The Iran Agreement Is Worse Than You Think

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Iran Agreement Is Worse Than You Think"

The Dispatch Podcast — June 18, 2026
Participants: Steve Hayes (Host), Jonah Goldberg, Mike Warren, Mike Nelson

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Overview

In this episode, the Dispatch team provides a sharp, in-depth critique of the recently announced Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the United States and Iran, which aims to end hostilities between the two nations. The roundtable analyzes whether the Trump administration achieved its stated objectives in the conflict, what the MoU actually delivers for U.S. national security, and the broader implications for regional stability, U.S. politics, and America’s alliances. Throughout, the tone is direct, skeptical, and frequently critical of both the deal and the political responses surrounding it.

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Main Theme

Thesis:
The Iran Memorandum of Understanding represents a strategic defeat for the United States, fails to meet even the Trump administration’s own shifting war objectives, and dangerously empowers Iran and its regional proxies—all while leaving U.S. allies exposed and U.S. credibility undercut at home and abroad.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Did the U.S. Achieve Its War Objectives?

• Mike Nelson: On the administration’s original goals (destroying Iranian ballistic missiles and navy, preventing a nuclear weapon, severing Iranian proxies):

  “Short answer is nothing.” (01:52)

• The objective of destroying Iran’s missile/naval capabilities was not achieved; significant military abilities remain.
• The MoU contains only “hollow promises”—returning conditions to worse than pre-war status, with new mechanisms benefiting Iran.

2. Shifting and Unclear Objectives

• The U.S. administration’s stated goals have moved throughout the conflict, often post hoc and reactive.
• Ballistic missile destruction began as a priority—later minimized or abandoned in public statements as reality fell short (06:35).

3. Trump’s Own Justifications and Spin

• Trump publicly claims success based on:
  • Reopening the Strait of Hormuz
  • A promise (deemed hollow) that Iran will not achieve nuclear weapons
  • Ending the conflict itself—framed as a chief accomplishment (05:04)
• Jonah Goldberg:

  “[He] went into the conflict to get an agreement to end the conflict.” (05:06)

• Trump changes tune, now dismisses the importance of limiting Iran’s missiles:

  “What am I supposed to do? Let Saudi Arabia have missiles but not Iran?... Missiles aren’t the problem. Missiles are...They hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.” (13:02)

4. Regional Alliances and Ramifications

• The shift in U.S. stance sours relationships with traditional allies—especially Saudi Arabia and Israel, with Trump treating Iran and Saudi as “morally equivalent.”
• The inclusion of Lebanon-specific provisions in the MoU is interpreted as explicit protection of Hezbollah, effectively curbing Israeli military freedom and binding non-signatory countries in ways the U.S. cannot actually enforce (27:29).
• Goldberg:

  “What the administration is doing here...is a major screwing over of Israel...” (31:07)

5. Financial Concessions to Iran

• The MoU proposes a $300B reconstruction fund and broad sanctions relief.
• Steve Hayes: The deal provides multiple mechanisms for Iran to benefit immediately and in the long term, with little effective oversight.
• Money, even if not “pallets of cash,” ends up fungible and accessible to Iranian proxy organizations.
• Mike Warren: On administration spin and dishonesty:

  “Throughout this entire process, the administration...has just been so incredibly dishonest and untrustworthy...” (23:51)

6. Enabling Iran’s Proxies

• The deal directly empowers Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies by removing restrictions and promising significant funding.
• The administration is seen as going beyond Obama-era “decoupling” of nuclear and proxy issues—now actively facilitating Iranian support for terror organizations. (34:07, 36:54)

7. Likely Non-Enforcement and Prolonged Uncertainty

• Several participants speculate the MoU will linger indefinitely, never solidifying into a binding treaty, as both sides simply extend its provisions for domestic political convenience.
• Trump’s main interest appears to be “getting a deal” and quickly moving on to other topics, especially as midterms approach.
• Nelson: “It's very likely that the President continues to say we're making progress … and that way he punts it down the road...” (41:22)
• Warren: “We can be assured that Trump is not going to be returning to any sort of military action in Iran.” (42:27)

8. Republican Political Response — Cowardice & Rationalization

• Most Republicans remain silent or rationalize the MoU, fearing political retaliation.
• Those not in full-throated support either blame advisers (not Trump directly) or hedge, hoping for course correction.
• Prominent sycophants (e.g., Hugh Hewitt) create sophisticated excuses, while critics remain largely on the margins (49:41, 54:03).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mike Nelson:
  “We've really accomplished nothing that we set out to do and instead have enabled, empowered, and created clear benefits for the Iranian regime.” (04:37)

• Jonah Goldberg:
  “He went into the conflict to get an agreement to end the conflict... That’s really a snake eating its own tail in terms of… grand statecraft.” (05:06, 05:13)

• Steve Hayes:
  “...the President wanted a deal and he wants a deal above sort of anything else... This is the worst possible negotiating position you can have.” (43:50)

• Jonah Goldberg, on the Lebanon provision:
  “This is a major screwing over of Israel and a major, major screwing over of Bibi Netanyahu... This is an attempt to bind countries that are not party to a treaty, to a treaty.” (31:07)

• Mike Nelson:
  “We are, with eyes wide open, greenlighting Iran to send money to Hezbollah. And I want to read something from an assessment from the Institute for the Study of War... [T]his is no exaggeration, no hyperbole. A pro terrorist memorandum of understanding.” (36:54)

• Mike Warren:
  “[The administration] essentially cannot be trusted without pressure to be honest about what it is they're negotiating, what it is their position is.” (23:51)

• Jonah Goldberg (on GOP reactions):
  “There are just the absolute head-past-the-sphincter ass kissers who, it doesn’t matter what Trump does, they will support it.” (49:41)

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Key Timestamps for Critical Segments

• War objectives and their non-achievement: 00:07 – 04:37
• Discussion on shifting, poorly articulated goals: 05:26 – 06:35
• Trump’s public statements about deal “accomplishments” and spin: 06:35 – 13:48
• On the missiles question (Trump’s reversal): 13:02 – 14:35
• Financial terms and their implications: 16:56 – 23:51
• Pro-Hezbollah language and its regional consequences: 27:29 – 36:54
• Empowering proxies and the “pro-terrorist” label: 36:54 – 40:22
• Speculation on the MoU becoming the new status quo: 40:22 – 43:50
• GOP rationalizations & media spin: 49:41 – 56:57

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Tone & Style

• Candid, at times caustic; informed by direct experience and a strong point of view.
• Unvarnished language (“ass kissers,” “snake eating its own tail”), often leavened with dark humor and inside references to prior policy debates.
• Sense of frustration—both with policy and the political theater surrounding it—pervades discussion, but participants occasionally allow for gallows laughter or self-deprecation.

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Not Worth Your Time: Father’s Day Festivities ([60:03]–[73:44])

• The team shifts to lighthearted reflection on Father’s Day traditions, personal memories, and dad advice in classic “not worth your time” Dispatch tradition.
• Notable advice:
  • Jonah: “The days are long but the years are short.... You can’t plan quantity time with your kids. You can only hope you happen to be with your kids when one of these moments that makes a real difference occurs.” (60:03)
  • Steve: Shares a heartfelt and humorous moment from a daughter's gift: “My favorite thing about my dad is he has big, big, big, big front teeth.” (69:45)
• The segment ends with recommendations for Father's Day reading (“The Dadly Virtues”) and some fun family brags.

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Conclusion

Summary:
The Iran MoU, as analyzed by the Dispatch team, is a sweeping capitulation that fails to achieve any substantive U.S. security objectives, dramatically enriches and empowers the Iranian regime and its proxies, and jeopardizes the security of U.S. allies—especially Israel. The administration’s shifting rhetoric and clear desire to “just get a deal” have left it open to manipulation, with little direct pushback from the GOP. The team expects the MoU to become the muddled status quo, with real costs and dangers deferred but not resolved.

