Trump’s Iran Capitulation Is a Betrayal of the Iranian People

The truly forgotten voice in all this is that of the actual Iranian people. They are the ones who would have gained most from the defeat of the Islamic Republic, and they are the ones who will suffer.

Photo by Javad Esmaeili on Unsplash

Unless you’re a die-hard MAGA supporter, there is no way on Earth that you can possibly see the “memorandum of understanding” put forward by Donald Trump to end the US/ Iran war as anything but a catastrophe. It is a blatant capitulation that empowers the Islamic Republic and effectively castrates the US’ influence in the region and on the world stage. Regardless of the serious damage to Iran’s military and the death of the previous Ayatollah, the war has been an abject failure that not only failed to meet the multiple goals set out by both the United States and Israel (who went from being the US’ vital partner in the war and ended up having to choose between its own security needs against Hezbollah and Trump’s suddenly very conditional support), but actually put the Islamic Republic of Iran in a better position than it was in before.

And no amount of political double-speak from Benjamin Netanyahu or just outright fabrications by Donald Trump can obscure this tragic truth.

It’s true, the regime’s military capabilities have been degraded, and it might take some time and money to fully re-arm, but if the deal that comes out of the ongoing “negotiations” between the US and Iran is anything like this “memorandum of understanding”, even this limited military victory will amount to less than nothing. Perhaps most mind-boggling of all is Trump’s pledge to not only end all existing sanctions, but to pledge another $300 billion to “rebuild Iran” – as if that’s what the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would do with the money.

From what I understand, such promises are unlikely to be fulfilled as stated as it would require multiple parties, including Congress, to agree to such insanity, but fulfilling even a fraction of the terms in the memorandum would go straight towards strengthening the regime at home and abroad – both in terms of its pure military capabilities and as a supreme power in the region that can bring any of its enemies to its knees just with the threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz.

As for the other goals, obviously no regime change has taken place and in terms of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear aspirations, it’s hard to see Trump’s plan as anything but an infinitely worse version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the “Obama deal” that he so ceremoniously tore up the minute he took office. The JCPOA, which did halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions, was fatally flawed both for giving the regime the funds to build up its non-nuclear military might and its proxies across the region, and for only ever “kicking the nuclear can down the road”, but it was at least negotiated from a position of strength for the US and its partners, which is the exact opposite of the situation now.

I wish I could say that this is all a worst case scenario, but based, at least, on the views of those who are far more knowledgeable about this than I, it seems to simply be the most likely outcome.

What I can comment on specifically and with at least some authority, though, isn’t so much the deal itself, but the reactions and responses to it. I am, after all, no political or military strategist, but as someone who does pay a significantly higher than average amount of attention to the media dealing with the region (and through some sort of pop-culture osmosis, to the United States), I can say pretty unequivocally that the responses to the “memorandum of understanding”, to the war and to the Islamic Republic itself, have been incredibly revealing. And not in a good way.

Here at Home

At this point, really, what else is there to be said about the South African government’s shameful, unforgivably chummy relationship with the Islamic Republic? Or at least its leading party’s? In a statement released on 1 March 2026, at the very start of the war, the ANC wished condolences to the Iranian people for the death of Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, who not six weeks before oversaw the cold-blooded murder of tens of thousands of these same people and who had spent his entire adult life systematically oppressing them. It also included this gem: “The ANC reiterates that there can be no lasting military solution to fundamentally political conflicts.” As if calls for “death to America and death to Israel” and the countless military attacks on both countries and their allies count as a “political conflict”.

DIRCO’s response to the memorandum of understanding is, if anything, even more of an embarrassment. It’s not in any way a surprise, of course, as just as negotiations between Iran and the US are under way, South Africa hosted Iranian foreign minister, Dr Saeed Khatibzadeh, giving him the opportunity to spread his vile lies to the people of South Africa, but this statement still needs to be read to be believed – not least for its actually quite impressive feat of framing moral bankruptcy as moral righteousness. Nothing summarises it and the ANC’s entire approach better than this, though: “this MoU thus provides the framework for durable peace and regional stability in the Middle East as it reaffirms the need for peace and the respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all States.”

At very, very best, such a statement is hopefully naive. At worst, its a pernicious endorsement of one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet. Anyone who thinks that an empowered Iran offers “peace and stability”, let alone the “respect of the sovereignty” of other states in the Middle East is either an ignoramus or a liar. And it’s getting harder and harder for the ANC to make any sort claim to the former.

