Washington and Tehran signed a 14-point “Memorandum of Understanding” June 17. But this is not a “peace” agreement, it’s a move by Washington to work with Iran’s capitalist rulers to achieve the stability the U.S. rulers want to advance their imperialist grip on the Middle East.
President Donald Trump and other U.S. government representatives have raised differing objectives since they launched the U.S. war against Iran Feb. 28. They claimed they wanted to help the Iranian people win “freedom,” to end Tehran’s moves toward producing nuclear weapons, eliminate Tehran’s ballistic missiles, and end its aid to its “proxies” in Lebanon and Gaza who threaten Israel. The bourgeois press consistently described this as a joint U.S.-Israeli war.
In fact, it was two different wars with two sharply contrasting goals. It’s an imperialist war by the U.S. rulers to increase their plunder of the oil, gas and labor resources of the region. For Israel it’s a defensive war to prevent the regime in Tehran from carrying out its longtime goal of a Holocaust against Jews there.
Underscoring their competing interests, the Trump administration kept the Israeli government out of its negotiations with Iran.
“Trump reneged on every promise,” wrote Ben-Dror Yemini, a columnist at Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest newspaper, “and as a final flourish, gave Israel a kick and humiliation.”
According to the memorandum, Tehran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz “with no charge” for 60 days and Washington will lift its blockade of Iran’s maritime trade and begin lifting all economic sanctions on Tehran.
Washington also agreed to unfreeze $12 billion of Iranian funds, insisting that at least half of that be used to buy goods from the U.S.
Tehran “reaffirms” that it will not “procure or develop nuclear weapons.” But that is what Tehran has always said, while all the time it was building sheltered facilities deep underground to enrich uranium to levels close to what is needed to produce nuclear bombs.
The memorandum does not say that Tehran must end all enrichment. Instead, the U.S. and Iranian rulers will negotiate over the following 60 days a “methodology” for “down-blending” already enriched nuclear material inside Iran.
There is no mention at all of Tehran’s ballistic missiles, which it has used repeatedly against Israel. Those weapons killed some three dozen people and wounded hundreds more during the latest war. They were also used against targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Imagine the threat to Israel, home to nearly half the world’s Jews, if those missiles carried nuclear weapons.
When questioned by reporters on why eliminating the missiles is not in the agreement, Trump replied, “I mean, they have to have some, because other people have some.”
“Missiles aren’t the problem,” he said. “They hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.”
The memorandum also demands the “immediate and permanent” termination of military operations on “all fronts,” a provision primarily aimed at Israel’s efforts to stop Hezbollah using southern Lebanon for repeated attacks on northern Israel. It not only says that Israel must cease all attacks on Hezbollah but implies it must draw down its forces deployed in the south of Lebanon as well. Created, armed and led by the reactionary regime in Tehran, Hezbollah had been rebuilding its forces and launching provocative attacks on Israel.
Israel vows to protect its borders
Underscoring Washington’s and Israel’s conflicting interests, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel will “not withdraw from [Lebanon] as long as Israel’s security needs demand it.”
Vice President JD Vance lashed out at Israel’s refusal to obey Washington’s dictates. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” he said at a White House press conference. President Trump is “the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.”
In reality, no section of the U.S. imperialist ruling class is an ally of the Jewish people or defends Israel’s right to exist as a refuge from rising Jew-hatred.
In response, Netanyahu reiterated June 23 that Israel needs to “free ourselves from dependence” on Washington’s military aid. “We must manufacture our own armaments,” he added. “Where we will be in 30 years depends on our strength.”
Despite continued bombast between Tehran and Washington, including threatening to toss the deal aside and retaliate against each other, since June 17 the number of ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz has increased.
Iranian workers, youth and oppressed nationalities have engaged in rounds of protests against the regime in Tehran for years. They bore the brunt of the war both from U.S. bombing and regime repression.
Amir, a business owner from Mashhad, told the Guardian that he once hoped for U.S. intervention. Now “I feel humiliated,” he said. “This is not a ceasefire. It’s a never-ending auction between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic over our lives and our blood.”