Team Trump squares up to rip Red and Blue critics of Iran peace deal

The Trump administration has spent the last several days blasting away at bipartisan critics in Congress and from the usually friendly rightwing media sphere after the president signed a deal last week with Iran to stop the fighting and move toward more comprehensive negotiations.

Things appear poised to get a lot worse as the pressure builds in Washington.

For some powerful members of Congress, President Donald Trump’s biggest failure was not in starting a war the U.S. couldn’t win militarily, but forging a deal to end it.

In fact, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) called the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran this week the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who spent the week calling the MOU a betrayal of Israel, is no less vociferous in his opposition.

“History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea,” Cruz told reporters. “I think the president is receiving some very poor advice on this deal.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Mo.) said that the $300 billion account to fund the rebuilding of Iran — one of the measures in the signed MOU‚ “would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison.”

It is not clear who would pay for the rebuilding spelled out in the MOUL and with what, though the return of frozen Iranian funds is another measure in the 14-point agreement, drawing comparisons to President Obama’s 2015 deal to curb the Iranian nuclear program, otherwise known as the JCPOA. The agreement does not say how much the Iranian regime would be getting back right away.

Still, across the aisle, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) seemed to agree with Republican Sen. Wicker. “Remember this whole nuclear deal now? No better than what we had back in 2015, back when Barack Obama cut the deal.”

“And that’s where Donald Trump winds us up after all of this?” she added. “What an embarrassment.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wants to kill the MOU, posting on X, “We had an Iran nuclear deal. Trump tore it up. Now, his ‘deal’ includes a $300 billion payoff for Iran and no new limits on its nuclear program. This is a joke. Congress must review and reject this deal immediately.”

Turn on any broadcast of Congress’s response to the MOU and you are likely to see Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who, unlike the last four months of the war, is now ubiquitous in his harangues against peace.

“Look, this is not the art of the deal,” he loves to say, “this is the art of surrender. It’s not peace through strength. It’s payoffs through weakness.”

These members appear to be in high energy to invoke a 2015 law passed during the Obama era nuclear negotiations that requires the president to go to Congress with any agreement involving the regime’s nuclear program. Under that law, Congress has to review, and could vote to disapprove Trump’s deal (though the president could, in turn, try to veto it).

Bipartisanship in action! It’s worth noting that a YouGov poll of Americans taken from June 17-19 released Sunday showed that even 60% of Republicans wanted the Iran war to end immediately.

The Republican members of Congress opposed to this deal are of the hawkish variety and would likely oppose any end to this war short of regime change. The Democrats opposed to this deal are somewhere between hawks and AIPAC loyalists like Schumer who want the war to continue indefinitely but can’t say so openly, but also those concerned about Trump getting a win before the midterm elections in the midst of an unpopular war.

Luckily there are e Democrats like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) who openly support the deal, and GOP Sen. Rand Paul (R-K.Y.), who agrees with the president and says, “I’m standing with him on peace.”

Team Trump’s pushback on critics has been fierce. Vice President J.D. Vance warned members of Israel’s government who are vehemently opposed to the MOU that they should be careful in how they think and talk about the United States in this precarious moment.

Vance said at a press briefing on Thursday, “I will say, and this does bother me, is that you’ve seen people within Bibi’s cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal and in some ways very personally attacked the President of the United States.”

“Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower,” Vance said. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”

Vance’s words were not only a shot at Israeli leaders, but also at opponents of the Iran deal at home.

News Nation’s Batya Ungar-Sargon appeared to speak for the bipartisan Washington coalition for forever war, posting on X Thursday, “VP JD Vance just brought the US to its knees with a humiliating deal weeks before our 250th birthday and he has the audacity to blame … Israel! … for the terrible situation we’re in. We’re watching the Tucker Carlsonification of our Vice President in real time.”

The White House’s Rapid Response Team did not play around in its response to her, “The only humiliation here is Batya desperately begging for an additional brain cell because her failing TV is show is even more irrelevant than the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Fake Tapper. Only a moron of her caliber could still doubt President Trump’s leadership.”

When national security writer David Reaboi mocked Vance and his defense of the MOU by writing, “Imagine what kind of online brainrot it takes for a bright, educated guy to morph into a more articulate Theo Von,” Team Trump’s ferocious response was, “Imagine what kind of online brainrot it takes to convince yourself that anyone wants to read the dim-witted ravings of a complete nobody like ‘Dave Reaboi’ on Substack.”

The White House added, “Never Trumpers like this loser are the worst thing that ever happened to this country. Disgraceful.”

This tiny sample of the White House’s response account alone demonstrates the hardball the administration is willing to play in defending this deal against virtually anyone of any ideological persuasion. It’s a 180-degree whiplash from how it was treating conservative war skeptics like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene just a couple of months ago.

When former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Theissen claimed that “sources in the White House have assured” him “that this is not Trump’s position,” meaning the president did not agree with Vance’s defense of the MOU and criticism of Israel, the White House firmly put him in his place, “Respectfully, everything the Vice President has said is what the President has said and believes.”

“If you disagree with the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, that’s on you,” Team Trump added.

This could be key to keeping the MOU in place, which already has problems given the geopolitical volatility (will Israel behave?) and Trump’s own tendency to talk trash, as the president did in a Fox News interview on Sunday.

Despite how Sens. Ted Cruz, Bill Cassidy, Elizabeth Warren, or Chuck Schumer feel about a potential peace or this president, this shouldn’t be a time for partisan flailing but finally putting the true American national interest first.

Which means getting out of this war. No matter how the U.S. got into it, and no matter how bad some want to stay. Save the politics for the actual elections and listen to the people you represent.