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Any honest reading of the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran should put to bed the idea that Donald Trump’s administration is chock-full of Gordon Gekkos.

These are not would-be Henry Kravises overcome by a sense of civic duty. They are skilled Trump flatterers and C-tier dealmakers, and they’ve been thoroughly pantsed by the Iranians on the other side of the negotiating table.

The agreement ends the war, requires a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon and offers Iran $300 billion in funds to rebuild. It lifts all sanctions on Iran imposed either by the U.S. or the U.N. It unfreezes all Iranian assets and allows for the further export of Iranian oil. In exchange, Iran agrees to reopen the shipping canal to its southwest and not to attempt to build a nuclear weapon. To all appearances, those two conditions were already in place at the outset of the war.

That’s not to say that there’s any possibility Steve Witkoff and Michael Anton could have crafted a “good” deal for the U.S., given how things have gone. Trump attacked Iran, thinking the regime in Tehran would collapse. When the Iranians showed that they could withstand those attacks, even after many of the nation’s leading figures were killed, Trump’s negotiators were left in the lurch. When you lose a war, you have to take a bum deal, and that’s unquestionably what happened here.

That’s a situation Americans should get used to. The unipolar model of world affairs, and its associated negotiating position, has been in decline for at least two decades. The global financial crisis hollowed out the idea that smaller economies should go along to get along. Trump’s unpredictable nature made it seem that agreements with the U.S. were worthless. Now that Iran has shown how to withstand bomb-based opening bids, future administrations should expect more strong-arm responses from formerly pliable nations.

What do you think? Has Trump’s war accelerated America’s decline on the global stage? Was a better deal possible? Sound off in the comments.

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