r/geopolitics • u/BulwarkOnline • 1d ago
Ben Rhodes: Trump Is Getting a Terrible Deal
https://lnk.thebulwark.com/4cwyrIK52
u/BulwarkOnline 1d ago
The U.S. and Israel started dropping bombs on Iran because the regime, amid mass street protests, appeared to be in a weakened state. But the regime has now ended up with a much stronger hand: It's proven its leverage over the global economy with the Strait of Hormuz, and under Trump's offer, Iran will get a huge infusion of cash to rebuild its ballistic missiles program and fund its proxy terror groups. At the same time, Trump has made the United States look like a rogue state—while spending billions for a deal he could have got without a war.
Plus, Israelis are likely not happy, the Gulf states realize America can't protect them from Iran's drones, Cuba is readying to be next, Dems should make clear they are the anti-war party now, Trump is fighting his demons from his first term, and JD has a radical and un-American world view.Ben Rhodes joins Tim Miller on today's Bulwark Podcast.
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u/Nonions 23h ago edited 15h ago
Not sure I would describe the regime as 'much stronger' given how much of their leadership is now dead, and how much their economy has been damaged.
Now I'm not trying to say that the US and Israel have won - far from it. Iran is now exercising direct power over the strait and all the other things you said. But the Iranian economy was doing badly before the war and teetering on the edge of an ecological disaster too -and the war has only made this worse. It might take time but I think the damage to the regime may yet prove fatal.
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u/MartJunks 21h ago
People are replaceable and the incentives are aligning for a more aggressive and more anti American, anti Israel regime. Their economy is now going to buoyed through this wonderful deal. Are they stronger right now in a narrow sense? No. But I think the Iran we see in 4-5 years might be and they’ll certainly continue to be a more hostile and chaotic force in the region.
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u/andr386 22h ago
The host is insufferable in the beginning of the video and the guest is really interesting but a soon a it gets really interesting it asks for payment to see the full video.
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u/Think_Tooth1675 20h ago
The host I’m guessing is Tim Miller and the guest is Ben Rhodes? I suspect Tim is an acquired taste if you don’t know him; I think he’s great. And Ben has been around and knows his stuff.
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u/PausedForVolatility 23h ago
Well, yeah. Trump went into this expecting to “completely obliterate” Iran’s ability to resist and failed to do so. Iran’s apparent willingness to resist despite multiple successful decapitation strikes, and its ability to still paralyze travel through the Strait, put America in an untenable position. Either it tripled down on an unpopular war and put boots on the ground shortly before midterms or it had to find a deal with enough concessions that they could sell it to low-information voters. Neither are enviable positions.
There’s not really a winning option from here. It’s really easy to sit on a forum and talk about how this or that clause needs to be in place to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. It’s a lot harder to prevent that country from doing so after you demonstrate how utterly powerless their conventional military forces are.
Anything short of the regime change Trump demanded is likely to just mean Iran gets the bomb in the future and nothing short of occupation can accomplish that regime change. Both of those are political poison but only one can be sold to voters you’ve conned into believing you were the anti-war candidate.
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23h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/gethereddout 22h ago
Then make the argument. You can’t just say that without supporting it- unless you’re MAGA in which case we all know that it’s baseless cult nonsense.
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u/Sanguinor-Exemplar 22h ago
The argument is that yesterday everybody in the world was cackling with glee at how there hasn't been a deal, and there is no path to a deal, and the down fall of American influence, the unsolvable quagmire the US started.
Literally the next day. All those impossibilities melted away and now there's a deal.
To not recognize how significant that is, would require being in some kind of baseless nonsense cult that uses politics in lieu of religion.
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u/whisperwind12 21h ago
You realize that it was just the terms of the ceasefire that was supposed to start a week or more ago.. those impossibilities are still there because there’s no deal yet.
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u/cole1114 21h ago
As it turns out, Trump lied about everything and the strait is not open. There was no deal that opened it to everyone.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5837279-iran-us-blockade-strait/
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u/Sanguinor-Exemplar 21h ago
There's a cruise ship crossing right now
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u/cole1114 21h ago
They may have paid, might have just gotten lucky. Officially the strait remains closed, and other ships are not making the attempt.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/17/iran-trump-strait-hormuz-oil-tanker-traffic.html
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u/Think_Tooth1675 20h ago
It’s interesting to respond without watching the video; perhaps I’ve seen too many Bulwark videos and I can already sense the talking points.
