In igniting a war against Iran on Feb. 28, President Trump billed the U.S. campaign as an unprecedented step toward transforming the Middle East and terminating the threat from what he called a \u201cwicked, radical dictatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roughly 100 days later, as the United States and Iran have reached a somewhat vague memorandum of understanding to end the war, skeptics are expressing bafflement over what exactly has transformed.<\/p>\n
Neither the war nor the agreement ended what U.S. and Israeli officials regard as the main threats emanating from Iran. The country\u2019s nuclear program, while heavily damaged, was not eliminated \u2014 its fate punted to future negotiation.<\/p>\n
The same goes for its ballistic missiles, which the deal does not address. Iran\u2019s authoritarian regime endured, albeit with new leaders. Its proxies remain a threat to the region. Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, persisted in attacking each other.<\/p>\n
By Saturday, even the most significant immediate result of the deal \u2014 Iran\u2019s reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Mr. Trump had identified as essential \u2014 seemed at risk. Iran\u2019s military said it was closing the waterway again, because the United States had failed to stop the fighting in Lebanon. The U.S. military contested that, saying the strait remained open as the agreement stipulated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a document the United States agreed to because the war demonstrated a new U.S. military superiority,\u201d said Caitlin Talmadge, a professor at M.I.T. who specializes in Persian Gulf security issues. \u201cI think it\u2019s a document that has resulted from the fact that the United States bit off more than it could chew and doesn\u2019t want to escalate.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a worthy goal, she said. \u201cBut it really raises the question of what was achieved here, especially in comparison to the original Iran nuclear deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
For its part, the Islamic Republic is set to receive potentially substantial financial rewards. That is one substantive change, although not necessarily one in the United States\u2019 favor.<\/p>\n
For Tehran, weathering the blistering assaults from the United States and Israel, and demonstrating the ability to retaliate and inflict damage, constituted a victory. Indeed, aside from the Trump administration, the people crowing most about what transpired were core members of Iran\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran\u2019s parliament and a lead negotiator, hailed a revelation that Iran had taken from the war: that it could exert leverage by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial transit point for one-fifth of the world\u2019s oil supply.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a potential capacity that had never been activated,\u201d Mr. Ghalibaf said in an interview Wednesday with IRIB, the state broadcaster. \u201cBut our enemies \u2014 God created them fools \u2014 turned that potential into reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the memorandum allows for free passage of ships for two months, Tehran has threatened to implement transit fees for services, a system that did not exist before the war.<\/p>\n
The heart of the memorandum is that Iran will abandon hostility toward the United States and its regional allies, a pillar of the revolution, in exchange for sweeping, if sometimes gradual, economic benefits. They include the lifting of the American naval blockade, a $300 billion reconstruction fund to be created by the Gulf Arab states, the release of billions of dollars in frozen assets and an end to all American sanctions.<\/p>\n
The deal\u2019s ambition, as Vice President JD Vance portrayed it to reporters on Thursday, went so far as the transformation of Iran\u2019s hostile relations with the United States and much of the region since its 1979 revolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say the Iranians will never change their behavior. Well, maybe that\u2019s true and if so, they don\u2019t get any of the benefits of the bargain,\u201d said Mr. Vance. \u201cBut isn\u2019t it worth trying?\u201d<\/p>\n
Experts on the region are skeptical. Middle Eastern wars tend to breed more radicalization, not less, said Karim Haggag, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. \u201cThe reality is that the region in the aftermath of this conflict will be much more insecure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Here is a look at how the memorandum left various countries:<\/p>\n
The United States<\/p>\n
Mr. Vance said the agreement maintained U.S. leverage over Iran and that it could turn financial rewards on and off like a spigot. Many experts were doubtful.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that Mr. Trump broke the American taboo against invading Iran, but in doing so analysts said that he squandered the most powerful tool that Washington had maintained since the Islamic Revolution: the threat of force. The United States used it, and didn\u2019t achieve its goals \u2014 a lesson Iran is sure to internalize, analysts said.<\/p>\n
In the initial, 12-day war last June, for example, the U.S. military managed to cast a shadow over the long-term viability of Iran\u2019s nuclear program by dispatching long-range bombers to bury nuclear facilities under a mountain of rubble, said Ms. Talmadge of M.I.T.<\/p>\n
The more recent war had the opposite effect, she added, since Mr. Trump backed off further escalation. \u201cI think the U.S. in some ways undermined the leverage that it had,\u201d Ms. Talmadge said.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Iranian attacks on U.S. military bases in the region caused extensive damage<\/a>, undermining another facet of American leverage, she said, by puncturing the sense that they were inviolable.<\/p>\n And the memorandum has a further stipulation: that unspecified American forces should withdraw from the \u201cproximity\u201d of Iran within 30 days.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen did we ever negotiate with the Iranians about our force deployments going forward?\u201d asked Robert S. Ford, a former American ambassador in the region.<\/p>\n Iran<\/p>\n