President Donald Trump waves as he departs a dinner with Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron at Chateau de Versailles on Wednesday at the end of the G7 summit where he signed a memorandum of understanding on the Iran deal.
Global Reactions to the Iran Deal
Donald Trump's Iran deal has been met with anger, relief, and incredulity. G7 leaders and mediator Pakistan hailed the release of the memorandum of understanding, views that were not widely shared in Israel and among US Republicans.
Pakistan's prime minister has hailed the peaceful resolution of the conflict between the US and Iran, congratulating both countries for signing an agreement that he claimed would immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
But amid the celebrations from Shehbaz Sharif, the release of the MOU that gets the ball rolling on the next 60 days of negotiations between Iran and the US has proven more divisive, eliciting a mixture of outrage, bewilderment, and relief.
European and Israeli Perspectives
In France, the leaders of the G7 countries welcomed the deal, calling it a historic opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring any nuclear weapon. European leaders have largely been sidelined from the negotiations but expressed relief that the Strait of Hormuz would reopen, allowing the flow of oil to resume. Emmanuel Macron said it would put a stop to a situation of great instability that had terrible consequences for our economies.
In Israel, however, the agreement has been greeted with less optimism. Mark Regev, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, questioned how seriously Iran would approach negotiations over its nuclear program now that America has removed the economic and military pressure.
Under the terms of the MOU, Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and in return receive waivers for US sanctions on crude oil exports, petroleum products, and associated banking services. They will then enter into negotiations over the fate of their nuclear program and stock of highly enriched uranium.
Regev's views were reflected across Israel. Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel's opposition, said on Tuesday that Netanyahu promised a historic victory but instead got a crisis with the Americans, Hormuz open to the Iranians, money for the Revolutionary Guards, and ballistic missiles aimed at Israel.
US Political Divides
Those same splits in opinion were reflected in the US. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a key Trump ally, appeared to soften his view of the MOU after a very lengthy and productive conversation with the US special envoy Steve Witkoff. He wrote on social media that signing the MOU will be beneficial to the United States as the Strait of Hormuz will begin to open and hostilities with Iran will stop.
Other Senate Republicans were more critical. Bill Cassidy said Iran's nuclear ambitions were not curbed and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works. Senator Ted Cruz said the president was getting very poor advice when it comes to this deal.
Susan Rice, a former official in the Obama and Biden administrations, called it the biggest national security blunder in decades, while Democratic Senator Adam Schiff said it was hard to imagine a more thorough capitulation.
Trump's Defense and Iran's Response
Trump himself hailed the agreement as a major win for the United States, while Iran's chief negotiator, Mohammad Ghalibaf, called it a record of US failure. Trump signed the agreement on Wednesday and soon after, Iran announced that its president, Masoud Pezeshkian, had also signed it in Tehran.
Trump signed during a dinner with Macron at the Palace of Versailles, the site of the 1919 agreement that formally ended World War I. The outcomes of that agreement were short-lived, and Europe was again consumed by war just 20 years later.