Memorable closing:
"…you've heard that it was awful and it's much, much worse than you thought. But I'm glad we ended on a fun, positive note." (Steve Hayes, 73:44)

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For further reading:
See the show notes for links to "The Dadly Virtues" and articles referenced throughout the episode.

Transcript

[Unknown Speaker]

Foreign.

[Steve Hayes]

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, we'll look at the Memorandum of Understanding, ending the hostilities between the United States and Iran, taking a hard look at the actual text of the deal and assessing whether the administration has achieved any of its original war goals. Then we'll look ahead at what the deal means for the region, for the future of the Trump administration, and most importantly, what it means for US national security, following what was surely a strategic defeat. And finally, for not worth your time, Father's Day festivities. I'm joined today by my Dispatch colleagues Jonah Goldberg and Mike Warren, and Dispatch contributor Mike Nelson. Let's dive right in. Mike Nelson, in virtually every one of the conversations that we've had about the Iran war and a perspective effective deal over the course of the past several months, you have brought us back to sort of first objectives. What are we trying to do here? Let's start by taking the administration's stated objectives. And as we've said many times, that wasn't easy to do from the beginning because the objectives were shifting, sometimes they were unstated, what have you. Let's start by taking the administration and giving it sort of the best case. Let's let them make their best case scenario looking at those objectives that eventually became the objectives of this war. I would say post hoc. What have we achieved, as reflected in this memo of understanding released over the weekend that we've been discussing over the past several days?

[Mike Nelson]

Well, short answer is nothing.

[Steve Hayes]

That was the best case scenario. We're doing our best to give them the benefit of the doubt to start. And Mike's answer was nothing.

[Mike Nelson]

Right. And again, we can grade it against their own words. So as you pointed out, at the outset of the war, it was pretty muddled. Why now and what we were trying to accomplish. Why did this have to happen and why didn't it have to happen at the end of February, in a couple days of confusion, the White House put up a website kind of trying to counter that narrative. I think it's titled like the Clear and Unequivocal and Unchanging Goals, trying to claim that they had been consistent. The week leading up to website. It was at the beginning of March they posted this and they basically posted a series of public comments that had been made by the president himself, members of the administration, that highlighted what they were trying to accomplish. And there are several in there. Destruction of the ballistic missile capability, destruction of the Iranian navy. Iran can never achieve a nuclear weapon. Severing the links between Iran and its Regional terror proxies. I do think we have to count, even though the administration tried to distance themselves from this, I do think we have to count the statements that the President made to the Iranian people, that their hour of liberation was at hand, that help was on the way. So if we take all those, obviously we have attrited the ballistic missile capability but not destroyed it, and we'll come back to that. We have done significant damage to the Iranian Navy, but they still are able to interdict maritime traffic. They can still project effects into the maritime domain, as we see in the Strait of Hormuz and everything else. Not only have we not achieved, but we've seen the President in the past 24 to 48 hours seem to endorse Iran, defeating us in these capabilities. He said that they need to retain the right of self defense through their ballistic missile capabilities because it's not fair that they don't have it. He has said that there's no real point in trying to secure the highly enriched uranium, that it's not worth that much. So what's the point anyway? And you know, we have, at the end of this, you know, through the Vice President's own articulation of why he thinks this is great. Two, what they're trying to spin is quantifiable achievements. One is reopening the Strait of Hormuz. One is a promise that they will never achieve a nuclear weapon. The second one is largely mirroring the hollow promise that was in jcpoa. And the first one just returns us not even to what we were on the 27th of February when there was a free flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. But it also, in the explicit language of the MoU, sets up conditions for this tolling mechanism between the Iranians and the Omanis. So it's worse than it was on the 27th. So bringing us all back to we've really accomplished nothing that we set out to do and instead have enabled, empowered, and created clear benefits for the Iranian regime.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yeah, Mike, just one correction, because yesterday Trump said this deal accomplishes my three goals. And two of the ones are the ones you mentioned, right? Opening the Strait of Hormuz and getting a promise about the nuclear weapon thing. Right. But the other one, which is my favorite of the three goals that he says that's why they got into the war was he says, the reason I signed this is because it accomplished my goal of ending the conflict.

[Mike Nelson]

Right.

[Jonah Goldberg]

So he went into the conflict to get an agreement to end the conflict.

[Mike Warren]

Art of the deal, baby.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yeah, I mean, that's really a snake eating its own tail in terms of, like, grand statecraft.

[Mike Nelson]

But anyway, I mean, that's not entirely a bad way of looking at certain things. When I start a marathon, my whole goal is to get it over with fair and to be done with it.

[Steve Hayes]

So, Jonah, something else you've pointed out in internal dispatch conversations and on social media is the extent to which the administration at the beginning really emphasized destroying Iran's ballistic missile capability. In part, I think they did that, as we've discussed several weeks ago, because in those first days when various administration officials said, in effect, Israel drew us into this war, we're in this war because Israel saw an imminent threat, and we did this kind of on behalf of Israel. There was Marco Rubio's much debated comments to that effect. And the reason Israel had argued to the administration behind the scenes was because the Iranians were accelerating production of ballistic missiles, growing their capability in a way that would have at one point overwhelmed Israeli missile defenses. You have pointed out that they are no longer talking about how important it is to have destroyed and eliminated Iran's ballistic missile capability. Is that just a practical reality? Because they haven't done it. Now they're trying to spin it.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yeah. So, I mean, also, I have to say, like, I went back and I looked at. They're still up all on the White House and the State Department websites, all of the public statements, transcripts, addresses explaining what the goals of the war were. And even some of the ones that, you know, Mike mentioned, I still think they were kind of pretextual insofar as, like, the idea that they went into this war to sink Iran's navy and destroy its air force, I don't quite buy. I think, look, I know all in favor of sinking their navy and destroying their air force, but it was a way to sort of retroactively say, this is something we've accomplished. So we're gonna say it was one of the goals. But as you were alluding to, what was a real goal was this ballistic missile thing, particularly the short range ballistic missile thing. And this was like the smart, sophisticated argument that the administration made when people were like, what the hell? Like, what's going on? Why are we doing this right now? Why do we have to do this right now? You know, are we doing this for Israel? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Rubio gave the best version of it, which is, and it was a persuasive argument, is that at some point Iran could have enough missiles, but also drones so that they could overwhelm the interceptor systems of Israel, but also Gulf allies. And once it reached that tipping point, it's sort of like trading bullets. But if I have 100 bullets and you have 50 bullets, I'm gonna win eventually, right? And so they said we had to stop them from reading, reaching that threshold. And the whole argument about how we had to join in with Israel was basically that Israel has always said, if Iran gets to that tipping point, we're gonna have to do something about it. And they were getting to that tipping point. And then there were all these other ancillary and additional arguments about Abrah. But Rubio was very effective about it. He did it in congressional testimony, he did it in press conferences.

[Mike Nelson]

He did it.

[Jonah Goldberg]

And this is all from March 2. Marco Rubio said, the United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran's short range ballistic missiles. The purpose of this is to destroy that missile capability. Our mission, our focus is the destruction of their ballistic missile capabilities. The objective of this mission is the destruction of their ballistic missile capabilities. I'm telling you what the objectives of this operation are. The objectives of this operation are to destroy their ballistic missile capabilities and make sure they can't rebuild it and make sure they can't hide behind that, to have a nuclear program. That's the objective of this mission. Now Trump is saying what it's like, so unfair. I gotta tell the Iranians they can't have ballistic missiles. And then he said, I think, which is not getting nearly enough press here, but I guarantee you, they heard it in Saudi Arabia. He said, what am I supposed to do? Let Saudi Arabia have missiles but not Iran? The Saudis are like, well, first of all, who are you to let us do anything? And second of all, yeah, because you told us we're your allies and we've agreed for the last decade with you that Iran is our existential enemy. And now you're treating us as. That we're morally equivalent in your eyes. That's a huge problem in all of this. And it is just a classic example of Trump completely. Either you can call it Taco, or you can just call it, you know, going with his instincts. And the thing that is amazing about this is the way he is disparaging the people who are making to support the administration. They were making, I don't know, the Hugh Hewitt's. You can go down a long list of people. I know, 50 senators, 40 senators were saying things like, we have to deny them the ballistic missile capability. They were echoing the administration's talking points on this on a whole host of other things, can't let them have all this money, whatever. And now he is saying, literally, he said yesterday in France, I don't think these people are very smart. You know, they're telling me that Iran can't have ballistic missiles. You know, I just don't think they're smart people. Or the, as he said about hurting the global economy, a talking point that Trump infuriated Republicans making about how he doesn't care about the economy, doesn't care about affordability, doesn't care about gas prices. All he cares about is denying them a nuclear weapon, saying that going into the midterms, he's now saying only dumb people would be willing to risk the harms to the economy as he caves on opening the Strait of Hormuz. And he just throws everybody who was loyally following his script under the bus. And I guess the most remarkable commentary on human nature is how many of them act as if they're grateful for it. I mean, how many of them just sort of take the punishment, are not pissed? I mean, some are, clearly, but a lot of them, more of them are just sort of scapegoating and saying, oh, it was Vance's fault, and saying, the President is still a genius.

