What did Donald Trump do today?

He may actually have gotten Iran to the bargaining table, but at a catastrophic price.

While Trump celebrated his 80th birthday at massive taxpayer expense—and tried to turn a personal profit in the bargain—there was some real news on Iran. Unlike the previous thirty-nine separate times Trump has declared that he has reached a peace deal with Iran, it looks like there might be some substance to the one he made today. But there are three problems with it. First, it still isn't official. Second, it's not a peace treaty or an armistice—it's a "memorandum of understanding" about future talks. 

And third, if early reports of what Trump had to agree to in order to seal the alleged deal are accurate, it is an unprecedented humiliation for the United States.

Iran's government has leaked what it claims are the terms, though, and if accurate they are an absolutely brutal price for the United States to have to pay as a way of extricating Trump from the war. They include:

• the withdrawal of the United States not only from the Persian Gulf, but the entire region
• the end of US sanctions against Iranian oil shipments
• unfreezing of all Iranian assets under US control
• the end of UN sanctions within 60 days
• $12 billion immediately
• $12 billion within the next 60 days
• approval by the UN security council of any terms—meaning that Trump will need to seek approval from China and Iran's ally, the Putin regime in Russia
• Iran will not be required to put its support for Hamas, Hezbollah, or other militant groups on the table
• Iran will be free to develop its missile program
• the Strait of Hormuz will open, but "under Iranian arrangements"

Perhaps most humiliating of all, the terms that Iran's government are reporting would force Trump to put a $300 billion plan for rebuilding Iran on the table before any deal was finalized. Any money changing hands—even to give Iran back its own money—is a personal humiliation for Trump. He raged for years about the Obama administration unfreezing $1.7 billion dollars in Iranian funds as part of the successful multinational nuclear control deal that Trump pulled the United States out of in 2018. That $1.7 billion would be 14% the amount that Trump would have to yield back to Iran just to get the memorandum signed, if these reports are accurate.

In return, the only concession Iran's government is mentioning is the "reiteration" of its commitment not to produce nuclear weapons. That was the status quo when Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, and even after that, Iran's public posture was not that it was seeking to build nuclear weapons—only to give itself the capacity to do so as a deterrent.

Of course, Iran's government is not entirely trustworthy, other than its perfect track record of falsifying Trump's many previous claims about what it had already agreed to. It's entirely possible that Iran's readout is misinformation, or that parts of it are true but presented in a misleading context. It's even possible, as some commenters have noted, that Iran is taking advantage of Trump being distracted by the birthday party he's throwing himself to score a PR victory.

One easy way of confirming those claims would be to refer to the text of the agreement itself, but—as even normally pro-Trump commentators have noticed—Trump's team has refused to provide any information at all about the terms.

You know it’s bad when Trump’s diehards are frustrated:

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— Shipwreck (@shipwreck75.bsky.social) June 14, 2026 at 8:14 PM

Even so, it's very possible that nothing comes of this fortieth promise of a deal, not least because the Netanyahu regime in Israel doesn't seem to be willing to agree to dial back its attacks against Lebanon. (That's a necessary condition, according to Iran.) Israel launched another attack at Lebanon's capital Beirut this morning, infuriating Trump, which may have been the point. Netanyahu has gone to great lengths recently to demonstrate domestically and internationally that he doesn't take orders from Trump.

The more people absorb the possibility that Trump and the US might no longer be in control of the course of events the more realistic a lot of analysis would be

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— Alexander Clarkson (@aphclarkson.bsky.social) June 14, 2026 at 11:22 AM

Why does this matter?

• This was not worth 13 American lives. 

• This was not worth as-yet uncounted hundreds of billions of dollars. 

• This was not worth a massive spike in Americans' cost of living (which will not quickly end). 

• This was not worth depleting the readiness of the US military to deal with actual threats. 

• This was not worth making the United States party to absolute atrocities.