POPULAR OPINION INFLUENCES POLICY.

In "Trump Just Made the Worst Possible Deal… Except for the Alternatives,"  Michael Smerconish contends, "Once the conflict started, the United States faced a difficult reality: no clear path to victory, no public appetite for a prolonged war, and no support for a large-scale ground invasion. The result was an imperfect agreement that satisfies almost no one—but may have been preferable to the alternatives. The memorandum ends active hostilities, reopens the Strait of Hormuz, and creates a 60-day window for broader negotiations."

Reason's Michael Petti argues, "Compromise With Iran Isn't 'Surrender'."  At the moment, the only compromise that seems to be holding is the movement of ships and goods through the Strait of Hormuz, which is mutually beneficial trade at work, something possible with or without diplomacy.  "Both sides give something up and both sides get something in return."  Mr Petti notes,

The United States and Iran were unable to defeat each other in the first round, and, staring at an unacceptably costly escalation, they came to the table. While a final deal hasn't been agreed to, the ceasefire memorandum commits both sides to giving things up, with the U.S. promising to lift all economic sanctions if Iran negotiates away its nuclear program.

Strictly speaking, the ceasefire memorandum commits both sides to sixty days of palaver that might lead to somebody giving things up, that is, if the palaver lasts that long.

Mr Petti's essay summarizes points much as Mr Smerconish did on his eponymous show.

There are serious criticisms to be made about the memorandum. It is vague about the nuclear concessions Iran has to make to unlock full sanctions relief. Vice President J.D. Vance has implied that there are unwritten "gentleman's agreements," which is not exactly reassuring. While the memorandum forces Iran to stop extorting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in the immediate term, it leaves the "future administration" of the strait up for negotiations.

Any conversation over the costs and benefits of the deal also has to take into account the costs and benefits of the alternatives. In fact, it was trying those alternatives that gave Iran leverage in the first place. Trump started down the road hawks wanted by bombing Iran, calling for regime change, and promising "no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER." The war didn't collapse the Iranian government, but it did give Iran the opportunity to harass shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, holding the world's oil economy hostage.

Trump searched in vain for a cost-free escalation, only to discover that none existed. A ground raid to take away Iran's sources of leverage, its enriched uranium and its oil export terminal, would expose U.S. troops to serious casualties. Escalating the air war by bombing critical Iranian infrastructure would provoke Iran to do the same to its oil-rich neighbors. Trying to sneak ships through the strait during the ceasefire was provoking near-nightly naval combat.

Even maintaining the status quo was rapidly depleting oil inventories around the world, which would have forced either rapid price hikes or outright shortages by the beginning of July, as oil executives were warning. Trump ultimately concluded that the deal was the least bad option. That conclusion, of course, is up for debate. But much of the hawkish rhetoric is meant to shut out debate with emotional cries about surrendering to evil and losing honor.

Kurt Schlichter concurs.

Yes, you can put me down as a hawk. My preferred way to fulfill our strategy – which must be regime change, even though nobody can say “regime change” aloud – is kinetic. I propose we blow the living snot out of them, to use the technical term. But here’s the problem. Most Americans don’t agree with me. If you look at the polls, it’s very clear that people would prefer not to be in a kinetic fight with the Iranians at this time. I have the luxury of not having any responsibility. I wasn’t elected president. I’m not in command of anything. But Donald Trump was elected and is in command, and he’s got a lot of moving parts to consider.

He suggests Our President would like to prolong the negotiations at least until the midterms.  Can the mullahs hang on that long?

He knows exactly who these people are, and he’s got to know that they will screw with him from now until November. But that’s OK. A bunch of these savages getting on Twitter and making their announcements is not the same as actual fighting.

Trump is going to try to drag this out past the midterms. That 60-day nuclear negotiation? Of course, that’s going to get extended. There’s precisely zero chance that’s going to be resolved. But understand that their nuclear program has been blown to smithereens. We are not back in a worse position than we were before we entered this righteous conflict. We’re in a much better position. And in the long term, the correlation of forces is in our favor. Israel is wiping out its proxies. The Gulf states are strengthening their defenses, so Iran can’t do again what it just did. We are rebuilding, rearming, and retargeting. And Iran’s regime? It’s still impoverished and teetering on the edge of collapse.

