{"id":163696,"date":"2026-06-16T22:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T22:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/163696\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T22:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T22:48:15","slug":"trumps-iran-hawk-backers-are-not-feeling-good-about-ceasefire-deal-it-all-seems-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/163696\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Iran hawk backers are not feeling good about ceasefire deal: \u2018It all seems bad\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Donald Trump\u2019s long-awaited deal with Iran is here. While the U.S. and Iran are essentially kicking the can down the road with an extension of the ceasefire agreement,<\/a> the two sides are beginning to reveal what an eventual permanent agreement could look like.<\/a><\/p>\n

A neoconservative, pro-Israel coalition of Washington Republicans and commentators in the media sphere has been some of Trump\u2019s loudest defenders since the war<\/a> with Iran began on February 28. In the House and Senate, many were eager to defend the objectives of Trump\u2019s war with Iran <\/a>even as those objectives shifted from their original lofty aims of ending Iran\u2019s ballistic missile threat and potentially even toppling the government to reopening the Strait of Hormuz and eradicating Iran\u2019s nuclear stockpile.<\/p>\n

But now, the true extent of that shift is becoming apparent to the right\u2019s faction of Iran hawks. And they are less than thrilled.<\/p>\n

“This deal, and everything that we know about it, to the degree that it is being spun in public <\/a>by this, you know, and behind the scenes by the administration, everything about this deal seems bad to me. It all seems bad,\u201d said conservative commentator Ben Domenech on Fox News. \u201cIt all seems like a setback. It doesn’t seem like it meets any of the measures that the president actually put out there of his goals when it came to this conflict.”<\/p>\n

On Capitol Hill, Trump\u2019s announcement of a deal Sunday was met with muted apprehension. The few apparent details came as that same faction was egging Trump on further, and was supportive of his threats in the days leading up to the deal\u2019s signing to carry out a military invasion of Kharg Island, a hub of Iranian oil industry activity.<\/p>\n

\"NewsNews of the Iran deal’s emerging provisions come as Trump himself has left the country to attend the G7 summit in France (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

One of those voices was Sen. Lindsey Graham, long one of the loudest proponents of military action against Iran in Washington. Graham, who\u2019d tweeted late last week that a military seizure of Kharg Island would be \u201cthe most consequential move President Trump could make,\u201d cautioned on X that the Senate would have to approve any agreement between the U.S. and Iran \u2014 and noted his concern over the differing descriptions of the agreement between U.S. and Iranian officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am somewhat concerned that Iran\u2019s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming,\u201d wrote Graham.<\/p>\n

\"LindseyLindsey Graham is one of the biggest backers of military force and regime change efforts against Iran on the Hill (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

Graham and the Iran war\u2019s other supporters in Congress have largely abstained from commenting to reporters this week on the merits of the deal itself. Sen. Ted Cruz, another major booster of Israel and supporter of the war, told The Independent only that he\u2019d have to see the deal to make a judgment about it when asked in the halls of the Senate on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, in typical flamboyant fashion, was more open to providing his cynical take on the matter: \u201cUnless you were homeschooled by a day drinker, no one’s confident that Iran is going to do anything.”<\/p>\n

But Graham took things a step further over the weekend, and trashed the idea of a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran \u2014 one of the deal\u2019s rumored provisions. Like most in Washington, Graham plans to compare the emerging Trump agreement to the 2015 nuclear deal signed under Barack Obama, the JCPOA, which was maligned by conservatives for providing Iran with sanctions relief and freeing up frozen funds in U.S. banks.<\/p>\n

Those same provisions are expected to be in the upcoming agreement, though administration officials have maintained that they will be contingent on reforms within Iran and long-term compliance with the arrangement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs to any potential deal, it must be compared to the JCPOA, and I am hopeful that it will be vastly different,\u201d wrote Graham on Friday. \u201cThe idea of a $300 billion reconstruction fund, given who is in charge of Iran, seems to be tone deaf. It would be akin to a Marshall Plan for Germany with the Nazis still in charge. That wouldn\u2019t have been a good idea then, and any reconstruction fund that benefits this terrorist regime wouldn\u2019t be a good idea now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BackersBackers of the Iran war like Lindsey Graham were ecstatic when Trump threatened to take Kharg Island, a major Iranian oil industry hub (Planet Labs PBC)<\/p>\n

In the conservative media sphere, coverage of the ceasefire deal is already trending against the president\u2019s favor as the war\u2019s backers see more similarities than dissimilarities between the Trump deal\u2019s reported provisions and the JCPOA.<\/p>\n

Brit Hume, another Fox talking head, retweeted commentary from an Israeli commentator on the far-right Channel 12 network: There\u2019s \u201cnot a lot of room for an American victory\u2014especially once you fit in all those Iranian concessions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing we do in terms of a deal will change the behavior of this enemy. If you don’t believe that you do not know what we are dealing with. If you do believe that you know that for them deals are made to be broken,\u201d posted Mark Levin, one of Trump\u2019s favorite pro-war pundits, who attended the White House Hanukkah celebration last year. \u201cThere was a time, not long ago, when we never negotiated with terrorists or terror regimes. Today, we’ve dealt with intermediaries and now directly with terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MarkMark Levin is one of the war’s biggest backers in right-leaning punditry, and appeared at the White House last year (Getty)<\/p>\n

Even those projecting some optimism did so through gritted teeth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suspect the MOU may be less awful than the administration\u2019s disastrous sales pitch,\u201d wrote Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.<\/p>\n

Others speculated on what the deal could mean for the Republican coalition: \u201cIf the end of the war is perceived as damaging to that ally, President Trump will crack his base, perhaps badly,\u201d wrote Hugh Hewitt.<\/p>\n

The message is clear: While Trump has finally found his off-ramp, the end of the war could end up being more politically costly for a fractured MAGA coalition than starting it ever was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[5084,34,11155],"class_list":["post-163696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-horizontal","tag-iran","tag-summit"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116762227844157658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}