Trump finds his Iran off-ramp in Versailles, but saves the big issues for later: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to From the Politics Desk , a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, Jonathan Allen explores what comes next for President Donald Trump on Iran after signing an agreement to end the war. Plus, we dig into the societal divides revealed in the latest NBC News poll.

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Trump finds his Iran off-ramp in Versailles, but saves the big issues for later

Analysis by Jonathan Allen

The Treaty of Versailles, the complex 1919 pact that ended World War I after more than four years, is not held in high regard by most historians because it created the conditions for the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II.

President Donald Trump can only hope that his Memorandum of Understanding — a 14-point blueprint to end the U.S. war with Iran — that he signed yesterday in Versailles will be remembered more fondly, if at all.

For now, it’s a quick-exit strategy that suits Trump and the Republican Party better than a prolonged war or stalemate. The crux is a relatively minor tradeoff for the U.S. America has stopped bombing Iran and the Strait of Hormuz has reopened, developments that are good for both countries, and the U.S. is lifting sanctions on Iranian oil, which is helpful to Tehran.

But more than three months after Trump went to war, the main sticking points between the countries have been punted to future negotiations that may or may not yield results. The Iranian regime, battered and bloodied, remains in place. Iran’s highly enriched uranium, buried as it may be beneath mountains, remains in place. Its ability to wreak havoc in the region remains in place.

The memorandum envisions some of those issues being resolved by ongoing talks, with Iran accessing hundreds of billions of dollars if it beats its centrifuges into plowshares. But the devil is in the details, and Trump is already taking political heat from both sides of the partisan divide.

Back in 2015, Republicans, and some Democrats, criticized President Barack Obama over his Iran nuclear deal, a six-nation pact in which Iran dismantled its existing nuclear program, agreed not to enrich uranium to weapons-grade level and allowed international inspectors to monitor its efforts to develop civilian nuclear energy in exchange for sanctions relief and access to frozen funds. Trump was one of them. He ripped Obama for unfreezing captured Iranian money — a provision that is matched in the new MOU.

Trump’s blueprint isn’t identical to Obama’s deal, but they are close cousins. The main difference, so far, is that the Obama-era pact dealt with the thorniest policy and political issues — and it held until Trump tore it up in 2018. Since then, Iran has re-engaged its nuclear program and the U.S. has bombed its weapons sites. Now, if negotiations succeed, Trump’s framework would reinstate the basic tenets of the Obama plan.

That could be politically toxic to Trump. Many Republicans don’t trust the regime in Tehran and don’t want to enrich Iran, no matter who pays the tab. What he has now is undeniably easier to defend: an end to the war, a free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz and a piece of paper to point to as proof that he is trying to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

After burning through political capital, Trump may be content if the war and its conclusion fade away — if the memorandum becomes the “Footnote of Versailles.”

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For subscribers: How Trump’s agreement with Iran compares to Obama’s

By Dan De Luce and Abigail Williams

Comparing the two agreements underscores that what lies ahead for the relationship between the U.S. and Iran could resemble what has already come before.

Keep reading →

➡️ More for subscribers: What Trump said he wanted in a deal with Iran, and what he got in the agreement , by Justin Goldman and Dan De Luce

NBC News poll: Americans see a huge divide between haves and have-nots

By Bridget Bowman, Annelise Hanson, Lauren Zola and Ben Kamisar

Most Americans are optimistic that the country is broadly more united than divided, and they feel that’s true even across some contentious dividing lines like race and gender.

But that optimism does not extend to what Americans see as a broad gulf between the wealthy and those who are not wealthy, according to a new national NBC News poll .

A majority (54%) say most Americans share the same core values but disagree about policies and issues, while 44% say most Americans have fundamentally different core values, according to the survey, which was sponsored by More Perfect, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing democracy.

There are notable splits along some lines, including age and geograp…