M.O.U. Knowns…And A Lot More Unknowns

The old saying is a lie goes around the world before the truth gets its boots on. When we’re discussing the Islamic Republic of Iran regime, or what’s left of it, they certainly do not need a head start. They lie like you and I breathe. 

As with any good rollercoaster, this past weekend provided more unexpected twists and turns. And even though Donald Trump claims we’re headed back to the station with a deal, it’s hard to see it around the blind corner in front of us.

George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense, the Late Donald Rumsfeld, used to categorize whatever quandry he faced into one of four buckets – known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns. The Memorandum of Understanding that President Trump announced on social media Sunday has the dubious distinction of applying in whole or in part to all four. Here’s what he announced to the world mid-day yesterday. 

pic.twitter.com/oVeD5kOcrJ

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 14, 2026

It did not take very long before the pre-market numbers for the big three indexes to show they were poised to open up Monday morning by triple digits. And oil, assuming Iran doesn’t fire at another tanker, could be in the low $70 dollar range very soon. So traders globally are embracing the promise of the deal Donald Trump is presenting, even though none of them know what’s actually in it. 

So what are the known knowns? 

We know that Iran’s economy is at such a breaking point that whatever constitutes regime leadership is out of options. Quite simply, they’ve never faced an outlook where their economy contracts by nearly 50% in a year. No one has ever pushed back at the regime with overwhelming military and economic force in its 47-year history. Unemployment throughout Iran is approaching 50%, their currency is worthless, and the only successful military strike the regime conducted over the past week, firing dozens of missiles and drones all over the Middle East, was a drone that took down one of our Apache helicopters. I say success, except the drone was a dud. It misfired on impact and didn’t kill our pilot and gunner. 

We know their four main weapons facilities – Fordow, Isfahan, Natanz, and Arak- are destroyed. Their nuclear scientists have been killed, and the one university that helped develop the farm team of future Iranian nuclear scientists was also destroyed. 

Their dual-use steel plants, used to fabricate missile bodies, have been destroyed. The known underground missile cities have all been hit multiple times. Iran does retain some missile stockpiles and capacities, but greatly diminished, with varying degrees of reliability. Many have self-destructed in flight, meaning they no longer have the top shelf inventories available. And they are without the ability to reach the highly-enriched uranium they do have, or create another underground centrifuge facility to enrich their lower-grade uranium. 

We know that much of the senior leadership of the Iranian regime is no more. What remains is nebulous – re-activated generals that retired years ago, and a rag-tag Basij force and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that have not paid their ranks in months and has resorted to conscripting 12-year-olds to fill checkpoint duty. Thousands of others in uniform have simply deserted and vanished. 

And we know that Israel has degraded the terror proxies all around them – chiefly Hamas and Hezbollah, to the extent that Hamas is barely a blip in the news anymore, and Hezbollah is cut off, isolated, and facing attacks from both Israel and Lebanon. 

Regardless of whatever opinion you may form about the yet-to-be-disclosed M.O.U., or the final deal should there be one, Donald Trump, the United States Military, and the Israeli Defense Forces get full marks for taking on a growing threat that no administration in 50 years would tackle head-on. And at worst, they’ve set them back a decade or more if Iran were to cheat on whatever deal Trump strikes and begin to rebuild. 

In the known unknown tranche, we know that Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio, and J.D. Vance have been talking to someone with the ability to agree to whatever this M.O.U. is. We just have no idea who that individual, or individuals, are. But unlike the many times over the past few weeks when President Trump announced we were very close to a deal, immediately being followed by regime remnants saying no talks have been held, they’re agreeing to nothing, and responding by launching drones at another couple of tankers in the Strait for good measure, there was a sea change…at least by Iranian standards.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council:

• Iran says the MOU to end the war with the U.S. was finalized on June 14 following months of negotiations.

• Immediate and permanent ceasefire to take effect tonight across all fronts, including Lebanon.

• Naval blockade on Iran to…

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 14, 2026

Iran’s Deputy FM: MOU text will be published after signing. Says the agreement does not reflect trust in the “enemy,” and confirms talks on a final deal will continue for 60 days.

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 14, 2026

Is there bluster by the Iranians? You betcha. Are they claiming they drove America to its knees? Naturally. Are we going to see regime change by way of another color revolution in the streets of Tehran? Sadly, not. At least not one caused or enabled by us. As Reverend Johnson said to Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles after the mob responded to his plea for peace by blasting a double-ought shell through his Bible, “Son, you’re on your own.” And so it apparently goes for the Iranians desiring freedom. If they want it, now seems a pretty good time, but they’d better get on with it. 