You wouldn’t know it from all the whining online and the self-serving crap of the Democrats, who seemed just as mad about us not shooting as they were at us shooting, but we’re in a good position for the future. All the Iranian mullahs are just crying like the little b****s that they are. They accepted the MOU because they need the MOU as much as Trump does, maybe more.

It's for another day whether Our President will open up a can the day after his party holds Congress, and whether the can will be even bigger should his party lose the House or the Senate.  The resumption of bombing followed by a threat of another night of bombing seems to take some of the starch out of Iran's negotiators and it's still not clear who is really making decisions in Teheran or if the representatives of the notionally elected government can agree to anything substantive in Switzerland.

On the other hand, Michael Doran notes in The (Not Detroit) Free Press diminishing returns to that bombing.

The president faced a clear dilemma. No American military officer could convincingly guarantee him that three or four more weeks of bombing would eliminate Iran’s ability to shoot drones and missiles at ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz. He admitted as much at this week’s G-7 summit in France. “If we didn’t do this deal,” he said, “we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years.” But the strait would not have reopened.

Further punishing Iran might have delivered greater leverage in subsequent negotiations. But it would also have come at a steep cost, which we can summarize as the three M’s: markets, munitions, and midterm elections.

Mr Doran left out the fourth M, manpower.  There's no popular enthusiasm for occupying any Iranian land in the first place, and casualties to little immediate effect on maritime traffic are not the way to run on a "stay the course" platform for the Congressional elections.

But did accepting fourteen Iranian points that read a lot like the status quo during the Obama years (not the Jarrett regency) constitute failure?  That might be the gist of NBC reporting from over the weekend, complete with the ever colorful Senator Kennedy of Louisiana offering "Unless you were homeschooled by a day drinker, no one's confident that Iran's going to do anything."

Not so fast, argues Mr Doran.

Voters have little appetite for open-ended conflicts that drive up gas prices and divert attention from domestic priorities.

Trump finally calculated that retreat, however inelegant, was preferable to gambling on an uncertain endgame. His critics see this move as surrender. In their eyes, he has become Barack Hussein Trump, offering Iran a pathway to rebuild its nuclear program, proxy network, and ballistic missile arsenal, while demanding nothing in return.

This analysis is overwrought for many reasons, but consider just three. First of all, Trump revitalized the credibility of the American military threat. President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 not only paved the way for Iran to develop an industrial-scale uranium enrichment complex. It essentially removed our military from the U.S.-Iran equation, even as Iran used its proxies to harry our forces. Tehran used the post-JCPOA decade to build its integrated deterrence “trident”: precision missiles and drones capable of saturating regional defenses, proxy forces from Yemen to Lebanon, and a nuclear program that never stopped.

Trump has severely weakened every prong of that trident. So far during his second term, Trump has ordered three major military operations against Iran: against the Houthis in Operation Rough Rider, and against Iranian nuclear and military sites in Operations Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury. That is three more operations than ordered by any other American president since Iran began enriching uranium.

Each time under Trump, the operation ended abruptly without achieving the hyperbolic objectives he declared. Each time, critics accused him of deserting the fight. Remember TACO? But the cumulative effect has degraded Iranian power severely and quickly.

The president’s critics want us to believe that the MOU marks the super TACO, a definitive and permanent surrender, leaving Iran free to behave as it pleases. A more sober assessment would conclude that Trump is buying time. If Iran responds as it did after last year’s 12-Day War, seeking to revitalize its nuclear program and protect it with a shield of ballistic missiles, Trump’s record suggests that he will strike again.

Victor Hanson's riposte to the people who are carping about how the current memorandum of understanding leads back to the Obama era time-limited accord will reward careful study.  A sample:  "The Strait was open because an appeased Iran had no reason to close it—given that no nation on earth dared to end its nuclear dreams of dominating the Middle East, funding anti-Western terrorists, and threatening Europe and the U.S."  Further:  "Trump is dealing with a bankrupt Iran, a neutered military, a restive Iranian street, a wounded regime, and the specter that the U.S. can do whatever it wishes militarily to a shattered Iran for the foreseeable future."

I'm not sure what to make of reporting that some of Iran's "sanctions relief" will take the form of United States agricultural products being delivered to Iran.  Vice President Vance, who participated in the first days of negotiations, might be asking the best question.  "What are the Gulf Arab states saying about this deal? What are they saying about this deal compared to the JCPOA in 2015?"