Thursday

June 18th, 2026

Insight

Why Is the Trump Administration Taking Orders from the Iranians?

David Harsanyi

By David Harsanyi

Published June 19, 2026

Why Is the Trump Administration Taking Orders from the Iranians?
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Why didn't President Donald Trump initially want to share the full text of the framework agreement between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran?

The first reason is obvious: The memorandum of understanding is a capitulation to the clerics of the regime.

The second reason is also a scandal.

"I don't, frankly, fully understand it, but there are sensitivities that exist in the Arab and Muslim world that we're trying to be responsive to," a coy Vice President JD Vance told podcaster Megyn Kelly this week. But Vance, who helped negotiate the framework, added that the "Iranians, Pakistanis and Qataris asked us to sequence this in the right way."

It's disgraceful that the administration is taking direction from the radical clerics of Iran and the Pakistani military dictatorship on the "right way" to share a "peace agreement" with the people.

When it comes to Europeans, Vance always gets a thrill out of playing the tough guy, lecturing them on free speech and their cultural decline. No worries about the "sensitives" of the Germans or French, I guess. Bravo. In every way imaginable, however, Western Europeans are still freer and more moral than the Islamic Republics of Iran and Pakistan. Yet, Vance doesn't want to tweak the delicate feelings of Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

Indeed, Vance was also far tougher on American conservatives who oppose capitulation than the Iranian mullahs. The vice president told Kelly that "hawks" don't "have an alternative." They're "proposing an endless conflict" and they "want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian is dead."

This is a vile, Tucker Carlson-esque mischaracterization of the views of those who oppose piddling away a resounding American military victory against a terrorist regime. Not since Barack Obama has a politician been this adept at destroying strawmen. Most "hawks," as far as I can tell, want the Iranians to be alive and free rather than under the boot of the Islamist regime. Maybe that's not possible. But capitulation to the regime is what creates "endless" conflict.

Moreover, it was Vance's boss who opened the war against Iran, something he'd been advocating for decades. It was Trump who urged protesters in Iran to keep going, promising that "help is on its way." Until about a week ago, Trump was the "hawk." It must be fun for Vance, whose tendencies run isolationist, to unload on reviled "neocons," but it's difficult for normal people to keep up with the mercurial zigs and zags of the president.

Considering what's happened thus far in negotiations, you'd never know that the U.S. had recently decimated the Iranian ballistic missile infrastructure, annihilated most of its navy and destroyed most of its military.

"We're seeing even people that I would have assumed are hard-liners who are kind of saying, 'You know what? Maybe it was a mistake for us to do the things that we've done over the last 40 years,'" Vance claimed. "You see people saying, 'Our relationship with the United States over the past 47 years has been a mistake. Let's turn over a new leaf.'"

Oh, is that what leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and apocalyptic Islamic Twelver clerics who executed tens of thousands of protesters a few months ago are saying? Vance's unctuous and naive attitude toward a terrorist regime that's been exporting violence, murdering and kidnapping Americans, and lying to the world about its nuclear ambitions for nearly 50 years has an uncanny resemblance to the rhetoric we heard from Barack Obama, John Kerry and Ben Rhodes.

It is also worth noting that while the American public had not seen the framework agreement, neither had Israel, which fought side by side with us. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who wouldn't even help the U.S. open the Strait of Hormuz, on the other hand, told CNN yesterday that he has seen the framework agreement, calling it "a game changer."

Makes you wonder how many other nations had seen the agreement before the American public.

(COMMENT, BELOW)


Previously:
06/12/26 Even Without His Controversies, Graham Platner Is Just a Lightweight Extremist
06/08/26 Southern Poverty Law Center's REAL scam
06/01/26 Dems Are in No Position to Lecture Anyone About Candidates
05/25/26 Jeff Bezos Is Right About Capitalism, Wrong About Taxes
05/11/26 Why Stay in NATO if Europe Isn't Willing to Help Us?
05/01/26 Nazi Tattoo? Hamas Defender? No Problem, Says Chuck Schumer, a self-styled defender of Jewish interests
04/24/26 James Madison Saw Abigail Spanberger Coming
04/20/26 Hey, Socialists, We've Already Figured Out the Supermarket
04/16/26 Argentina Is Booming -- Capitalism Remains Undefeated
04/13/26Everyone Knows What the Dems' AIPAC Obsession Is Really About
03/27/26 Trump's Iran Deal Must Be Nothing Like Obama's
03/24/26 Class-War Economics Is Counterproductive and Un-American
03/20/26 Paul Ehrlich is dead. Regrettably, his legacy isn't
03/13/26 When 'Islamophobia' Becomes a License to Lie
03/06/26 Trump eradicates 47 years of feckless foreign policy
03/02/26 What Trump Should Tell the American People About Iran
02/20/26 Yes, Dems are crazy
02/20/26 Obama Is in No Position to Lecture Us About Decency
02/13/26 Shut Up and Ski
02/06/26 Don't Cry for The Washington Post, It Helped Destroy Media
01/30/26 Price Controls Won't Work Any Better for Republicans Than It Does Dems
01/16/26 The Left's Silence on Iran Is NOT Hypocrisy
12/26/25: For JD Vance, Free Speech Only Means His Friends Can't Be Criticized
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