The Iranians allegedly called off what they referred to as a planned attack against Israel, and have admitted that not only were there talks, a deal was struck and will be signed in person at the end of this week, and the 60-day ceasefire after that will focus on nuclear matters. So we know Trump reached a deal. We just have no earthly idea with whom he’s reached that deal. And it’s something I would very much like to know. 

There is not one person in the Iranian regime leadership with whom I would invest a nickel’s worth of trust. But the mere fact that the White House is announcing the M.O.U. without any details is more than a little unsettling. If the deal has been signed virtually, as President Trump said earlier on Sunday, it’s signed. There’s no need to wait around to have it notarized. Keeping his negotiating interlocutor anonymous doesn’t give anyone warm fuzzies as to whether that signatory would survive a coup if they became known, or whether the regime will live up to the terms of the accord before the 60-day ceasefire negotiations on a permanent peace deal commence. 

The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were quite literally signing their own death warrants if the Americans lost the Revolutionary War against the British. But they still signed their names to take a public stand. John Hancock signed it extra large because he was that kind of personality. As the fable goes, he also did it so that King George III could read it without his glasses. I fully understand that, at best, the Iranian regime remnants are in such dire straits that they have no choice but to make a deal, so they’re hardly enthusiastic or thrilled to do so. But signing a Secret Memorandum of Understanding doesn’t have the same conviction to it as one signed by Cardboard Mojtaba, or whoever is doing business as Cardboard Mojtaba. 

In the unknown knowns quadrant, we know that the Middle East is not going to resemble what it looked like before Donald Trump came back to town. We know that the Sunni Arab Gulf states are now either in open partnership with Israel, or had defensive weaponry supplied by Israel at a time when no one else came to their aid. And that seems to have led to a fundamental change in who the regional hegemon now is. Yes, the United States still makes the weather, but Israel is the region’s rapid response power, both militarily and economically, and virtually all of the Arab states are quickly rethinking their alliances and ancient hatreds. Will it result in a Middle East that is at relative peace for the foreseeable future? That’s the unknown part of the known unknown. But the known part is that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have shifted the Middle East in just a few short years from a region worried about a growing fanatical Shia threat from the former Persian Empire, to one that might result in a military alliance to keep Iran in check, even if they do attempt to rise from the ashes once more. 

And we know that this aspect is a big part of what President Trump was seeking with the deal. He’s trying to isolate Iran by unifying the rest of the region against it until they are forced into playing nice with their neighbors. Is that too Pollyannaish? If history is any judge, yes. But that’s the unknown part again. We have no idea what Trump has gotten the regime to agree to, and what enforcement mechanisms were accepted to keep them in check while the rest of the Middle East alliance stands up. 

As for the unknown unknowns, just due to the fact that the details of the M.O.U., the fine print, are shrouded in secrecy, there’s no telling whether this is a great deal, a good deal, an offramp, or a total capitulation. My hunch is more the former than the latter, but we just don’t have anything of substance to go on for analysis. And that’s compounded by false reporting originating from the regime about what they want you to believe is included.

There is a lot of chatter from all corners of foreign policy watchers about money being freed up so that Iran can sell oil again once the blockade is lifted. Here are just a few things about that part of the deal, if that’s even in there, we don’t know. Again, details, if provided, would help greatly with clarity. 

Is the lifting of the blockade performance-based? Meaning, what do the Iranians have to do in order for the blockade to be lifted? Once the blockade is lifted, does our military hang around the Arabian Sea for a little while just in case they have to forward deploy in a hurry if and when the Iranians break the ceasefire? If the blockade is lifted, does that mean the Iranian oil that is sanctioned gets to be sold legally? Or are the sanctions on their oil sales still in place until further compliance conditions are met? 

What are the enforcement mechanisms to guarantee they turn over their uranium stockpiles? What about their secret fifth nuclear site, Pickaxe Mountain? Is that included in the nuclear programs the Iranians are allegedly going to abandon? Will we continue to monitor their shadow banking network once the money starts flowing again, so that if it starts going to terror proxies and projects to rebuild their nuclear program, we’ll begin throttling them again with sanctions and other maneuvers? 

I’m not willing to go out on a limb to say the deal in the making, the M.O.U. leading to whatever becomes the final deal if the negotiation process gets that far, is good for the U.S or not. Just like Donald Trump reportedly spent hours revising and fine-tuning the language until he had something he could accept, I’d like to have a gander at the text myself before rendering an opinion. My instinct is that the President recognized the threat Iran posed long ago, never wavered from his worldview, and responded appropriately and in a way no one else before him in the Oval Office would have dared. I just don’t see him willing to go this far in a wildly successful campaign just to give away all he gained since late February. He’s surprised us with wins when we thought he was losing many times in the past. I’m all finished underestimating his abilities to pull off the unthinkable. 