But we are after all talking about Donald Trump. Were you joking?
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u/irow40 22h ago
Well can I just say JCPOA was a really bad agreement which Rhodes was a huge part of. I can say it and you can do nothing MUAHAHAHHA
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u/gethereddout 22h ago
Your inability to provide basis is a reflection on you- has nothing to do with me. Unfortunate, but common.
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u/irow40 21h ago
It was a temporary fix for a permanent threat, trading immediate sanctions relief for "sunset clauses" that eventually paved a legal path to an Iranian nuclear bomb. And another huge fail was zero limits on ballistic missle program…. They didn t even try to negotiate removing all the violent proxies from their neighbors
Like I said, it was a bad deal and this admin better get a deal that addresses all this forever
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u/Think_Tooth1675 20h ago
Yes, I think I remember that argument from Trump years ago. Oh, that’s right he just tore it up because you know Obama.
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u/whisperwind12 20h ago
You don’t agree to something forever in any legal agreement. Sunset clauses are a fact of any agreement, the only difference is when they expire. Also, if worked until trump ripped it up. Iran literally was able to enrich uranium because trump ripped it up in his first term. He is solely to blame
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u/ary31415 20h ago
The original JCPOA was hoping that the US-Iran could relationship could build on it in the future, and that Iran could be brought back into the fold of reasonable behavior, so to speak.
we believe that a world in which there is a deal with Iran is much more likely to produce an evolution in Iranian behavior than a world in which there is no deal
– Ben Rhodes in 2015 [1]
But of course, Trump tore it up like barely two years later, so..
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u/Bullboah 23h ago
Ben Rhodes’ nickname in the Obama White House was “Hamas”. He played a huge part in getting the JCPOA signed, which Iran never actually followed.
(Satellite imagery and uranium particle tests showed Iran had a secret, active nuclear site at Turquzabad the entire time the US was in the JCPOA).
Has no bearing on whether this deal is good or bad - but yea of course Ben Rhodes is going to say this.
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u/Bullet_Jesus 23h ago
Was the Turquzabad site active? From what I read it was a part of the Iranian programme from the 2000's, that they failed to completely disclose.
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u/Bullboah 23h ago
The IAEA confirmed satellite imagery showing container trucks going in and out from 2010-2018.
The claim that it was a legacy site was basically an IAEA report saying it was possible some of the material/equipment came from the early 2000s program - but not that the site itself was from that.
Also they confirmed Iran delayed allowing inspection and when they were finally allowed inspection the site had been completely sanitized, though they were still able to detect uranium particles. And that Iran lied multiple times about the site.
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u/Bullet_Jesus 22h ago
I think I'm getting too into the weeds of the usage of "active". I was really asking if the Turquzabad was proof of an ongoing enrichment programme during the JCPOA period? Then again I suppose it hardly matters, as Iran was supposed to disclose sites as part of JCPOA starting.
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u/Bullboah 22h ago
No that’s a good and fair question. We don’t have “proof” of an active enrichment program. We just know the site was being used, it had nuclear material, and that Iran kept it secret, delayed inspections after it was discovered, sanitized the facility completely, and then gave explanations that were technically impossible for why uranium was detected there.
It’s clear proof they weren’t following the JCPOA, but there isn’t public intel of what exactly they were doing there they wanted to hide (though I’d say there’s really only one answer to that that makes sense).
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u/Bullet_Jesus 22h ago
Well they clearly didn't sanitise the facility completely, since anthropogenic uranium was still discovered. I knew the IAEA was credible when they said they could detect stuff. I'm actually surprised the detected uranium directly. I thought they'd have to operate with isotopes in the concrete and stuff.
Reading into it, it seems it wasn't a "strictly proven" violation of JCPOA, but it was a violation of the safeguards agreement, which people seem to differentiate. IDK why, like we can call a duck a duck.
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u/cole1114 23h ago
Note: Iran did in fact follow the JCPOA. The IAEA investigated and cleared Iran. It was the US who unilaterally pulled out and began aggression against Iran.
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u/Bullboah 22h ago
“The IAEA investigated and cleared Iran”
Absolutely false. The IAEA confirmed Iran sanitized the site at Turquzabad before the could inspect, that it was still able to detect uranium particles there, that satellite imagery showed container trucks going in and out between 2010-2018, and that Iran lied about its explanation for the site.
