Trump Ends The War He Started Against Iran By Promising To Help Raise Up To $300 Billion To Rebuild It, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Country He Spent Four Months Bombing Might Stay Bombed

The Filing

EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France. Capping a four-day visit to the G7 summit, President Donald J. Trump on Wednesday released the terms of a preliminary agreement to end the war against Iran that he had helped launch in late February, a framework whose central provision commits the United States to help assemble a fund of up to $300 billion to rebuild the country it had spent the preceding months bombing.

The document, which senior administration officials read aloud to reporters on the condition that their names not be attached to it, runs only a few pages and leaves nearly every specific to be negotiated later. It declares the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, commits both sides not to start another war against each other, and sets a 60-day window, extendable by mutual agreement, in which to reach a final deal.

Under the framework, the United States will begin lifting the naval blockade it imposed immediately and end it entirely within 30 days, reopening the Strait of Hormuz that the war had closed and that the global economy had spent four months learning to do without. Iran, in turn, agreed to use its "best efforts" to let commercial vessels pass, free of charge, for 60 days, resolving long-standing concern that the world's ships were being kept out of a waterway only because the United States had sealed the approach to it with a war.

The reconstruction fund drew particular attention. Asked who would pay the up to $300 billion to rebuild a nation the United States had recently been bombing, Trump clarified that the United States would not be contributing directly, and that any relief for Iran would be "based on merit, and it won't be from us," though he allowed that other countries were welcome to invest. The agreement further provides that Washington will lift sanctions, issue waivers permitting the export of Iranian oil along with the banking, insurance, and transportation that move it, and make frozen Iranian funds fully available, all upon completion of a deal that does not yet exist.

The President framed the entire arrangement as a rescue of the American economy, the same economy that surging oil prices and rising costs had battered since the war he started, and whose damage had driven his own approval rating down even among his supporters. "If we didn't do this deal, we could have dropped more bombs for another three weeks, two weeks, four weeks, two years," he told reporters, adding that continued bombing would have left the Strait closed and markets at "levels that nobody ever saw before." Of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium, which the framework leaves for future talks, he said the United States had "cameras on every inch of it," and that any violation would be answered with Patriots.

At press time, the President had signed the framework at Versailles, scheduled a formal signing ceremony in Switzerland for Friday, and was accepting congratulations from six allied leaders for resolving a crisis that had not existed before he created it.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who recast a war he helped launch, one that battered the global economy and sank his own approval, as a historic peace, banking credit for ending a crisis that did not exist until he created it.
§The administration's dealmaker and strongman branding, handed a signing ceremony and six grateful allies in place of an unpopular war.
§The government of Iran, granted a ceasefire, the lifting of a blockade, sanctions waivers on its oil, access to its frozen funds, and the promise of up to $300 billion to rebuild what the bombing destroyed.
§Gulf states and the "regional partners" expected to assemble the fund, who stand to gain contracts, leverage, and a foothold in Iran's reconstruction.
§Oil and gas producers, commodity traders, shippers, and insurers, who profited from the blockade that closed the Strait and now profit again from its reopening.
§Defense contractors and missile makers, including the manufacturers of the Patriots and cruise missiles expended over four months of bombing.
§Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government, whose campaign the United States joined and whose war is now declared won.
§The expansive theory of presidential war power, under which a president may start a war, end it, and withhold its terms from Congress and the public until after he has signed them.
§Future presidents, who inherit the precedent that the United States may bomb a country for months and then help raise hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild it.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment