think one of his arguably main drivers for his whole 2016 campaign and his presidencies has really been undoing everything Barack Obama did. He really hated Obama. I would argue personally that a lot of that is driven by racism.But Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement was the Iran nuclear deal. And when Trump came to office in his first term, all his advisors were saying, don’t leave this deal. At the time we had Mattis as secretary of defense, we had McMaster as national security advisor. All these people were advising him not to leave because it would weaken America’s position and it would ultimately harm American interests. And that bore out. But he didn’t listen to their advice. He did leave the deal. Again, I would argue for a variety of factors, but a chief one is undoing Obama’s legacy, trying to do everything better than him, quote-unquote.And so now you see all these years later—2018 was when he left the deal—but now in 2026, after this disastrous war, his marketing pitch for this deal is still, it’s better than Obama’s, Obama was so weak, the Iranians were laughing at him, et cetera, et cetera. When the Iranians are the ones who fought him in a war and basically had him by the balls, if I can say that. And he’s backed off.You can let history make the judgment. But obviously this is a strategic retreat, arguably, from America. Even America on a transpartisan basis was very hawkish on Iran—the foreign policy establishment and all these demands: Iran has to give up its missiles, Iran has to end its support for its regional alliance network and proxies, as we call them. And there’s a retreat on those demands. They’re not even in this deal. It’s just the nuclear issue now.Sargent: Well, let’s just try to look forward to what comes now. They enter into this stretch of negotiations in which they try to figure out what the details of the constraints on Iran’s nuclear program are going to be. And it looks to me like Trump is not in a very good position here. First, it’s the stuff you said earlier, which was that Iran has now discovered that it can bring the global economy to its knees and that that will actually get the United States and Trump to move.But second, and also important, is the fact that every day that passes, we get closer to the midterm elections. And Trump keeps going out there and saying, if Iran doesn’t do what I say, I’ll just start bombing again. That’s pure bullshit, because that will be something that Republicans really do not want as the midterms are approaching. There will come a point where Republicans are in such a bad political position due to Trump trying to restart the war that they will probably actually say no. And there will be a vote in Congress, and I think you would see Republicans at that point, with their careers on the line, suddenly saying, we can’t do this.And so Iran’s got to know this, right? Iran’s got to understand these dynamics pretty well, don’t you think?Toossi: Yeah. So the biggest thing that this war did for Iran is it allowed it to activate this leverage that it had but didn’t have before and couldn’t demonstrate before—which is disrupting the Strait of Hormuz, closing it, taking everything the U.S. and Israel could throw at it, and still maintaining that pressure on the Strait of Hormuz. So this is a new geopolitical reality that, as you say, gives Iran lasting leverage.Even as part of this deal, the Iranians are saying they’re not going to collect payments for ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz in the 60-day period. But very much the Iranian rhetoric and this deal leaves an opening for that. They’re saying that the new status quo is going to be them collecting service fees, and they’re going to administer it with Oman.But on this question of Trump going back to war—the Iranians can’t trust him at all, obviously. He left the JCPOA. He attacked them twice during negotiations. And they’re not trusting him at all. So that’s why I’m kind of skeptical, or I’m not bullish that this is actually going to lead to this broader nuclear deal. This is kind of a temporary arrangement for now that achieves some interests on both sides. I mean, Trump just wants his Strait of Hormuz open. The average gas price in America was almost $5 a gallon just a couple of weeks ago. And all the inflation went back to as bad as it was under Biden during the Ukraine war. And so all these bad economic consequences that, as you say, were going to have a big consequence for the midterms.Now, if Trump wants to restart this war ahead of the midterms, those consequences are going to come back fast. But it very well could be that this is a temporary arrangement to push past the midterms and then potentially try to restart. They’ve already attacked Iran twice. They’ve already started this war twice. Maybe they could be thinking third time’s a charm. And that’s definitely what the most hawkish groups in D.C. are saying. People like Mark Dubowitz at the neoconservative, pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of Democracies—he’s basically saying, third time’s a charm, try it again, do it again.But even then, I think there’s a new reality at play. The Strait of Hormuz, and Iran is going to be rebuilding its capabilities with all this money that they are already getting. They’re going to get these oil waivers. They’re going to get their frozen assets. So it’s going to be a new geopolitical dynamic. And I think overall the U.S. hand is weaker vis-à-vis Iran now than it was before the war.Sargent: And you know what happens next year, if there’s discussion about another war or the negotiations of the nuclear deal continue? JD Vance is starting to run for president in earnest and he’s really not going to want to be associated with those positions. Sina Toossi, really good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.Toossi: Thanks for having me. This was great.