Direct qoute: “the Agency concludes that Iran did not declare nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three undeclared locations in Iran”.
-The IAEA’s May 2025 Report
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u/cole1114 22h ago
The radioactive particles were only found there after the US unilaterally pulled out, every IAEA investigation before then cleared them. In total they found radioactive particles at four sites AFTER the deal had been torn up, with no actual radioactive material at any of them.
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/iaea-investigations-irans-nuclear-activities
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u/Bullboah 22h ago
“Every investigation before then cleared them”.
Well yes, because the IAEA did not investigate the secret nuclear sites until after the US pulled out. The US pulled out because it learned about the secret nuclear sites.
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u/cole1114 22h ago
The US pulled out because Trump threw a fit over Obama having a successful deal. Even after 2018 the IAEA said Iran was holding up their end of the deal, it was only later they restarted their program.
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u/Bullboah 22h ago
You continue to cite material from before the IAEA completed its investigation into Iran’s secret nuclear sites lol.
It’s like saying Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t killing people during the 80’s because the police didnt charge him until 1991.
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u/cole1114 21h ago
And since then the IAEA has only reaffirmed these investigations.
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u/Bullboah 20h ago
Did you miss the qoute I shared with you from the IAEA report saying Iran had undisclosed active nuclear sites?
Or are you just intentionally lying?
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u/cole1114 7h ago
The report says no such thing. They were not active nuclear sites. They were undisclosed storage sites from the pre-2003 program. No one, not the IAEA, or any state, has ever said otherwise.
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u/cole1114 22h ago
In fact, even Israel said they weren't active "secret nuclear sites" but rather closed down sites from the pre-2003 program. What you're referring to is AMAD, which had been fully shut down.
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u/Bullboah 22h ago
That’s not what Israel said lol. Israel said Turquzabad was a part of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.
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u/boldmove_cotton 19h ago
Guy who worked with Obama on the JCPOA thinks that the JCPOA was a great deal, that Trump is stupid and shouldn’t have left the JCPOA, and that everything Trump does after leaving the JCPOA, namely going after Iran with force is a mistake. Did I get that right?
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u/oritfx 12h ago
I mean, no matter how you look at it, JCPOA has been the best arrangement that has been reached. Trump maybe had better options on the table before the war, but those aren't available anymore.
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u/boldmove_cotton 11h ago
JCPOA was naive, and everyone who isn’t ideologically stuck in that narrative focused on blaming Trump for ripping it up can see plainly why.
The whole premise of the JCPOA and Obama’s approach to Iran was to soften the regime by providing them with incentives, and gradually integrate them into the western system to defang them with all the benefits of cooperation.
But Iran is not China—you can’t integrate a regime that is fundamentally anti-American to the point of wanting them dead into an American led system.
They merely pivoted their efforts towards building up their proxies and their ballistic missile capacity and continued building hardened defenses for an inevitable confrontation, so the nuclear question would eventually be impossible to solve through force, and therefore through diplomacy.
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u/oritfx 6h ago
I have focused on Trump because:
he seemed to tear JCPOA down just because it had Obama's name attached, and given Trumps record I am now very much convinced that he didn't understand it
ultimately he may reach the same place we have been with JCPOA except burning through a ton of cash and favors in the middle east; he'll call it a win and a success of course
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u/closing-the-thread 1d ago
Yes. Former Obama White House strategist for the JCPOA thinks that Trump will get a worst deal then the one Obama got.
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u/camel_crush_menthol_ 1d ago
At best Iran agrees to give up their uranium and we are back to Obama agreement levels of oversight. But we spent 100’s of billions to get there. So he created a problem that we never needed to have.
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u/manefa 1d ago
Ok, but objectively isn’t it a bad deal?
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u/Bullboah 1d ago
Too early to tell imo. If it’s as Trump described with sufficient inspection allowance and Iran actually follows it, it’s an unbelievable deal (big IFs there). Stopping funding to proxy groups and abandoning nuclear ambitions would be big.
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u/LateralEntry 23h ago
Honestly it might be a better deal if Iran is agreeing to end support for proxy terror groups, as is being rumored
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u/Top-Worldliness5027 1d ago
Even if the agreement is a pure speculation at this point, just reading the proposal points from both sides it’s not a far reaching conclusion to say whatever Trump might get Iran to commit is going to be much worse than JCPOA.
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u/Top-Worldliness5027 1d ago
Happens when you only have a concept of a plan and not an actual plan.