Democrats criticized President Donald Trump for starting a war with Iran. Now some of them are criticizing him for trying to end it. “This [Iranian] regime is getting money to rebuild, purchase more drones, cause more havoc” through the ceasefire and proposed peace deal, Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) told Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a Tuesday congressional hearing. And Sen. John Fetterman (D–Pa.) accused Trump of trying to “cave [to Iran] just for political convenience” in an interview with the Jewish Insider published on Wednesday.
These Democrats have become unlikely allies to Republican hawks who want the war to resume. When news of a potential deal emerged on May 24, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Trump of following in the footsteps of the Obama administration and demanded that Trump “take out enough Iranian capability so it cannot threaten our allies in the region” instead. The same day, outspoken war hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) implied that the deal would be a “nightmare for Israel,” and Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R–Miss.) warned that the truce wouldn’t let Trump “finish the job he started.”
The Republican hawks, at least, are honest that they oppose a deal because they prefer war. Fetterman has also made a name for himself as a pro-Israel hawk. But Booker was ostensibly against Trump starting the war. In March, he called it “outrageous and never conceived of that we could have this level of a military engagement without the people’s house, Congress, doing something about it.” Just as Democrats who attacked Trump for escalating tensions with North Korea and then attacked him for de-escalating, opportunist critics are making it harder to back out of the conflict with Iran.
And this pressure is apparently working. Trump said on May 23 that the peace agreement with Iran was “largely negotiated.” As criticism flowed in, Trump went on a social media posting spree, insisting that he was a better dealmaker than former President Barack Obama. (The Atlantic reports that Trump has been particularly sensitive about comparisons to Obama.) Last week, officials told The New York Times that Trump sent back the memorandum of understanding to Iran with new “tougher terms.”
Although the talks have dragged on, both sides agree on the basic shape of any peace agreement. Iran and the U.S. would lift their mutual blockades of the Strait of Hormuz, and then they would move on to negotiate a permanent deal, in which Iran would trade away the remnants of its nuclear program and the U.S. would lift economic sanctions, allowing Iran to rejoin international markets.
The main problem is a lack of trust, and many of the extra demands from both sides have been about guaranteeing that the other side can’t walk out. On the ground, they have been violently testing each other’s limits. On Monday, Trump announced that he had brokered a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting the pro-Iran militia Hezbollah, but both sides are still fighting near the border. On Tuesday, the U.S. military blew a hole in an Iranian oil tanker, and the Iranian military bombed Kuwait and Bahrain, which host U.S. troops.
Of course, as more dovish Democrats have argued, Hormuz was not even on the table before the war. “It’s just sad that we had to go through all of this just to talk about a diplomatic agreement that brings us back to where we were but lowers our leverage,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D–Conn.) told CNN last week. Unlike Fetterman and Booker, he made it clear that he would not attack Trump for a weak deal. Murphy instead grilled Rubio on whether the administration was jeopardizing a quick end to the Hormuz crisis by trying to get too much up front.
“It sounds to me like what this agreement will do is take us back really to the prewar status quo. The Strait of Hormuz will be opened again, although it sounds like Iran will have a little more control,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D–Md.) told Fox News on May 24. “I think this was a blunder. When you’re digging a hole, you should stop digging, and that sounds like maybe what we’re doing finally.”