[Steve Hayes]

So, Jonah, I want to get to that clip. We're going to play that clip because I think it's important. But there was this moment after Trump signed the physical copy of this memorandum of understanding in Versailles, where I guess

[Jonah Goldberg]

a Yalta wasn't available, but anyway, I'm sorry, go on.

[Steve Hayes]

He signs it with a flourish. He gets a round of applause and an enthusiastic handshake from Emmanuel Macron, the French leader. And then Trump does this thing that I don't think has been much picked up. He uses hand gestures and points, sort of does a roller coaster gesture. Oil down, stocks up. That's what he said when he finished signing the treaty. So he wanted to get to the end of this. And while he said, as you pointed out several times over the past few weeks, he doesn't care about the economy, what really matters is protecting the American people. The first thing he said upon signing this was, oil down, stocks up. I want to play this clip because Jonah mentioned that Trump has sort of flipped on the ballistic missile question. There's no question that he has, but I think sometimes you have to hear it in the President's own words. Jonah, read to us all of these times that Marco Rubio and others had said that it was.

[Jonah Goldberg]

That's just a fraction of the times.

[Mike Nelson]

Right?

[Steve Hayes]

Right. Were a key part of understanding the objectives of the war. As he says, this happened many, many other times. There was a point in those early days as they were struggling to articulate the broad range of objectives. Imminent threat hadn't worked. All of these ending nuke program hadn't worked where they seemed to settle on ballistic missiles as the primary objective. Let's play the President's clips from yesterday with Howard Lutnick to his left and Marco Rubio standing looking very uncomfortable to his right.

[Unknown Speaker]

So we'll be working on a parallel effort with the Gulf nations to address non nuclear issues such as the conventional ballistic missiles which we'll be talking about and support. I mean, they have to have some because other people have some. You got to have some. Somebody said you shouldn't give them one. I mean, I have guys, I like some of these guys, but I don't think this, I don't think they're smart, sir, you shouldn't let them have any missile. I said, well, what am I going to do? I got to let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but they can't have them. Yes, sir, can't. Doesn't work that way. You know, it doesn't work that way. And missiles aren't the problem. Missiles are. They hurt a little location, but they don't blow up the planet.

[Jonah Goldberg]

For those who didn't see the video, Marco Rubio and Howard Lutnick were behind him. And Lutnick is just giddy because he just, he just likes being at the party.

[Mike Nelson]

He's happy to be there.

[Jonah Goldberg]

But Marco Rubio was quietly dying inside.

[Steve Hayes]

Yes. And it's evident from the video. Mike, I want to ask you a question about his logic on the missiles. He said these are non nuclear questions, you know, and as Jonah pointed out, they have to have nukes because other countries have nukes. Couldn't use the exact same logic about nukes, about the things that will blow up the planet. Mike Nelson, President Trump says that it's appropriate for Iran to retain ballistic missile capability because others have ballistic missile capability. I mean, that's the full breadth of his argument. Couldn't you make the same case on nukes?

[Mike Nelson]

Well, I think it kind of goes to a point that Jonah was making earlier. The President doesn't seem to understand or view countries as inherently villainous or virtuous. And beyond that, even if there are equal parties, he doesn't see a distinction sometimes, or doesn't seem to between our allies and our adversaries. We don't want a level playing field between a country that is nominally our ally in Saudi Arabia. And it has its own inherent flaws in the way it governs its domestic population. But they are on our side. They're in our tent. As opposed to a country that has demonstrated their willingness to disrupt the region, to threaten their allies, to use these missiles against civilian infrastructure, both in forms of oil infrastructure, desalination plants, civilian airports, and against our own forces. So we should not want them to have this capability. And as Jonah pointed out, as Marco said, the one clear articulation as to why now at the beginning of the war was the pace at which they were producing them. So even if you think they are going to retain some capability, there should be a limitation on them so that they don't outstrip the interceptors that exist in theater. I don't think he's looking at it in terms of an actual articulation of the way he views equality between nations, but more as a backwards justification for, I don't want to deal with this anymore. So I'm going to find this good way to justify it. If this is something that has been too much of a difficulty to negotiate, then I'm going to say they can have them and it's fair because everybody's got them. But it goes back to the comment he made on Morning Joe when he was running for president the first time. Russia kills journalists, Russia assassinates dissidents. And he says, yeah, so what? We kill people too. There's no distinction between countries. He doesn't see a matter of the cause of right and not. And it seems to be that he's doing this to bolster the country that is, you know, our great adversary in the region. I think it's also pretty striking that he is making the case for Iran's inherent right to defend itself against the aggressive nation of Saudi Arabia. But at the same time he is negating Israel's right to defend itself against actual threats of drones and missiles that are striking them on a daily basis from Hezbollah. He's reprimanding Netanyahu when they conduct these self defense strikes. And inherent in the language of the MoU is codifying protection, extending that blanket of protection to Hezbollah, the very terror proxies he's saying. I think in his articulation he said, we don't want that stuff.

[Steve Hayes]

Mike Warren, I want to talk about money here. There are four, as I count them, provisions of this 14 point memo of understanding that deal directly with the money that Iran is going to receive, in some cases either the money or the sanctions relief, in some cases, upon the signing now, this is all happening because the thing has been signed by the President of the United States. Did I mention at Versailles? Bullet point 6. The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It should be noted that when this was floated initially, the administration and its supporters strenuously denied that there would be any such provision included in the Memo of Understanding. It should also be noted that some of this was misreported and Democrats have tried to make hay of that particular provision by making it sound like the United States is going to effectively cut a check to Iran for $300 billion. That is not happening. At least that's not what the Memo of Understanding says. But there is this clause that talks about a plan for a fund for reconstruction. 7. The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including UN Security Council, I. E. Board of Governors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Bullet point 10. The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of this MOU and until the termination of sanctions, the US Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of uranium, crude oil, petroleum products, derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, et cetera. Number 11. The United States undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran under the implementation of this mou. On and on, Iran gets its money. Some debate about how much money that is, but it's a lot of money. Mike, what's your understanding of why these provisions were included? After we've heard from Republicans generally and Trump administration officials specifically, that money is fungible. You can't provide or free up money for this regime because they will use it for all sorts of bad deeds, as we've seen over the course of 47 years.

