Does Trump’s understanding with Iran count as a ‘deal’?

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — On Sunday, hours before a UFC fight night took place on the White House lawn, President Donald Trump announced that the war with Iran was concluding with a “deal.”

“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Congratulations to all!”

What was the deal with the “deal”? In the hours and days that followed, it became clear that the terms and the nature of whatever Trump had announced were somewhat unclear. The two sides put out conflicting accounts about such central issues as the restoration of free transit through the Strait of Hormuz and the disposition of Iran’s nuclear material, and after weeks of Trump repeatedly declaring that the end of the war was imminent, world leaders and the press both took a cautious approach toward naming whatever it was that had been done, or was in the course of being done.

US news organizations have alternately referred to it as an “agreement,” “tentative deal,” “framework” and “framework deal.” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator in the process, used the phrase “peace deal;” but some analysts have noted that it is neither a peace deal nor a nuclear deal. US and Iranian officials have referred to the negotiations as a “memorandum of understanding.” Qatar’s prime minister, stacking terminology, commended the “agreement reached on the Memorandum of Understanding.”

“Deal” is not a formal term in diplomatic negotiations. It is not listed as an entry in “The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy,” nor in the National Museum of American Diplomacy’s diplomatic encyclopedia. From the Old English “dǽl” meaning a part of a whole, the word around the 19th century began to apply to business transactions and bargains — and later, to private, mutually beneficial arrangements in commerce or politics.

“Charleston is not taken, the war is prolonged, and but little chance of its ending until we have a new deal,” Sen. John Sherman wrote in an 1863 letter to his brother Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman, expressing frustration with the progress of the Union Army’s campaigns during the American Civil War.

Semantically unclear though it may be, the word “deal” is a favorite of the president’s. Trump has long fashioned his public persona around his ability to make deals, outlining his worldview and business philosophies in the 1987 book “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” When he first ran for president, he pitched himself to the American public as a consummate, world-changing dealmaker: “The problem with Washington, they don’t make deals,” he told Fox News in 2016. “It’s all gridlock. And then you have a president that signs executive orders because he can’t get anything done. I’ll get everybody together.”

During his first term, he tore up the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran achieved under Barack Obama’s administration, calling it “a horrible, one-sided deal that should never, ever have been made.”

Now Trump is working on his own arrangement with Iran. Following days of no details being publicly available at all, the administration released the document, after journalists had obtained draft copies. According to the text, it is a “memorandum of understanding.”

The many terms used to describe the project indicate a degree of confusion and possible disagreement between the negotiating parties, says Inderjeet Parmar, a professor of international politics at City St George’s, University of London. “They all suggest that there is nothing actually determined or decided yet,” he says, “and that all the hard work is really yet to come.”

Alternative terms such as “framework,” “agreement” and “memorandum of understanding” also reflect an effort on the part of officials and journalists to be more precise about what has been achieved, says Mona Yacoubian, director and senior adviser of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Unlike “deal,” these terms do have specific meanings in diplomatic contexts.

An “agreement” can have informal and formal meanings, as noted in “The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy” — often used to characterize informal agreements that are limited in scope, it can also be used more formally to describe treaties or conventions. Bamo Nouri, senior lecturer in international relations at the University of West London, is reluctant to even apply the term “agreement” to the US-–Iran negotiations. An agreement, he says, indicates that parties agree on key issues, even if the questions around implementation have yet to be worked out. “At this particular juncture, it’s difficult to call this an agreement factually because there are massive discrepancies for either party,” Nouri adds.

Nouri says a “framework” is an outline of principles, objectives and future pathways, often without specifics. A “memorandum of understanding,” also called an MOU, is a formal framework, he adds — “a political statement that says that these two countries have common interests or see eye to eye on something.” Yacoubian describes it as an agreement to come back to the table and restart talks.

Parmar puts it like this: A framework is a broad set of points that can be used to negotiate an agreement, which can be sealed by a memorandum of understanding, which in turn could pave the way for a more lasting peace agreement.

If the language being used to describe the US–Iran negotiations seems vague or confusing, that’s sometimes by design, says Yacoubian. The language of diplomacy, especially in complex and tense relationships like the one between US and Iran, can rely on ambiguity and open interpretation to build momentum that will get both parties back to the negotiating table, she notes. “If the objective is in fact to de-escalate tensions in the region and to reopen the Strait,” she says, “then allowing for some looseness of terms, some ambiguity, probably is essential in order to at least get that first step taken.”

To others, Trump’s initial decision to characterize the latest phase of negotiations as a “deal” serves other purposes. Nouri suspects Trump is less concerned with conveying the reality on the ground and more focused on calming global markets and public discontent at home. “The language is basically being used to create a false momentum,” he says.

Even Trump has modified his account of how much momentum the negotiations have, or of how done the deal is. An hour after he called it complete, Trump clarified on Truth Social that the Strait of Hormuz would open on Friday upon the deal’s signing, for “purposes of mine removal.” More recently, he seemed to hedge even further. “It’s a memorandum of understanding,” he said at the G7 summit on Wednesday. “And if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.”

As Parmar sees it, calling the negotiation a “deal” allows Trump to project strength. “In all, Donald Trump has faced a huge, humiliating defeat, which he’s trying to cover up with the language as usual of power and strength,” he says. “But still it suggests that Iran has got the upper hand in this particular war.”

US intelligence agencies recently determined that Iran can now shut down the Strait of Hormuz at will, giving the country a powerful form of leverage in future conflicts, CNN’s Zachary Cohen and Natasha Bertrand reported on Tuesday.

In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump notes: “The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you have.” At least for the moment, Parmar suggests, it’s Iran that holds the cards.

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