MAYBE EVERYBODY LOST.

I was being flippant earlier this week, but I'm having trouble finding anyone who likes the "memorandum of understanding," which is nowhere near a treaty, let alone as well defined as Barack Obama thought his never-ratified accord was.  Then, only a few minutes ago, Red State's RC Maxwell dropped "Iranian Hardliners Denounce US Deal as ‘Surrender’ and ‘Path to Colony’."  That was quick: unbundling the opening of the Strait of Hormuz to navigation prior to discussing everything else isn't opening the Strait under Iranian regulation after everything else is signed off upon and the True Believers object.

The strongest backlash has come from the Paydari Front, also known as the Endurance or Steadfastness Front, which is a small but vocal faction of ideological purists. The group positions itself as the guardian of the revolution’s anti-Western principles.

Prominent hardline lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian, a Paydari-aligned figure and former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiation team, has emerged as the deal’s most outspoken critic. Nabavian warned that the agreement would transform Iran into a “U.S. colony.” He slammed the deal’s requirement that Tehran seek permission from the “Great Satan” for even limited uranium enrichment. “This is surrender,” Nabavian declared, according to reports.

What, did somebody leak the Trump Organization's plans for a hotel and casino on the Caspian Sea?

Seriously, though, the outlines of the old regime are still in place, at least in principle.

Protests erupted in Tehran and Mashhad, where demonstrators rallied against negotiators, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Signs and slogans accused the government of capitulation and betraying the blood of martyrs.

State media controlled by the regime and not the Paydari Front has portrayed hardliners as instigators, creating “polarization.”

Their visceral rage may serve as the strongest indicator that the MOU with Iran favors the West. Denunciations from Paydari hardliners suggest it extracts meaningful concessions that curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions while reducing its regional proxy activities. The full text of the memorandum remains subject to competing interpretations and leaks, but the hardliners’ fury means the political battlefield inside Iran is changing. Whether the deal ultimately holds will depend less on street protests than on implementation and the Supreme Leader’s final calculus.

That might be reason to let the phony negotiations start, or not, as long as the Straits are open, even to Iranian ships.

We see a similar headline from CNN: "Iran’s hardliners threaten to spoil the regime’s victory lap."  The hardliners might have more to fear than a Trump casino on the Caspian Sea.

The war effectively gave the Iranian government a new lease on life, said Dina Esfandiary, Middle East geoeconomics lead at Bloomberg Economics. It allowed "a government weakened by demonstrations of discontent and crisis to regain their hold on power." But that doesn't mean the government has the support needed for the deal to succeed, and the government, she says, will still have to contend with the myriad of domestic problems that existed prior to the war.

Before the war, containing anti-government dissent was among the regime's chief domestic priorities. Now, it faces a different challenge: managing opposition from within its own ranks. According to Vali Nasr, author of "Iran's Grand Strategy," the supreme leader and those around him will first have to look inward to a hardline faction known asthe Jebhe-ye Paydari, which Nabavi is close to.

"For this agreement to work, (Supreme Leader) Mojtaba (Khamenei) and the (Revolutionary Guards) have to control the very forces that they helped create," he said. The hardline faction has tried to sabotage the deal with the US throughout the negotiations process. They see such an agreement as capitulation and appeasing them is more critical than appeasing anti-regime groups in Iran, he said.

Again, as long as the ships move, let the internal politicking continue.  Contrary to what Pajamas Media's Rick Moran suggests, Our President might be willing to play the good cop separating Israel and Hezbollah while offering only muted (by Trumpian standards) fretting about the pace of diplomacy in Switzerland.

Iran is facing a dilemma. It is about to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. to end the war, allowing it to continue enriching uranium and building ballistic missiles, but it must be careful about what it says and how it says it.

Donald Trump is likely to call off the deal if the Iranian government takes too triumphant a tone about its success in surviving the U.S.-Israel onslaught and brags about its triumph at the negotiating table.

Iran gets to continue enriching uranium. Its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, to 60%, remains in their hands with a nebulous promise to negotiate a way to "dilute it." They will be allowed to continue to support their terrorist networks in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthis), and Gaza (Hamas). They will have access to $300 billion to rebuild their defenses and ballistic missile forces.

Surprisingly, hardliners in Tehran don't believe that this deal is good, although not for the same reasons as some in the U.S.

Those hardliners might understand that the $300 billion is contingent on performance, which might or might not include that Trump casino.  And as long as Iranian politicians are looking around nervously for opponents bearing weapons, while the ships sail, the best course of action is inaction.  From the CNN report:

Much of the success of the agreement will hinge on the economic relief promised to Iranians, according to experts. While the opening of the strait is a key element of the agreement, what Iran and its government need is immediate economic and sanctions relief. Iran's economic situation is dire, and to address the concerns that have led to economic and anti-government protests, the government must show a tangible benefit to not only its previous policies, but also of this deal.

The US-Iran agreement reduces Tehran's external military threats, but it "does not resolve Iran's domestic economic, political, or social grievances nor does it guarantee lasting peace," said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at London's Chatham House think tank.

Ultimately, she said, public support of the pact will depend on whether "the agreement improves daily life."

According to Nasr, support for the deal will depend on whether it can lead to cultural freedoms and economic benefits at home, something he says the new supreme leader and the IRGC are acutely aware of.

"They don't want to be back where they were in January with the public. During the war, there is a honeymoon, – they can control the streets, people may accept certain sacrifices, but that's not indefinitely sustainable, and so if the agreement does give them some economic leverage, and then the question is, how long can they sustain it, and can they expand it," he said.

Meanwhile, ordinary Iranians like Reza, 45, say that they are exhausted.

A hawkish essay by Miranda Devine in New York's Post concludes with what might be the emergence of those cultural freedoms.

Women in Tehran are starting to drive around on motorcycles wearing skirts and without hijabs covering their hair, a crime that used to result in fines, jail and savage beatings.

“The morality police, for now, appear to have largely given up enforcing the rules,” the report says.

The Islamic Republic is crumbling from the inside, and Trump, alone, made it happen.

Strategic patience.  And if that doesn't work, Power Line's John Hinderaker suggests the B-52s are still mission capable.

Iran has violated the terms of the Memorandum, so it is no longer in effect. President Trump should make note of the overwhelmingly negative response to the terms of the Memorandum among his own supporters, and take the opportunity to tear it up. No more $300 billion, no more United Nations. Just do what he should have done all along: drop a few more bombs and go home.

Iran’s immediate repudiation of the Memorandum probably reflects a political situation in which no one is in effective control of that country. There likely is no coherent group of leaders who are in a position to bind Iran to any kind of agreement–which if true, is one more reason why the whole idea of ending the Iran conflict with a “deal” was misconceived from the beginning.

The absence of a "coherent group of leaders" suggests that not interrupting the faction fighting while the faction fighting keeps funding from getting to the proxies and keeps the speedboats from cutting up in the Arabian Gulf might be the best course.  Who was it said something about not interfering with an adversary that is making a mistake?