[Mike Warren]

Why is it in this MoU? I mean, I think we can, you know, attribute it to the same reason why, you know, the President is saying that, you know, ridding Iran of its ballistic missiles program is okay now, even though just a few months ago or even a few weeks ago, this was still a top objective for the administration. It's, you know, flowing from the President's own kind of mantra or his own sort of M.O. in these kinds of negotiations, which is to get a deal. And this is clearly something that was a non negotiable on the part of the Iranians. And so he's essentially giving up. Look, yes, as far as we know now, there are no pallets of cash being delivered from the Americans, you know, because of this mou. And it's important to know that you, you read out the various points in this. In point 11, talking about making fully available those frozen or restricted funds. The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during negotiations. Mike Nelson in his piece for us noted that actually it's sort of an inversion. The devil is not in the details, but in sort of the big picture of this mou. But I do think actually on the money front, the devil will be in the details. And the fact that a lot of this is still sort of up for negotiation. These, these kind of details are actually important and we are at a point now where that's going to be hammered out in these negotiations that are coming as a result of this memorandum of understanding. I think it's really important for us to first obviously watch closely and continue in the press, to continue to ask questions as those negotiations are going on, but also to remember that throughout this entire nearly week long saga of hearing about this mou, not having the text of it until pressure came from the American media and others and folks on Capitol Hill to release it, the administration has just been so incredibly dishonest and untrustworthy about anything. And I know we want to talk about the money here, but I just think it's an important thing to keep in mind that actually when you drill down and ask questions about the details that the administration essentially cannot be trusted without pressure to be honest about what it is. They're negotiating what it is. Their position is. JD Vance in particular has been pretty awful on this front. Before the MOU was actually released, there were a couple of leaks. There were draft, a draft version of the MoU was getting out there and people were saying this is what it is, this draft reflects what's going to be in the final. These are these problems. And JD Vance accused people of, you know, trumpeting IRGC propaganda, accused American media and Israeli media of, of essentially lying about what was in this. And of course what turned out to be the case is that the actual as released by the US government MOU, 14 point MOU is pretty much exactly on track with the draft. There are some specific and important, and I don't mean to say insignificant differences in the language, which by the way, Mike Nelson sort of deals with in his piece as well. But throughout this entire process, the administration and particularly JD Vance was saying this is lies, what you're seeing. You saw Stephen Cheung, a White House communications director, saying these are lies what you're seeing here being reported in the news media. And turned out they. No, they weren't lies. It was congruous in a lot of times, the exact language of what the administration actually finally released. So, yeah, the devil is in the details. And we should keep pressing and pushing and asking questions and demanding clarification as these negotiations go on, because I think that what we will continue to see going back to the money is, yeah, right now there is nothing in this MOU that suggests America writing a check. But we hear the same thing about, say, the East Wing Ballroom, right. That, that that was going to be donated by private donations and not from through taxpayer money. And of course, once we got the details, we know that that's no longer the case, that they are actually intending to use taxpayer money for that renovation. I would say don't trust and verify should be our approach here.

[Steve Hayes]

All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be back soon with more from the Dispatch podcast. Running a small business means constantly balancing priorities. As the CEO and editor of the Dispatch, I have responsibilities on both the editorial and business sides of our operation. So I need tools that help us simplify what we do and streamline our workflow. Improving how your business runs day to day is something you can manage. That's why I think Gusto is a smart tool to look into. It helps simplify payroll in hr, cuts down on repetitive admin tasks, and gives you more space to focus on your team, your customers, and growing your business. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly, and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire onboard, and support your team from anywhere. Get direct access to certified HR experts who can support you through any tough situation, and enjoy a quick, seamless switch to Gusto by simply transferring your existing data. Plus, you won't pay a cent until you run your first payroll. Try gusto [e-mail] dispatch and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free [e-mail] dispatch one more time, gusto.com dispatch and we're back. You're listening to the Dispatch podcast. Let's jump in, Jonah. One of the things that Mike pointed out were these small additions between what was initially reported, I think, by Bloomberg and CNN as the text of the MoU, and then what was subsequently actually read out to reporters. By the White House. We should point out that while there was a lot of debate in the first few days after this deal was announced about the text and whether we'd see the actual text and what have you, the administration eventually had a senior official read the actual text to reporters. So now what we're talking about is the actual text that is agreed upon by everybody involved. There's nobody's disputing what this is, which was an interesting few days. Why would they not want to release the text? I think now that it's been released, we can see why they wouldn't want to release the text. But one of the things that was added to the text at the last minute were these provisions, or at least one particular provision about Lebanon. And it was added to the very first paragraph. And in effect, what it says is, Lebanon will not be part of this war. There won't be any fighting in Lebanon. The signatories agree that the war won't continue in Lebanon. There's massive ambiguity about whether that means Israel or the United States. Israel's not a signatory to this. Benjamin Netanyahu has told President Trump he won't be bound by whatever Trump signs here. Israel has been attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon for weeks and weeks, trying to destroy one of Iran's chief. I'd say at this point, it's chief terrorist proxy. And the administration agrees to this, the inclusion of this language on Lebanon. Can you give me, first of all, anything you want to say about that inclusion and about the. The sort of sloppy language? We'd be eager to hear it. But then more specifically, can you give me any reason that the Iranians would work so hard to include this language about no attacks, no action in Lebanon other than to protect Hezbollah?

[Jonah Goldberg]

Oh, well, okay, I'll get to that one, because the way you ended the question is really easy. But I do want to add onto something that Mike Warren was talking about just very quickly. I think the most plausible explanation for the lies and the dissembling, not just from Vance and Trump, but also Stephen Cheung and all these people who are saying, oh, all this reporting on what's in the text is wrong, is because I think they were holding out hope that they would never have to release the text, which was, if true, would be astounding, because there's almost no other explanation for why Vance would go around lying so much about something that he knew was going to be coming out in 24:48, 72 hours to prove him a liar. Right. I mean, it just makes no sense. I mean, like rubio's strategy of saying nothing makes a lot more sense. Okay. Putting that aside, I think the biggest poison pill. Let me put it this way. Other than green lighting, reconstruction fronts for a regime that is not, you know, like Trump also says, it's not a fanatical regime anymore. They're rational. He likes talking to them. They're good people. You actually had some people saying on background and also, you know, Vance basically saying as much that you have to understand that, like, we're all bros now. Like, these are good folks we're gonna grill out. You know, like the mullahs. They're awesome now, right?

[Mike Warren]

They've changed their tune. You know, that's what Vance was saying.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And it really.

[Jonah Goldberg]

And like the actual. There were actual administration officials who told Elena Treen from cnn, when the text actually comes out, you shouldn't overread it. It's a political document. We had to say certain things in the document to help the Iranians get political cover at home. Because, you know, in a Islamic fanatical, totalitarian country, you know, all politics is local, man. Right. I mean, it's just. It's such unrefined horse crap. Right? But there was this real effort to say, look, you know, it's very Obama esque, right? It is saying we're opening a fist and extending a hand to welcome Iran into the community of nations and we're going to kick the can on a nuclear program so that at minimum, it'll be a future president's problem. But really the hope is, and Vance basically says this, that Iran is gonna realize that we're all cool now. And besides, the real goal is to get them to join the Abraham Accords. And my real goal is to get bears to stop using our forest as toilets. Right? The idea that that's going to happen is just the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So. All right, so anyway, the Lebanon thing is huge, supremely important, because it's not so much. Yes, Iran definitely wants to protect Hezbollah. That is one of the last places it can project power beyond its borders. And Hezbollah is also about messing around with Israel. And obviously the Iranians love that. But part of it is this is the way to separate the United States from. From Israel. And Iran knows this. They've been testing this. This is their playbook. We've already seen it happening, right? Israel attacks Hezbollah in response to attacks, right? I mean, like, Hezbollah launched some rockets at some school buses, right? I mean, like, they were attacking Israel. Israel responds. And as since time immemorial, the Way the mainstream media covers it, the way critics of Israel covered, is Israel attacks Lebanon, right? Unprovoked attack, breaks ceasefire. It's never Israel responds to attack that broke ceasefire. And so Israel cannot, no prime minister of Israel can blindly accept as a matter of policy that they will not respond to terrorist attacks on Israelis ad infinitum for all time. They just can't do it. Like, yeah, every now and then there are these moments where Condoleezza Rice or Trump or somebody calls Bibi and says, can you cool your jets right now? Or like during the first Gulf War, don't respond to the Scuds. We got this big coalition, we're gonna take care of Saddam, blah, blah, blah, blah. But as a general matter, they can't, as a matter of policy, just say we don't have the right to retaliate to attacks on Israeli citizens. So what happens now is Hezbollah can start testing a little bit, but eventually it's going to attack Israel. Israel is going to respond. Iran is going to say Israel's violating the ceasefire, Strait of Hormuz is closed again, and Trump is going to blame Israel. That's the strategy. And the media climate will go with it. It will have the wind at its back. That's why Israelis feel so betrayed. The operation in Lebanon is very popular in Israel because they know what Hezbollah is. Moreover, what the administration is doing here, it's trying to legally bind both Israel and Lebanon because the Lebanese government doesn't like Hezbollah. And they've been told by this administration, do something about Hezbollah. And now they're told, no, don't do something about Hezbollah. And the biggest problem here is Trump wants to send this to the UN to be ratified by the Security Council, which will mean that if Israel responds disproportionately or whatever to Hezbollah attacks, which will be prompted by Iran, if it responds to them, it'll be violating a U.N. you know, resolution and get itself even more crosswise with the international community. Maybe, like, prompt peacekeepers and all that kind of BS talk. But this is a major screwing over of Israel and a major, major screwing over of Bibi Netanyahu, who, like, is just is. I mean, like, I wrote a G file about this this week. I think Bibi in some ways deserves it. When you put all of your faith and trust in Donald Trump, you deserve to have the universe kick you in the nethers, because it will eventually. But this is an attempt to bind countries that are not party to a treaty, to a treaty or to a agreement. And Israel cannot, over the long haul agree to this. And Iran knows that and is going to test this once it gets enough money and rebuilt to try to separate even further Israel from America. It's already separated from the Democratic Party in America. This could be part of a major operation psyop, you know, like operation to get it separated from both parties. And that's one of the reasons why a lot of the Israel haters love this deal so much.

