Hezbollah Forces Israeli Withdrawal as Trump Scrambles for Iran Agreement

President Donald Trump is framing a tentative peace deal with Iran as a victory for the U.S., but fractures in the Republican Party suggest that could be a hard sell both on Capitol Hill and in the run-up to November’s midterm elections.

“It’s a very strong deal,” Trump said at the G7 summit in France on Wednesday, seated across from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. “Nobody knows what it is, but it’s very strong.”

The early response from Republican leaders and the conservative commentariat is mixed at best, in part because versions of a 14-point memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the two countries have been circulating around the globe while the White House has not shared the finer points with Congress or the public. On Wednesday, a senior U.S. official read the 14-point memorandum on a conference call with reporters.

“I think we’re all hoping to get more information, more detail about that,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Tuesday. “I expect that will be forthcoming.”

He said most Republicans agree that the administration “has taken steps” to diminish Iran as “an existential threat,” but added: “I’m hoping that when we get more information about the memorandum of understanding, we’ll have a better sense about what the path forward is.”

With Trump under pressure from Republicans wary of forever wars and those worried about inflation ahead of the midterm elections, the short-term gain for consumers and candidates is the MOU, which promises a tentative end to hostilities and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Administration officials believe that will bring down prices for gas and other goods as freighters flow freely again through a major conduit in the global supply chain.

But cutting a preliminary deal to immediately reopen a seaway that was clear when the U.S. launched the war in late February — without ensuring enriched uranium is removed, effecting regime change or continuing to squeeze Tehran’s economy — is a “low-grade humiliation” for the president, a person close to the White House said.

“It’s an embarrassing way to get out of this, but I think everyone just wants to get out of it,” this person said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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What Netanyahu thinks of Trump's Iran deal

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A more comprehensive pact remains as elusive as it is politically fraught for the president. As much as voters want the U.S. out of Iran — and polls consistently show that they do — the price of getting Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions is giving the regime access to money. That’s a cost that many of the president’s supporters don’t want to bear, and it’s one that GOP candidates may have to wrestle with if a final agreement is ever reached.

“If this is true, Iran wins,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during Trump’s first term, wrote on X on Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that sanctions on Iranian oil would be lifted immediately as part of the MOU. “There should be zero sanctions relief day one.”

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, whose views generally differ from Haley’s, also criticized the possible lifting of economic sanctions during his “War Room” podcast on Tuesday.

“Keep the sanctions, because if we lose that, it will take forever to get back,” he said, adding that the president should not unfreeze billions of dollars in captured Iranian assets. “Just walk away, but keep their money.”

Those concerns come as even top Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have been kept in the dark about the details of the emerging pact. Still, GOP lawmakers are divided over whether now is the time to end the war, according to Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.

“I think you have a couple of camps,” Schmitt said. “You have the camp that wants us to lose. And then you have the camp that wants a forever war. And President Trump is not in either one of those camps. And neither am I.”

Presidents are typically reluctant to be the face of policies that split their base, and Trump is no different. That means the job of selling the plan to the public may eventually fall more fully on Vice President JD Vance, who was the lead negotiator for the U.S., and Trump’s most stalwart supporters in Congress. The announcement of a deal coincided with the launch of a Vance media tour to promote his new book, making him a more frequent TV presence than usual.

“It’s going to be interesting to observe as all of the people who pushed hardest for the war and celebrated the president’s sublime judgment are now going to hate the deal,” one person close to the administration said. “And they’re going to turn on Vance because he’s a useful proxy because they don’t want to turn on the president.”

Among Trump’s top advisers, Vance was the most hesitant about the launch of the war at the end of February, but the president designated him to help bring an end to it, along with envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. So f…