President Donald Trump signed a short-term agreement with Iran on Wednesday, and several Republican senators quickly said the deal gives Tehran too much immediate relief and too little control on the other side. The criticism landed at once on the part of the memorandum that would help create a $300 billion reconstruction fund and pledge to unfreeze $24 billion in Iranian assets.
That backlash matters because it came from some of Trump’s closest allies on the Hill, not from his usual opponents. Ted Cruz said he did not want to see the United States send a penny to the ayatollah, while Tom Cotton said he had concerns that parts of the deal were moving in the wrong direction and that the leverage built across six years should not be squandered.
The senators’ objections went beyond the money. Roger Wicker said the proposed $300 billion account would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison, and he said he opposed lifting sanctions, unfreezing Iranian assets or forcing Israel to stand down against Hezbollah. John Cornyn warned that the agreement could be remembered as a missed opportunity to eliminate the threat going forward.
The memorandum says the United States and Middle East partners would develop the reconstruction and economic development account, but Trump said Wednesday that the United States would not contribute to it. That leaves the central promise of the deal intact on paper and uncertain in practice: if Washington is not paying into the fund, the burden shifts elsewhere, even as Iran is still set to gain relief on oil revenues and access to frozen money.
The sharpest unresolved point is the Strait of Hormuz. The memorandum calls for its toll-free reopening, but senators said its future is unclear and could still open the door for Iran to impose fees for safe passage. Trump’s answer was terse: “We’re not putting up 10 cents,” he said, but that leaves the harder question of how much leverage the United States actually keeps if the agreement is implemented as written.