[Mike Warren]

And can I say real quickly that while we're talking about objectives that the administration has been saying, you know, were the goals of this war, one of them, of course, sever Iran's support for terrorist proxies. This is a lifeline in so many ways to the most important Iranian terrorist proxy left after so many of them have been. Have been eliminated or decapitated.

[Steve Hayes]

Yeah, Mike Nelson, I think Jonah explained the strategic inclusion of this provision. I mean, there's also, I think, a reason that this is the very first paragraph. Jonah explained the strategic inclusion of this very well. I want to focus on Hezbollah specifically. If you go back to the, you referenced earlier, the jcpoa, that was the Obama administration's Iran deal. The main criticism of hawks, including me. Well, one of the many criticisms of hawks, including me, was that the Obama administration pursued a policy of decoupling. They said, in effect, we are going to negotiate only on the nuclear issues and we are going to separate the nuclear issues from anything and everything else from Iran's treatment of its own people, from the nature of the regime, from its use of terrorist proxies in the region and beyond to extend its power. I thought that was disastrous to do that because I think, in effect, it allowed those proxies to grow and to strengthen. I think if you look at this provision of this Memorandum of Understanding, what the Trump administration is doing here is worse. It's not just sort of ignoring the terrorist proxies. By including this paragraph, it is protecting Hezbollah. It is, in effect, empowering Hezbollah. Add this to the money paragraphs that we talked about moments earlier. The administration is, with eyes wide open, greenlighting Iran to send money to Hezbollah. And I want to read something from an assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, your old colleagues there. First, just for context, they point out that Iran has likely sent Hezbollah $1 billion between the 2024 war and the 2026 war. One billion with a B dollars has gone from Iran to Hezbollah. At a time when Iran was tightly sanctioned, restricted by international actors, they still managed to send, according to ISW, $1 billion to Hezbollah. This is their assessment of this part of the deal, and I'm going to read it exactly, quote, Iran will likely use renewed economic access under the MoU to reconstitute members of the axis of resistance, particularly Hezbollah, during the 60 day negotiation period. Iran has already told Hezbollah that Iran will increase its funding as soon as possible once the United States unfreezes Iranian assets. This is no exaggeration, no hyperbole. A pro terrorist memorandum of understanding. Am I overstating?

[Mike Nelson]

Not at all. First of all, I think we need to address the scope and scale. Like you said, we are removing any and all restrictions from what Iran can do with their money that they're going to get through the various buckets here in, in addition to what they already have, in addition to the upfront oil revenues they're going to get from us, removing our sanctions or providing waivers for those sanctions, in addition to the access to their unfrozen funds that may look like pallets of cash, depending on how those are delivered or honored, they are at the end of this, assuming that there is some kind of final settlement, as we've addressed, they're going to get access to that guaranteed $300 billion fund. And we don't actually know where that's going to come from. As several people have pointed out, the President has spoken on behalf of Qatar, giving money orders of magnitude beyond their gdp, both in terms of investment in the United States and apparently contributing to this. I don't think it's out of the realm of possible that we end up providing some of those funds if it comes to fruition. But when we talk about the size of this, if you were to put the Marshall Fund into today's dollars, this is twice as large as what was contributing to rebuild Europe after World War II, which comes out to about $150 billion in today's money. So this is a massive influx of cash that they're going to use to rebuild their missiles, to potentially restart whatever is allowed under their nuclear program at the final settlement, and moreover, to fund their terrorist proxies. Now, as you point out, decoupling was a massive disaster. The regime's primary concern is and always has been regime survival. And a lot of things are done as strategic deterrence to try to prevent interference with their survival. The nuclear program. If they get that, if they get a nuclear weapon, it's probably not primarily going to be used as an offensive capability, but likely going to be used as a trump card to prevent anything else that they interference with, anything else that they would do. The regional proxies are Also part of that extended umbrella of deterrence that if previously thought before October 7th, if anybody interfered with the Iranian nuclear research program, that has all it would bring rockets down on Tel Aviv, that that was the, the deterrent from Israel taking action. In the aftermath of October 7, Israel now faced an existential threat and had to deal with some of these threats. Hezbollah a year ago was at its lowest point. The leadership had been taken out largely through the deeper campaign of the Israelis. In addition to other strikes that were related to the responses to October 7, Hezbollah had taken significant casualties fighting on behalf of Assad in the Syrian civil war. And there was some resentment where Hezbollah felt like in their efforts to sponsor these Iranian umbrella efforts had taken their licks and had not been properly supported. So that linkage was at its most frayed a year ago. We have not only, you know, created the tendrils that will allow that to be reinforced, we've allowed them to show on the world stage, we have your back, we are going to back you up. And you know, if the Iranians goal of green lighting October 7th was to try to drive a wedge between Israel and the rest of the region to sever the good work that had been done at the Abraham Accords, we are going to have the reverse effect at the end of this. Israel will be marginalized and Iran's regional ties will actually be strengthened. So we are, you know, from October 7th to a year ago, we and our Israeli allies had really taken advantage of the response to that attack and put the Iranians in their proxies on their back foot. We have undone almost all of that good work and actually given them an advantage.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Steve, can I hijack and ask a question of everybody, please? I am increasingly of the mind that we will never see a final agreement, that the MoU will get extended just it'll become the status quo. Trump doesn't want to talk about this anymore. He's gonna move on to something else. He's gonna make it about some, you know, some issue that helps him more, that galvanizes Republicans for the midterms. And since he knows, and certainly Marco Rubio knows, he's not gonna get a great final agreement or nevermind an actual treaty that would have to be sent before the Senate. So this is it. This is just like it. It's just going to be like the status quo forever. That's. I'm not 100% persuaded of that, but I am. My confidence level is pretty high. Does anybody disagree? Am I missing something?

[Mike Nelson]

I think it's a 50, 50 in the MoU, it says that this, basically the conditions that exist under this 60 days can be extended ad infinitum by mutual assent. And I think it's very likely that the President continues to say we're making progress, the uraniums are really helping us out. And that way he punts it down the road and he never has to discuss. I also think baked into the MOU are the seeds for what might be a really bad final agreement that he feels he doesn't need to talk about. We talk about down blending already, so that might already be dealt with. We talk about retaining the nuclear program at status quo. So he might be able to say, with the promise, it's good enough. I got what Obama never did, even though it's exactly what Obama did. Maybe there are some promises of inspections, maybe there aren't. But I think at the end of the day, it's going to be whatever the Iranians actually want to have happen, whether their extension of the current status quo under this 60 day period is in their advantage or whether coming up with some kind of weak agreement because whatever it is that they don't want, they'll threaten to walk away from the table and rethreaten maritime traffic. And I think he'll agree to either one.

[Mike Warren]

Jonah, I'm, I'm increasingly where you are and I, but I do think one thing that we can almost surely take to the bank is that these threats that Trump has made that, you know, hey, if they're in violation of what MOU of a deal that eventually, you know, comes, whether or not it actually comes, you know, that we can go back to raining bombs down right on their heads, the Iranians, as opposed what Trump has said this week, that's not going to happen. I think we can be assured that Trump is not going to be returning to any sort of military action in Iran. I don't know if you agree with that, Mike Nelson. I just think where he is politically and why punting this every 60 days is the most likely is because for Trump, this did not go as well as it went militarily. This did not go the way he thought it would, as it did in Venezuela. And his top priority at this point is what you referenced, Steve. Right. It's about the stock market, it's about oil prices, it's about, you know, economic material concerns. And I think the Iranians know that Trump is not coming back in to enforce any sort of violation on their part of, of whatever agreement or, or under memorandum of understanding is signed here

[Mike Nelson]

just to respond to your question, to me, I completely agree. No matter what, there will not be a return to military action, no matter what the President says.

[Steve Hayes]

So I agree largely with Joan. I think that's the most likely outcome. And the challenge is the President of the United States. I mean, we've been talking about this for a while on this podcast. It's been very obvious the President wants a deal and he wants a deal above sort of anything else. And if you look at just his public facing rhetoric, setting aside for a minute, whatever his negotiators are saying in these conversations, he's downplayed Iranian attacks on Israel. Ah, small attack, who cares? Netanyahu shouldn't be upset, didn't kill anyone. He's minimized the importance of highly enriched uranium and the United States getting its hands on it, taking it out of the country. When he said it's not worth much, which somebody made reference to a little bit earlier, what was so interesting was both the fact that he said, eh, not a big deal, we don't really need the enriched uranium, it's not worth much. But then it was how he was thinking about its worth. He said, it's not worth much, maybe a half a million dollars. He's thinking about it literally in dollars and cents, actually. Like that's what he said. He's dismissed the prospective threat from ballistic missiles, which as we've pointed out here, was arguably the number one cause for the war in the first place. At the beginning of this, he has mischaracterized the nature of the regime. He has literally again called them smart. He said, this is a new Iranian regime. He is basically doing PR for Khamenei's son Mujtaba and the IRGC folks who are now putatively, or at least de facto in charge of Iran. And he's shrugged off the lethality of Iranian proxies. I mean, this is what the President has said in the lead up to and in the defense of this Memorandum of Understanding, which merely sets up the, this 60 day period of negotiation. So everybody in the world knows that all he wants is a deal. I mean, that is a, you know, for the guy who wrote or had somebody ghostwrite on his behalf this book, the Art of the Deal. This is the worst possible negotiating position you can have because of what he said publicly, to say nothing of the actual physical written text of the Memorandum of Understanding. So I think it makes it very likely, Jonah, to your point, that there won't be an actual deal here because, you know, they've got them over, over A barrel, as it were. I will say I. I disagree slightly with both of the mics on the question of military action. I don't think it's probable, I don't think it's likely. But it's not hard to imagine a point at which Trump is so thoroughly humiliated by this, where if Hezbollah goes too far. I agree entirely with Jonah's framing about the Hezbollah trigger here, what it's likely to do to Trump and Iran or Trump and Israel.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Excuse me.

[Steve Hayes]

I think that is likely one reason for the inclusion of this on the Iranian part, why they pushed for it as much, aside from just protecting Hezbollah. I do see a scenario where things get so bad and Trump is so thoroughly humiliated that he decides not to just respond and not to just do targeted strikes. But he actually considers the sort of civilization destroying strikes that he's raised in his threats over this, which I think would be, you know, potentially catastrophic for everything we've seen. The one question, that final point I'll make, and I'll turn it to you all for a question as we wrap this up, I guess. I mean, I'm not surprised that we haven't seen Congressional Republicans speak out against this. Again, something we talk about a lot on this podcast, is their unwillingness or inability to say even the most obvious things because they're so afraid of Trump. But this feels to me, and maybe because I care so much about these issues, this feels like the policy equivalent of the Access Hollywood tape. I mean, you have the A deal that I think objectively is pro Iran, is pro terrorist, which has the president making the kinds of absurd arguments he's making in defense of or creating context for a really nasty Iranian regime. If you spent your life running for office getting into politics, thinking about these, because no matter how ambitious, let's say it's 90% ambition and only 10% policy driven, don't you stop at this moment and say, holy, the President of the United States is selling out the country to a terrorist regime. Maybe I ought to say something and it might not be the case that you say, as many Republicans did after the release of the Access Hollywood tape. The President's gone nuts. This is 25th amendment time. We need an intervention. You're hotlining calls to Marco Rubio to say, marco, you know better. I could see by the way you were standing awkwardly on the stage that you think this is a disaster. Help us. You say something publicly, you sound the alarms at all. It's hard to believe that I'm in a position where I feel like I'M not quite cynical enough for this moment, but maybe that's the takeaway here. Jonah, given all of that thoughts on what happens next between Trump and his political party here in the United States, does anybody speak out? Does somebody take a stand? Does somebody look at an opening and say, man, 2028 is coming up quickly. There's a real opening for me to say, yeah, we shouldn't be pro terrorist.

[Jonah Goldberg]

Yeah. So the, I mean, Warren probably has a better headcount on these kinds of things, but I've seen, I think it's all members of the YOLO caucus in the Senate. Cassidy, those kinds of people who are saying this looks pretty disastrous, right? I mean, Mike Pence is saying it's disastrous, Nikki Haley is saying it's disastrous. So what I think is really interesting is the different camps here, right? So on the one camp, there are just the absolute head past the sphincter ass kissers who, it doesn't matter what Trump does, they will support it. Rick Grenell, right. Newt Gingrich, the crowd that if you described what this thing was, if you describe the MoU as we now know it a month ago to these people and say, I think this is what Trump is going, they would, how dare you, sir? Donald Trump would never do something like that. Right? So absolutely intellectually indefensible people. And then there are the people actually willing to criticize Trump for this. And I would include. These are the people who supported the policy, right? So like my friend John Podor, it's, you know, people who are like, my God, this is a disaster. Trump screwed us. And then there are the people in the sort of Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro is doing this. There are a bunch of people who are doing this who cannot bring themselves to deny that this is bad. But what they do is they say, this is all Vance's fault or Trump is getting bad advice. And so I agree with these people on the substance and I think to be as charitable as possible, I think what they think they're doing is trying to not foreclose the possibility that Trump corrects his mistakes. Right? And if you just say Trump's a moron, then you are forever not listened to by Trump and they're trying to maintain a sort of fair hearing down the road. I mean, Lindsey Graham, of course, is now saying that we need to give diplomacy a chance. So anyway, I'll stop there and just simply say that I think there are these different camps. Some of them are just sort of, this is such a disaster. We should just call it a disaster. And I think those are primarily the people who take seriously the threat to Israel in all of this and have been following this for a very long time. And then there are people who I think take seriously the threat to Israel and take seriously national security, but they also are letting the politics get them in a place where they once again do if only the tsar knew, right? It's this all like Trump can't fail. He can only be failed. How is he getting this advice, that kind of thing. And then there are just the people who if Trump says jump, they ask how high. Whatever he does, they endorse and the theory that this is all good news for Vance and that he's becoming the like the Vance people are telling Politico and a bunch of other places they love all of this. They're thanking the neocons for blaming him because they think this is great news to be seen as the architect of peace and all this kind of thing. And I think that's all nonsense. But it's good for the sort of money primary prior to 2028 to make it sound like Vance as the inside track, but I actually think it's ridiculous. Political analysis on the merits before we

[Steve Hayes]

take an ad break, one final call for a special live episode of the Dispatch podcast on Tuesday, June 23rd in New York City. If you're in the area, you will not want to miss it. We're bringing the roundtable together to discuss what's left of the right. Jonah and I will be joined by Dispatch contributors Megan McArdle and Chris Steyerwalt in Manhattan to discuss the biggest news stories of the day and the evolving identity of conservatism in the Trump era and beyond. What does the war in Iran mean for Trump's coalition ahead of the midterm elections? Is MAGA still a conservative movement? Was it ever a conservative movement? And who is the future of the Republican Party? The show starts at 7pm on June 23rd in New York City. Head to the events page at92ny.org and purchase your tickets today. Okay. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion.

