Will the Iranian-American memorandum of understanding hold?

Much has been written about the memorandum of understanding recently signed remotely between the Iranian regime and the United States of America, with Pakistani mediation, to end the hundred-day war in the Arabian Gulf. Writing about its circumstances, hidden dimensions, context, and provisions will continue for a long time, amid expectations by some that it will not hold and will collapse at the first real test.

The reasons and probabilities of its collapse are many. Perhaps foremost among them is that the agreement is signed between two parties, neither of which trusts the other. Historical precedents and experience have taught us that mutual trust between the two parties to any dispute is an essential condition for the success of any settlement between them.

In the case before us, we find that hostility has been entrenched between Washington and Tehran since the establishment of what is known as the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, owing to the differing and contradictory policies, values, and principles of each side — something that has kept them in a state of perpetual conflict, through various means, for more than four decades.

There are mutual anxieties and suspicions, and indeed each side has developed retaliatory impulses — particularly given that the Iranian regime has carried out aggressions of every kind against American interests everywhere, which has forced Washington to respond by pursuing the regime's followers and figureheads, or by tightening sanctions and squeezing it further.

Iranians complain that the United States has shown no goodwill toward them since 1979, and instead raised the banner of threat and opposition against their new regime from day one. Americans, for their part, complain that Iran's velayat-e faqih system has violated every law and international norm recognised in relations among civilised nations.

It has never once proven its commitment to its promises, and instead has practised deception through manoeuvring, procrastination, charlatanism, thuggery, fabrication of news, distortion of facts, and the establishment of militias to destabilise security and peace and spread strife and unrest — all in continuation of the deeply rooted Iranian doctrine of inciting against America, the West, and allied nations.

US President Donald Trump now says he will refer what was agreed with Iran to the US Congress for review. Despite the difficulty of predicting the outcome, submitting the agreement for debate before American legislators — who hold differing positions on Trump's war and its results — could lead to their objecting to it, or at least to some of its provisions.

On another front, popular and street-level opposition in Iran to the agreement is intensifying, driven and supported by extremist forces within the regime that have begun to accuse those who negotiated on Iran's behalf of treason and are demanding their resignation. These masses, naturally, are acting from the values, myths, and legends that have been instilled in their minds.

Then there is Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly declared his strong opposition to any provision in the agreement stipulating a permanent ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon, stating that Israeli forces will continue fighting and will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria for as long as necessary.

Even if he has yielded reluctantly to American demands to halt his war on Lebanon, nothing prevents him from resuming the war should Hezbollah provoke the Israeli army.

And if we assume that none of the foregoing has obstructed the agreement today and that things proceed smoothly, other factors could bring it down during the two-month deadline set for negotiations on the deferred issues.

These include core files such as Iran's nuclear programme, its ballistic missiles, its stockpile of enriched uranium, and its regional militia arms across the Middle East.

It is widely expected that a collision between the two negotiating parties will occur here. Washington will accept nothing less than a complete halt to Tehran's uranium enrichment, while the latter will insist on enrichment as one of its sovereign rights as an independent state. The same applies to the ballistic missile file, which the Iranian regime cannot abandon — neither its production nor its development — as it serves as a weapon for intimidating and blackmailing neighbouring states.

As for Iran's nuclear programme, which Tehran is said to have committed to suspending as a provision included in the signed agreement, there is nothing to guarantee its complete abandonment, particularly given how often the Iranians have broken their promises and commitments.

In our view, and in the view of many observers, the signed agreement has only halted a war that revealed what each side is capable of doing to the other, reopened the Strait of Hormuz to international navigation, and lifted the naval blockade on Iran — but it has not reached a final settlement of the American-Iranian conflict. It has instead ended in a truce whose durability, or need for further truces, the coming days will reveal.