WASHINGTON: Donald Trump can claim a diplomatic victory after reaching an agreement with Iran to end the war in the Middle East, but numerous pitfalls remain and the US president has lost political capital.<\/p>\n
The cautious reception to the Sunday announcement of the memorandum of understanding with Iran \u2014 scheduled to be signed in Geneva on Friday \u2014 reflects prevailing skepticism at a time when the war is unpopular due to the soaring oil prices and inflation it has caused.<\/p>\n
The deal ends nearly four months of conflict, paving the way for negotiations on Iran\u2019s nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions.<\/p>\n
It effectively extends the current ceasefire by 60 days and provides for the opening of the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 a strategic artery for oil and gas shipments \u2014 before the start of what promise to be extremely sensitive negotiations.<\/p>\n
Launched on February 28 by the United States and Israel, the war has set the Middle East on fire and caused thousands of deaths \u2014 mainly in Iran and Lebanon \u2014 and destabilized global trade.<\/p>\n
Thirteen US troops were also killed during the conflict.<\/p>\n
Trump, who initially said the war would last four to six weeks, has faced mounting pressure at home to extricate the United States from the conflict ahead of midterm elections in November.<\/p>\n
While close allies immediately hailed him as the \u201cpresident of peace,\u201d reactions have been mixed, even within his Republican party.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am somewhat concerned that Iran\u2019s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming,\u201d said Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, a staunch opponent of Tehran, adding: \u201cAny nuclear deal with Iran will be sent to Congress for review and a vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senator John Cornyn, another Republican, reposted a message on X from conservative commentator Pastor John Hagee that said: \u201cNo deal is better than a bad deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the opposition Democrats, questioned whether a final agreement will be reached.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if there is, two things will be true at the same time: a) It\u2019s essentially surrender to Iran. b) We should be glad about it, because every day this insane, illegal war continues, we get weaker,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump can claim a diplomatic victory after reaching an agreement with Iran to end the war in the Middle East, but numerous pitfalls remain and the US president has lost political capital. The cautious reception to the Sunday announcement of the memorandum of understanding with Iran \u2014 scheduled to be signed in Geneva …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99168,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99154\/revisions\/99168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}