[Mike Warren]

Can I say, on the issue of the camp of people who say basically anything that Donald Trump does on this is good and well reasoned and he remains the chief, the art of the deal chief, best negotiator in politics, there is a, I won't say a smart version of this, but there is a more sophisticated version of this and I think it is summed up by and sort of typified by Hugh Hewitt, the radio host, and he has a post in which he essentially says that, you know, nothing to worry about. Here is the argument of the entire post that all of the things that we have been criticizing and talking about how this is a betrayal at the very least of Trump and his administration's own justification for going to war and what their objectives were, his argument is essentially that, and I'm going to read this now from Hugh Hewitt, this is a post on Wednesday morning. He goes through a number of, you know, sort of specific details about the way the ballistic missile inventory in Iran was destroyed and how that's gonna be difficult for them to build this back. The regime must survive the deep hatred of its own people. I mean, I think it's done that over the last 47 years. But at the very end of this, the MOU, this is Hugh Hewitt saying the MOU is a punt, and I expect another one in August. And any serious concessions to Iran would, I expect, trigger the resignation of senior Trump administration officials and a split in the gop. I don't see that happening. That, to me is a tell that tells you that Hugh Hewitt, who is as sycophantic and partisan and willing to defend with some, you know, modicum or a gesture at sophistication pretty much anything that the leadership of the Republican Party is doing at any time that he knows that this sucks really badly. And so his justification for it is essentially that this is a punt, that if they do what is in the letter of the mou, that senior Trump officials would resign, of course. And that's not going to happen because none of the bad things that anybody is suggesting will come out of this, you know, will actually come out of this. Because the idea that that would is unthinkable to someone IQ Hewitt, I think that tells you a lot. I think it is also a such a source of the problem when it comes to people criticizing the Trump administration when it on. On its own terms or on Republicans own principled terms, which is that you have sycophants like Hugh Hewitt willing to, to make these so called sophisticated justifications. And I think it really does give the administration a little bit of power.

[Steve Hayes]

Yeah, I mean, I would just say if you think about what Hugh Hewitt would be saying had this been done by a Democrat, which is a point that both you and Jonah made earlier, it wouldn't be that he wouldn't be saying that. Just wait. And I think that's true of virtually everybody who's even sort of making gestures at defending the deal. But second on some of this, Hewitt is just plain wrong. He's incorrect. We read the verbatim language earlier. Of the things that start today, yes, they're now ongoing. This isn't theoretical. This isn't hypothetical. This stuff is happening. And he might say it will have no effect. But this isn't a matter of debate. It's not like we can wonder whether this stuff will have an effect. It's happening right now. And that is the part of the deal which I think is, you know, one of the many things that makes this so ridiculous. We're going to leave it there. There's no question that we will be revisiting this again next week and the week after that. I think this is a pretty significant change in the United States approach to Iran, approach to the region, approach to terrorism, and the likelihood that this dramatically increases the threat. The final point I'll make on this substantively is if you look at what we've talked about here, sort of the immediate effects of this and where this is going and what it sets up, but it's largely the president of the United States trying to get out of a situation that he created for himself, using rhetoric, trying to make claims that allow him to bend perceptions to the point where they meet reality, which is what Trump has done so many times, somewhat successfully. It's not going to happen here. The reality here matters far more than the perception. I think that the challenge for the United States is while all of this is going to start to unravel now, as I just pointed out, the effects and the real dangers, and I would say the potentially catastrophic consequences of this series of events won't likely be felt for a couple years and beyond. And then it's going to be somebody else's mess. And the United States and its populace will be at much greater risk as a result of what the President of United States, the the United States has done today. And on that very cheery note, I want to turn to Father's Day. We are recording this on Thursday, June 18th. Father's Day is in a couple days. And as it happens, we have a bunch of dads on this podcast. And I thought I would end by asking sort of an open ended question about Father's Day, but with a couple of sort of suggestive prompts. Do you have anything planned for Father's Day or do you expect to be surprised In a very fun way? Do you have any Father's Day moments or Father's Day gifts that you recall fondly as you think back on your days of being A father. And are there any particular fatherly pieces of advice that you could give to our listening audience? Jonah, I will start with you.

[Jonah Goldberg]

I do not expect much for Father's Day. My daughter is 3,000 miles away and I'm an empty nester. But if I don't get a phone call, checks are going to be canceled. And in terms of father advice, I'm sure I've said this a million times on here in one way or the other. The best insight I got when my daughter was born was get ready for long days and short years. I think that basically describes the essence of parenthood in general is that the days are long but the years are short. And so the only other thing I would say, and again I've said this a million times before, is I'm a big believer that quality time is kind of a BS thing. What you want is quantity time in park is you can't plan quantity time with your kids. You can only sort of hope that you happen to be with your kids when one of these moments that makes a real difference with them occurs. And the best chance of doing that is spending more time with your kids. And that means take your kids with you to work when you can, take your kids on trips with you, when you can take them with you on chores and just yammer with them and hopefully something good rubs off. And that's all I got. And also it's the most important holiday of the year. We can all agree on that obviously.

[Steve Hayes]

Obviously. All right, very good advice from brother Goldberg. Mike Nelson, you have plans for Father's Day? Anything fun? Any great Father's Day memories?

[Mike Nelson]

Well, like Jonah, you know my kids are at the in between age where my second son is home from college, visiting over the summer. And my daughter's just finished one of her years of high school and also has a job that requires her to work on Father's Day. So you know there's going to be a mixed comings and goings of Father's Day. But I echo everything Jonah said that. You know, I am very grateful that in a previous chapter of my life I was gone for a good chunk of the kids childhood, you know, going back and forth to some of the neighboring places we've talked about today. And now I get to be, you know, the relatively boring suburban dad, goes to my daughter's track meets and things like that. So you know, you can't make up for those, those unplanned times that make the special memories. But as far as fatherly advice, I'm going to Bring it back to what we've something we talked about earlier when my kids inevitably would get in trouble cause some kind of horrible incident that they would just pretend didn't happen and that no one would notice. One of my common lectures was what you did was bad. Your plan to get away with it was worse. What did you think was going to happen? Obviously this was going to be discovered. And I am reminded that I think I have taught my kids that lesson as they enter adulthood. And I am shocked that a White House that knew the text of an MOU was going to come out thought they could lie blatantly for four days. So what they did in the MOU is bad. Their plan to get away with it was significantly worse.

[Steve Hayes]

If you were meting out fatherly punishment to the White House, what would that look like?

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh man.

[Mike Nelson]

I mean, Vance would definitely be grounded for a while.

[Steve Hayes]

Mike Warren, you're sort of really in the throes of this more than the other three of us who have a little bit of age on you. What about you? Do you have big plans?