However, just like a parent of a teenager about to go out for the night with the keys to your car on a holiday weekend, knowing that you trust your kid implicitly because of his or her track record behind the wheel and in showing responsibility on the road, you still lay in bed wide awake late at night worried about the other crazy people on the road. Those are the Iranians. It’s not that I don’t trust Trump, necessarily; it’s that I know I can’t trust the Iranian regime. That’s why I want to see into what exactly we’re being committed. 

Looking at this politically, Iran got a pretty significant beatdown and won’t be an issue for a long time to come. And relative to prior large-scale military operations, Operation Epic Fury cost very little in lives and treasure, even though one life is always too much. We will grieve for those who made the ultimate sacrifice. Objectively, however, we gave way more than we got in return as far as how the war was waged. China has had to recalibrate. Russia was not a factor, and now has its hands full with Ukrainian drones. There are loads of geopolitical victories Trump can claim out of this operation, and with the midterm elections four-and-a-half months away, there is every indication that oil will plummet, inflation will quickly recede, and job and economic growth, if the last two monthly prints are any indication, will cause this country to be churning on all cylinders by the time voting gets underway. 

There’s a Supreme Court decision called Watson V. RNC that deals with ballot counting after Election Day in Alabama. The justices heard the case late last year, and is expected to be one of the final cases decided later this month. If it goes the way the tea leaf readers of oral arguments suggest, the midterms might look a whole lot different than lefty pollsters and Resistance media pundits think once 16 states can no longer harvest ballots in overtime. 

With the economy greatly improving, redistricting favoring the GOP by up to a dozen new seats this cycle alone, and the Democrats hanging a Nazi Totenkopf around every candidate’s neck nationally because of their embrace of Graham Platner in Maine, voters really aren’t going to have much of a coherent message to vote for Democrats other than “Impeach Trump…again.” I’ll gladly take my chances. 

And for those of you out there who think any deal with Iran is a bad deal, let me cheer your cynical heart up with this. Let’s say that Trump navigates the midterms successfully by retaining the Senate thanks to Mike Rogers winning over an antisemite in Michigan, Jon Ossoff getting beaten in an increasingly reddening Georgia by Mike Collins or Derek Dooley, and Susan Collins holding onto her seat in Maine. That certainly give Trump a lot more room to operate in his final two years, doesn’t it? 

If you believe that the President is backing down on Iran because the timing of the midterms is becoming a concern, after the election, if Iran is back to what Iran has always been during its entire history, he can get the band back together again and squeeze them once more without much of a political price to pay.  

And if you want to look out to 2028 and begin early doom-saying, keep in mind that you’ll have two more years of economic growth, investment in American manufacturing, and job growth, and another round of redistricting favoring another dozen Republican seats or so nationally. In addition, the Democrats are poised to nominate a lunatic out of a primary pool of lunatics, including Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, J.B. Pritzker, and Ro Khanna. The only “moderate” Democrat on the horizon that concerns me at all is Rahm Emanuel. But the chance that the base of the Democratic Party, growing more antisemitic by the day, nominates a Jewish man is not very likely. 

To wrap things up, would I like to see everyone in the Iranian regime Baghdad Bobbing on X take a dirt nap? Absolutely. Would I love to see Cardboard Mojtaba disposed of in the blue recycling bin? Hell, yes. Is my preference to see a bunch of arms placed into the arms of the true revolutionaries in Tehran desiring self-governance and freedom, with us and/or the Israelis providing close-air whack-a-mullah support? In a second. 

But I’m far from reaching for the hemlock. We don’t know what we don’t know. And while that is supremely annoying for someone in my business, it’s not a reason to fall into despair. Donald Trump 2.0 has been such a pleasant surprise on so many occasions this term, it takes one’s breath away looking at the accomplishments. Has this administration been perfect? Far from it. Chaos and political whiplash have been a feature often times more than a bug, and there have been a few spokes thrown along the way. 

I reserve the right, once the text of the terms of the M.O.U and/or final deal are released by the White House, including the signature page, to disagree with it strongly if I think the President and his team missed a golden opportunity with Iran. But until then, I’ll wait, with a Costco-sized supply of Prilosec, until enough solid information emergest to shift some of those unknown unknowns into another box.