U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech as he stands in front of the VC-25B aircraft gifted by Qatar that will be used as Air Force One, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., June 19, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
A former U.S. ambassador to Russia was shocked to read some of the proposals included in President Donald Trump's recent deal with the Iranian regime, according to a new essay.
Michael McFaul, who was the ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, wrote in a new Substack essay that Trump's 14-point memorandum of understanding, signed this week at the Palace of Versailles in France, included language that precludes the U.S. from meddling in Iran's internal affairs. McFaul argued that the clause could allow Iran to continue funding terrorist groups in the region, and continue to suppress democracy activists in the country, which were two issues the Trump administration claimed as the war's raison d'être.
"As for the goal of stopping Iran’s funding of terrorists, Trump and team have said nothing of late. The MOU ending the war does not even mention this issue. It looks like Trump is just giving up," McFaul wrote.
The sentence that committed the U.S. “to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs," also shocked McFaul.
"I was shocked to see this sentence in the agreement. This is the language championed by dictators all over the world," he wrote. "Other American presidents have refrained from interfering in the domestic affairs of dictatorships. But to the best of my knowledge, no president signed an agreement that codifies an American commitment not to support human rights or democratic values in an autocracy, let alone in a brutal dictatorship that holds power in the Islamic Republic of Iran. That was a major concession to the Iranian theocrats for which the United States got nothing in return."