[Mike Warren]

Let's see. I've got. The plans for this Father's Day are no surprise because when you have three boys at various levels of activity and needing to be places, there are no surprises when it comes to scheduling. But we will be this Father's Day at the baseball field as we seem to be almost every day now that we're in the. In the throes of, you know, All Star season and there's like games and practices all the time. So there is a Father's Day game for my 11 year old's all Star team. And then I am told we are going to kind of a fun place that my wife found for an early dinner that also has like old arcade games to play. And it's like a fun kind of place for, for this. This is somewhat of a theme for Father's Days. We found another sort of old school arcade place where you kind of play a flat fee. Last Father's Day that we went to and just had a good time and had some of that quantity as well as quality time that Jonah was talking about in terms of. I'm going to try to hit all of these questions in this kind of shaggy not worth your time that you can asked about in terms of gifts. I'm actually holding one of my first Father's day gifts now 11 years ago, one of these classic World's Greatest dad mugs. And it's got a picture of my now almost 12 year old son when he was a baby. And I still use it to this day. And I love it. I've had some other great Father's Day gifts. My sons and my wife decked out my bar in my basement. A couple of. Well, I guess, gosh, this was also maybe last Father's Day with some cool decorations, surprising me with that. And that was a lot of fun. And then my advice for fathers is sort of in line with what Jonah said, but I wrote about this for the Dispatch last year. I do think demonstrating that doing the things that nobody wants to do is a really important part of fatherhood. You know, cleaning things up that are too gross for mom to do. You know, killing the spiders, putting. You know, I wrote a lot about last year about sort of cleaning up the baseball field. There's a theme here in my life at this point, doing that sort of volunteer work that nobody gives you any credit for. But your kids are watching and your kids are learning and they are remembering those things that you do. I think so much of fatherhood is about demonstrating love and commitment and those sort of things. And I just remember all the time. And I would encourage other fathers to remember that your kids are always watching and they're always listening, for good or for ill. So try to make it more on the good side of the ledger.

[Steve Hayes]

I can see Mike Nelson looking on with shared admiration at one of the things that you just did very well, Mike, which suggests that while you haven't had as many years experience as we have being a father, you've mastered some of the most important things, like the humble brag twice mentioning in your first. Your opening paragraph that your son is on the all. It's All Star season. My son is going to be in the All Star game. Very good. Very good.

[Mike Warren]

Did I mention his regular. Did I mention his regular season team one? Yeah. The regular season team won the championship. Oh, and by the way, he got the best hit the other night. Okay, sorry. I'll. I'll.

[Steve Hayes]

The regular season team probably couldn't have won the championship without his. Without an all Star on the team. I mean, that's masterful.

[Mike Warren]

Yeah. Yeah. Look, we don't get a lot of athletic wins in the Warren family, so we gotta. We gotta grab onto them when we can.

[Mike Nelson]

So now I feel like I've undersold it. If we could post in the show notes my daughter's results where she won her cross country meet, I'd love that.

[Mike Warren]

That'd be great.

[Steve Hayes]

Yeah. Actually, if we can put in the show notes my number three daughter's report card that you just got. Very proud of that.

[Mike Warren]

Yeah, right, right.

[Steve Hayes]

So I'm lucky because I'm gonna get to spend a part of Father's Day with my own dad, who is incredible and has been. I can't imagine a better. I loved your mug, Mike. It's very nice. But unfortunately, the true number one dad is my dad. He has mugs making that clear. So I don't know what kind of ripoff mug you got. The real number one dad is the guy I'm gonna spend some, some time with, but then I will be back home and get to hang out with my own kids. But I got lucky because before I left town, my youngest, who's nine years old and is just leaving the third grade, I'm going to talk about my kids. I have said just a couple weeks ago, I don't spend a lot of time talking about my kids, my family. I made it a point not to do that. I'm going to break that rule here, just as I did a couple weeks ago talking about my dad. But my 9 year old had an assignment to close out the school year that is for and about me. It's part of my Father's Day gift and it's a fill in the blank sheet about my dad. And you know, it has a bunch of the beginnings of sentences and then fill in the blank and it goes through a bunch of things that I'm interested in, things that I like. And you know, you see this and you start reading from the top and you know there's going to come up a question that is, you know, why I love my dad most or the favorite thing about my dad or something. So you just build an anticipation. And as you're reading the kind of more perfunctory questions, the descriptive detail questions, your mind is racing. What is she gonna say? Is it the fact that I get up and make her eggs in a frame all the time, which is one of her favorite things for breakfast? Getting up early, helping to get her off to school. Is it that we were reading the Chronicles of Narnia together? Is it the trips she's gone? You know, all of these things that as a father you think very consciously about both the quantity time, but the quality time you put in, the time you're like, this is my opportunity to shape my daughter to spend this time, to impart valuable lessons about the world as we know it. And so I'm thinking that one of these things, or maybe something even greater that I've done that I haven't thought about will Be her answer to that question. So the survey starts. My dad's name is Steven Forster Hayes. He's 55 years old. He has gray white hair and green eyes. My dad's job is reporter, news person. His favorite food is steak. Favorite treat is Snickers. And Reese's favorite color is navy blue. My dad likes to wear jeans, T shirt, sports. She does. She knows me. She's paying attention. This is pretty impressive. He laughs when I'm around him. My dad is happy when he spends time with the fam. That's true. My dad always says, let's go, let's go. L E T S G O. It's like an old school high school cheer that I use to get her moving when she's not moving the way she could. My dad calls me Grammy Graham Bug, Graham cracker, middle name is Graham. And then we get to the big question and I'm just, you know, the expectation, the anticipation is built over all this time reading my dad. My favorite thing about my dad is he has big, big, big, big front teeth.

[Mike Nelson]

My very favorite go, hey, you like what you like.

[Steve Hayes]

My first reaction was, man, I can't believe she hasn't recognized all of these other things that I've done for her over. And she just settles on something like my apparently, apparently big, big, big, big front teeth. And then you stop and you think about it and you're like, that's sort of the essence of fatherhood, right? Like, I didn't expect that. I wouldn't necessarily think that. My 9 year old spends a ton of time reflecting on all of these things that I think about doing for her very intentionally and very purposefully. But the fact that I laughed for about five minutes straight after I read that as her favorite thing like that is the joy of fatherhood right there is just getting those kinds of fun surprises.

[Mike Nelson]

Well, not for Father's Day. One of the favorite things I've ever gotten from my daughter, when she was nine years old and had just learned about PowerPoint in school, she took it upon herself to make a PowerPoint with nine bulletized points why my dad's not funny. And it, you know, she articulated all the reasons why I'm not funny and why everybody laughs only because they feel bad for me and things like that. So I love it. I posted it on Twitter in its full incarnation at the time and it's never been more proud.

[Steve Hayes]

I'm not laughing at that just to make you feel better. I, I think that was genuinely funny. There is, it should be pointed out, and we'll pop this in the the show notes for you to share with your own fathers if you care to. There is new scientific research about the actual benefits of dad jokes, I believe just out this week, or at least it was something that was sent to me this week. So I will share that with everybody. And there's final a final thought thing. I'll say if you haven't gotten we'll release this either Thursday night or Friday morning if you haven't gotten a present for your dad. And whether it's a young dad or an older dad, there is a book that was published more than a decade ago called the Dadly Virtues. I wrote a chapter, Jonah wrote a chapter, a bunch of other people wrote chapters. It's such a fun read. I didn't love my chapter when I wrote it. I wanted more time. I felt like it should be more meaningful, but I like it better having looked back at it recently. But the real treat is some of the other things that folks wrote as contributions to that. Really a terrific. We'll put a link there as well.

[Mike Warren]

Here it is.

[Steve Hayes]

Oh, nice. Look at you, Mike. Matt LaBash, Tucker Carlson, actually, that's right.

[Mike Warren]

I believe P.J. o' Rourke has a piece in this.

[Steve Hayes]

P.J.

[Mike Nelson]

o' rourke and Tucker obviously passed on those virtues to the Vice President's former comms director.

[Steve Hayes]

That's right, that's right, that's right. All right, thank you all. I think the summary of the discussion about the Iran Memorandum of Understanding is you've heard that it was awful and it's much, much worse than you thought. But I'm glad we ended on a fun, positive note. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next time. Finally, if you like what we're doing here, you can rate, review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. You can also just tell some friends that they really ought to be listening to the Dispatch podcast. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email [e-mail] we read everything, even the ones from people who think this is a good deal on Iran. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this video episode possible. Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.