TEHRAN - Under Trump, America’s agreements increasingly appear conditional, reversible, and vulnerable to sudden policy shifts, raising fundamental questions about the credibility of U.S. commitments.
Chas Freeman, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and former assistant secretary of defense, said: “We’ve convinced the entire world that we don’t know what we’re doing, and we can’t be trusted, and we don’t keep our word, and we don’t even stay consistent from one day to the next. So how can you deal with us? That’s the question everybody has out there.”
American duplicity and betrayal intensified following the conclusion of the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding, signed on June 17, 2026, by Trump at the Palace of Versailles.
Pakistan, with the assistance of several regional countries, mediated the agreement. It was described as an initial accord intended to pave the way toward a broader, final agreement. The memorandum contained 14 provisions setting out the terms for an immediate ceasefire and mechanisms for negotiating a lasting peace.
Trump quickly reneged on his commitment to the memorandum. John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said in July 2026 that, from Iran’s perspective, the United States had failed to honor its commitments under the agreement.
“When we look at what is happening from the Iranian perspective… the Iranians [rightly] believe that the United States has failed to honor its commitments under the agreement,” he pointed out.
The Strait of Hormuz and oil-export waivers
Iran had several reasonable grounds for accusing Trump of failing to comply with the agreement. Provision 5 addressed what had replaced enriched uranium as a central focus of the illegal war: Iran’s position on shipping through the economically vital Strait of Hormuz.
The provision was understood to mean that Iran would lift its blockade while continuing to oversee and direct maritime traffic. When Iran took control of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz in March 2026, it replaced the pre-war shipping route, which ran through the middle of the strait, with another route directing vessels along its own coastline.
After the memorandum was signed, however, the Trump administration began directing ships onto a different route through Omani territorial waters. Following the ceasefire, there were three routes: one along the Omani coast, the central route used before the war, and one along the Iranian coast.
“We violated [the memorandum] by creating a southern corridor,” said retired U.S. Army Colonel Daniel Davis, host of the Deep Dive podcast, which focuses on geopolitical issues.
“There is nothing in the memorandum we signed that authorizes the creation of a southern corridor, or allows the United States to enter it and unilaterally determine how it should operate. It simply is not there in the memorandum.”
Davis, who returned from Afghanistan and exposed in 2012 how civilian and military officials had misled the public about the course of the war there, said the U.S. move in the Hormuz Strait was a deliberate provocation.
According to American writer Brian McGlinchey, author of the Stark Realities blog, whether intentional or not, it was indeed a provocation by the United States.
After issuing radio warnings to vessels attempting to use the southern route, Iran fired disabling projectiles at them. Trump then resumed his bombing campaign against Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate against U.S. forces and the countries hosting them. The Iranian armed forces subsequently began a prolonged cycle of retaliatory strikes.
Then there is Provision 10 of the memorandum, under which the Trump administration promised to issue sanctions waivers allowing Iranian oil and petroleum products to be exported without restrictions. Trump revoked the waivers on July 7, citing Iranian attacks on vessels that had failed to comply with its control over the Strait of Hormuz, a control that the United States had implicitly accepted under Provision 5.
Legitimizing Israeli occupation of Lebanon
Given its enormous importance to Iran, Provision 1 of the memorandum called for “the immediate and permanent cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon.” The provision did not specifically focus on Iran and the United States, but rather on their allies: Hezbollah, aligned with Iran, and Israel, America's staunchest ally in the world.
Nevertheless, the Zionist regime continued its aggression and the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure in southern Lebanon, on a scale comparable to what the regime's occupation forces had done in Gaza.
Some might argue that the United States was not in a position to impose the memorandum’s provisions on Israel. Even if that were true, Trump should not have signed a memorandum implicitly committing him to do so.
The Trump administration went a step further, taking measures to legitimize the Israeli regime's occupation of Lebanon.
“The memorandum stipulated that the Israelis had to leave Lebanon. We made no effort to achieve that. On the contrary, Marco Rubio mediated an agreement between the Lebanese government and Israel to jointly attack Hezbollah. What is that, then? At the very least, it was an unwise course of action,” Freeman pointed out.
More importantly, Trump’s conduct strengthens the credibility of the Iranian government and armed forces, who have long argued that Washington cannot be trusted and that negotiations should be backed up by military readiness.
The Saudi-U.S. nuclear deal
Trump’s repudiation of agreements has not been limited to adversaries of the United States who have been hit by his sudden reversals of terms he himself had accepted. Take Saudi Arabia for example.
On July 22, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, signed an agreement allowing the kingdom to build nuclear reactors and enrich uranium using American technology.
Both governments issued official statements, and the agreement was hailed as a victory for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The very next morning, Trump stunned, indeed, blindsided, the Saudis and his own officials with a social-media post adding a major condition retroactively: there would be no nuclear agreement unless Saudi Arabia joined the “Abraham Accords,” which entail recognizing the occupying regime's legitimacy and establishing formal diplomatic relations.
Trump’s demand that Saudi Arabia move closer to Israel comes at a time when Muslims in the kingdom and throughout the Islamic world are outraged by the regime's destruction of Gaza and southern Lebanon, making such a demand politically risky for the Saudi royal family.
Contrary to the agreement signed by his own energy secretary, Trump also suddenly announced that there would be no enrichment of nuclear material inside Saudi Arabia.
“Trump makes a deal, signs it, announces it, boasts about it, and within 24 hours radically changes its terms,” observed Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, on the Deep Dive podcast. “If this is what he will do to Saudi Arabia, a country with which the United States has extremely close relations… and with which the Trump family also has very close business ties, what will he do to Iran? How long is any U.S. commitment to Iran under Trump actually valid under any agreement?”
More recently, Ambassador Freeman told Colonel Davis: “We have convinced the entire world that we do not know what we are doing, that we cannot be trusted, that we do not keep our promises, and that we do not even maintain a consistent position from one day to the next. So how can anyone deal with us? That is the question everyone is asking.”
Alastair Crooke, a former British intelligence officer and diplomat, believes that American diplomacy may never return to what it was.
Summarizing the impact of Trump’s multi-front assault on confidence in the United States, Crooke said on Norwegian academic Glenn Diesen’s podcast: "I think the U.S. capacity to negotiate in the traditional diplomatic sense is over. I mean, we are in a new era!"
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