A veteran Republican strategist blasted President Donald Trump’s peace deal with Iran by comparing it to the one brokered by his top Democratic foe.
Karl Rove, a senior adviser to former President George W. Bush, didn’t mince words in a scathing critique published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday of Trump’s peace deal.
Rove warned that Washington’s 14-point memorandum of understanding with Tehran was full of “enormous concessions” that made the Trump administration “especially vulnerable,” including provisions that relaxed sanctions to allow the sale of Iranian oil and allotted $300 billion for the reconstruction of Iran.
“This all appears even weaker than Barack Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran,” he wrote, referring to the former Democratic president’s agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018 after repeatedly branding it “the worst deal ever negotiated.”
Rove also pointed to polls showing that 69 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of self-identified MAGA devotees said they wanted regime change or weakening, rather than a negotiated settlement, when asked what they expected to see from Trump’s war with Iran.
Instead, they got the opposite of what they wanted. Trump declared an end to the war he started through a glitzy peace deal signing in Versailles, France, last week.
“Maybe it won’t matter to his base that Mr. Trump didn’t achieve regime change and instead embraced negotiations. But it could reduce their enthusiasm,” Rove said. “Republicans, especially MAGA Republicans, see Mr. Trump as a strong leader. Getting outplayed at the negotiating tables by America’s sworn enemy is sure to undermine that.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A J.L. Partners poll obtained by the New York Post found that support for Trump’s peace deal among Republicans fell sharply after they learned more about it.
Initially, 62 percent of GOP voters supported the peace deal. But after hearing the details of the MOU, only 32 percent described it as a “good deal,” while 44 percent said it was “bad” and another 15 percent said it was “neither.”
Rove resurrected Trump’s own remarks from six years ago as he concluded his blistering op-ed.
“Mr. Trump observed in 2020 that ‘Iran never won a war but never lost a negotiation.’ Does he really want to help Iran add another win to that column? The president runs the risk of disappointing supporters without converting critics. That would be a needless political and foreign-policy disaster,” he wrote.
