The very first words announcing President Donald Trump's latest "deal" to conclude the war on Iran — which will reportedly be signed on Friday — were entirely false.

"The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete," the president proclaimed on his Truth Social site on Sunday evening. "Congratulations to all!"

But the agreement, whose details remain entirely opaque and disputed by all parties, is far from complete — if "complete" is meant to indicate that Trump has achieved any of the stated objectives for which he expended hundreds of billions of dollars, at least 15 American lives, untold thousands of Iranian civilian deaths, and severe damage to the world economy and this nation's international standing.

Instead, what Iranian officials have called a "memorandum of understanding" merely extends for two months the current ceasefire (which hasn't actually curtailed kinetic hostilities in the region) while the United States and Iran resume negotiations over curtailing Tehran's nuclear programs, the alleged objective of this war.

No honest analyst believes that Trump or his inept negotiators will achieve more restrictions on Iranian nuclear development than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the multilateral agreement that he discarded in 2018 merely because it was signed by his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. Amid the torrent of leaks and comments about this renewed ceasefire, what can be detected is a strong suggestion that this is in fact a far worse deal than Obama got, from the American standpoint — and a far more lucrative outcome for the Iranians.

Unless the Iranian news agencies are lying just as brazenly as Trump always does, the Tehran dictatorship will collect tens of billions of dollars in previously frozen funds during the 60-day negotiation period. The Trump administration's response has come in the form of nondenial denials, and it now appears that those previously unavailable billions will be exchanged mainly for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. That reopening is the only aspect of the mooted "deal" that both sides agree will happen, merely resolving a crisis that Trump and his Israeli partner Benjamin Netanyahu provoked when they initiated this conflict. In short, a return to the status quo ante, aside from all that squandered blood and treasure and honor.

Of course the gradual resumption of ship traffic in the Persian Gulf won't actually permanently resolve anything, because the Iranians will still be able to close the strait whenever they choose — a commercial and diplomatic superpower that they can now exercise at will, entirely due to the blundering of Trump, his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, his national security adviser Marco Rubio and the other nimrods in his cabinet.

Beyond that, we have no idea how or whether Trump's low-wattage diplomatic team will negotiate a credible agreement that restricts Iran's nuclear development with any force, as the JCPOA actually did. The likelihood of that occurring within the next two months seems vanishingly small, since the JCPOA talks required many months and intellectual skills that the Trump gang simply doesn't possess.

Even now, however, we can measure what Trump is doing against what Obama did: If the Iranians get $10 billion, or perhaps even $24 billion, to reopen the strait, without any substantial restrictions on their nuclear program, that will represent more than 10 times the amount of money Tehran received after signing the JCPOA. In other words, Trump has sold out cheap to end this pointless war — and the rest of us will pay the price.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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