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The U.S. is caving in to the regime in Iran—Israel cannot afford to do so

Summary

From Sacha Wigdorovits

On September 30, 1938, then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart Edouard Daladier signed an agreement with Adolf Hitler in Munich. In it, they granted Nazi Germany the right to annex the Czech Sudetenland into its own territory.

The two heads of government justified their betrayal of Czechoslovakia by claiming that they had thereby prevented Hitler from going to war. “I believe it is peace for our time”—that is the famous phrase Chamberlain said to his compatriots upon his return to London. Six months later, Hitler broke the Munich Agreement and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. Barely six months after that, on September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland, thereby triggering World War II.

One would think that this would serve as a warning to the current U.S. administration not to rely on “appeasement” and not to enter into treaties with criminal and fanatical governments. But the opposite is true: Under domestic political pressure, particularly from his vice president, J. D. Vance, U.S. President Donald Trump has now agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the mullahs in Tehran that is at least as bad as the 1938 Munich Agreement was.

For this Memorandum of Understanding does more than just dash the hopes of the vast majority of the Iranian people for the overthrow of the hated regime for the foreseeable future. A glance at the 14-point declaration shows that the U.S. has also renounced all other objectives that Trump himself had loudly proclaimed when he, together with Israel, launched the latest war against Iran at the end of February.

Trump and Vance are desperately trying to spin the memorandum of understanding as a success. But the majority of the media—from the *Frankfurter Allgemeine* to *Finanz und Wirtschaft* to *Bild*—are calling Trump’s deal a capitulation. And Vance and Trump are also facing a lot of criticism from within their own Republican ranks.

No wonder, since the MoU not only lacks a binding agreement on the destruction of the weapons-grade uranium that Iran possesses, but also makes no mention of the complete destruction of the Revolutionary Guards’ ballistic missiles, which threaten not only Israel but also Europe.

Nor does the memorandum of understanding require Iran to cease further funding of the terrorist organizations Hamas (Gaza), Hezbollah (Lebanon), and the Houthis (Yemen). Furthermore, unrestricted access to the Strait of Hormuz—a vital oil trade route for Europe and Asia—is guaranteed only for the first 60 days; prior to the war, this access was unlimited.

Instead, Iran is to receive $300 billion (not from U.S. taxpayer funds) for its reconstruction, and the international sanctions currently imposed on it are also to be lifted. Israel is also to be required to conclude a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon and to withdraw from the current security zone in the south of the country back behind its own borders.

The current government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot afford the latter—nor can the Israeli government that will likely take office after the elections this coming October. For it is not just since the Gaza War and the two wars against Iran, but even before that, that Hezbollah has terrorized the population in the north of the Jewish state with its rocket attacks—and continues to do so to this day. This threat can only be eliminated by military means, not by declarations of intent.

The Lebanese government, which is currently engaged in peace talks with Israel, is likely to be just as unhappy about the MoU behind the scenes. After all, the biggest obstacle to peace between the two countries is Hezbollah. And only the Israeli army is capable of eliminating this terrorist organization, which—with the help of funds and weapons from Iran—has been holding Lebanon and its people hostage for four decades.

To date, Israel has not signaled any intention of complying with the memorandum of understanding negotiated between Iran and the United States. On the contrary: even before the text of the agreement was made public, Prime Minister Netanyahu had announced that, if necessary, he would continue the war against Iran (and Hezbollah) even without U.S. support.

It was likely not just his country’s security that tipped the scales. Rather, Netanyahu knows that Israeli voters will not forgive him for his failure to prevent the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023. That is why he needs a tangible success—at least in the fight against Hezbollah—to have any chance in the upcoming elections.

But this is not the main reason why the current memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran will never become a binding agreement. The most important reason for this is Iran itself. For the Islamists in Tehran have just as little intention of adhering to the negotiating points outlined in the MoU as the Nazis did 88 years ago in Munich.

Just as was the case with the Nazis back then, the mullahs today are concerned solely with buying time so that they can then impose their own demands, regardless of all previous assurances. These demands are the same as they were back then: namely, unrestricted dominance, first over their own region and later beyond it. The fact that, just as back then, this once again includes the extermination of the Jews is yet another parallel.

The Islamabad Declaration of Intent thus shows that history repeats itself. Politicians like J. D. Vance and Donald Trump either don’t know this, or they haven’t learned anything from it.

Sacha Wigdorovits is President of the Fokus Israel und Nahost association, which runs the website fokusisrael.ch. He studied history, German and social psychology at the University of Zurich and has worked as a US correspondent for the SonntagsZeitung, was editor-in-chief of BLICK and co-founder of the commuter newspaper 20minuten.

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