There’s no way that it isn’t fully aware of the Islamic Republic’s history of colonising Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria with its proxies, or of its funding and perpetrating terror across the region and across the world. And the ANC certainly knows full well that those sanctions it wants lifted were put in place against the regime for specifically those reasons. Further, saying that “undertaking to terminate all types of sanctions against Iran is also welcomed as it will bring about relief to the Iranian people following decades of hardship”, is a bald faced lie that doesn’t support the people of Iran, but conflates Iranians for their despotic oppressors.

That the ANC is morally bankrupt – at least when it comes to its foreign relations – should be news to no one, but what’s perhaps most troubling is how this sentiment has echoes in reactions to the “memorandum of understanding” across the globe.

A “Pointless War”

Needless to say, outside of the Middle East, the country most affected by this war is the United States, and the conversation around it in the American media has been fascinating. It has, quite inevitably, broken down around partisan lines, but it has also shown that partisanship in America has now started to divide itself not along two lines, but along four.

On the centre-left, the war has enjoyed little support but that mostly comes down to a not-irrational distrust of Trump and the way he waged the war, as well as scepticism about the US ever being able to win a war in the Middle East. Its reaction to the MoU has centred on Trump’s failure and on being proven correct on its misgivings. On the centre-right, the war was largely supported as a righteous attack against one of America’s greatest enemies, and the MoU has been rejected by all but Trump die-hards as a despicable capitulation to that same enemy. The hard-left and hard-right, meanwhile, for all of their vast differences, have once again proven the “horseshoe theory” (that political extremes bend towards one another) by essentially having the same reaction to the war – isolationist, at best; pro-regime, at very worst – while also being largely dismissive of the MoU.

That discussions of the war in the US, ultimately, have had far less to do with Iran or even the war itself, than about a) Trump and b) America. This obviously makes sense. The USA is so highly divided at this point that it should probably drop all pretence and the word “United” from its name. Not just about Trump, but more fundamentally about the whole “American experiment” itself and whether it has ever actually been a net force for good in the world.

That discussions around the war in the US are so ideologically driven is understandable, but that doesn’t excuse just how little the people of Iran factor into the equation at all. That they are the ones who would have gained most from the war, and who will undoubtedly suffer the most from its failure, seldom enters the conversation.

This was brought home especially hard for me when late-night comedian Seth Meyers (of whom I’m generally a fan) repeatedly called the war “pointless” in his Closer Look segments, long before it looked like the Islamic Republic would emerge triumphant. There are many things to be said against the war, especially now that it has, for all intents and purposes failed, but calling it “pointless” when you consider the actions of the Islamic Republic, most especially towards its own people, reveals a fundamental vacuum at the heart of American discourse about the war. Even by people like Seth, who for all of his obvious partisanship, usually speaks with a thoroughy decent, moral voice.

Where Are They Now?

The most revealing response to all this, though, comes not from the pundits or the politicians, but from activists who had – and still have - a whole lot to say about the (so-called) evils of Israel and the (real) suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, but precious little to say about the situation in Iran prior to the war. The streets and college campuses were especially, conspicuously silent when the Islamic Republic slaughtered something in the vicinity of 30,000 to 40,000 innocent Iranians over a couple of days in January.

Since the war broke out, there have, of course, certainly have been protests, but these have been entirely against the actions of the US and Israel, not the Islamic Republic. Most shocking of all (if not exactly surprising) isn’t that these protesters conveniently ignored the actions of the Islamic Republic, but that a great many of them – especially Islamists and radical leftists – stood with this monstrous regime and painted it as either a victim of “Western imperialism” or, unbelievably, the defiant hero of the story.

Perhaps most grotesquely of all, these “social justice warriors” have also constantly shouted down actual Iranian voices who dare condemn the Islamic Republic and voice support their victims, by frequently dismissing them as, what else, “Israeli plants”.

These so-called “peace activists” have less credibility in matters pertaining to the Middle East than the UN, so I’m no doubt wasting my breath, but if they really cared for the lives of Middle Easterners (even just non-Jewish Middle Easterners), they would be out there in their millions protesting this unspeakably harmful “memorandum of understanding”.

That they don’t says everything about them and everything, sadly, about the truly forgotten voice in all this: that of the actual Iranian people. But just because the activists may be a hopeless cause, doesn’t mean that the rest of us should be. We may not be able to actively affect the situation, but at the very least we can remind those in power who the true villains of this story truly are.

Ilan Preskovsky is a Johannesburg-based freelance writer, who has covered everything from international politics to Jewish culture/ religion to film and TV reviews. His work has been featured online on the likes of News24, Popverse and BizNews, and in print in Business Day, Jewish Life Magazine and the Star, among others.