The US president once said that Tehran ‘never lost a negotiation’ – now he appears to have fallen victim to that phenomenon

By Charles Moore

Charles Moore covers politics with the wisdom and insight that come from having edited The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator.

Published 15 June 2026

It is too early to pass overall judgment on Donald Trump’s agreement with Iran. There is, as yet, no published text. Whatever the existing words are, they will prove highly malleable in the next 60 days. The process could break down.

What one can say already, however, is that President Trump should have recalled his own tweet in January 2020: “Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation.” He is himself the victim of this phenomenon.

The process by which we have reached this point has helped Iran in the following ways:

• The initial US/Israeli attacks made many people see Iran as the victim instead of the world’s leading state terrorist. The attacks would still have been worthwhile if they achieved a clear victory, but have they?
• The sequencing meant that many thousands of the regime’s opponents within Iran who followed Trump’s call to revolt were murdered. That’s what you get for following America, people will say.
• The train of events has appeared to confirm the strength, under extreme stress, of the Iranian leadership.
• It has encouraged the world to believe Iran’s long-standing and previously unproved claim that it can control the Strait of Hormuz and therefore the flow of world’s oil.
• America’s approach has put Iran and the United States on an equality which previously did not exist. Before, Iran was a pariah state. Now, it surfaces as the greatest regional power, unpunished for attacking its peaceful Gulf neighbours who look to the United States for security.
• By accepting Pakistan as the broker between the two, the United States empowered extremist versions of Islam and created an imbalance unfavourable to its own interests.
• Trump’s refusal to have genuine consultation with Western allies before his attacks further weakened Nato and gave the allies much less influence over or positive interest in any negotiated result. Iran can note with satisfaction that Trump seems to be moving towards a new version of Obama’s nuclear deal, the JCPOA, which he hates so much, but without the advantage of buy-in from America’s allies.
• Iran has not been punished for being close to Russia and China. So it will wish to stay close to them.
• Under Trump, it is easier to be America’s enemy than its friend. This sad fact will hit Israel very hard.

Because something called “peace” has temporarily been re-established, President Trump will trumpet it and apply it to other situations. He will claim to have added to his prestige and try to use this to bring a similar “peace” to Ukraine. Russia will know how to exploit this.

Stand with British Jews

I find many British non-Jews bewildered by the recent growth of anti-Semitism here. What can we do against this ancient and irrational hatred, they ask.

One thing we can be quite sure of is that if we shy away, the persecution will become normalised. I spoke on Monday to Isaac Grand, a young Jew, who was travelling on the upper deck of a bus through Golders Green earlier this year. In the seat behind him was a religious and therefore visually distinctive Jew. 

A man of mixed-race appearance saw him and began to abuse him, sweating and yelling “Free Palestine!” repeatedly. Mr Grand and the victim remonstrated with him and Mr Grand filmed the incident. When the religious Jew descended the stairs to get off the bus, his assailant spat on him from above.

At the back of the bus, a young man of South Asian appearance joined in shouting “Free Palestine!” The aggressor eventually got off the bus too, but not before complaining to the driver that he had been racially abused. A nice example of how people interpret our anti-discrimination laws.

The most depressing point was that nobody except Mr Grand intervened in any way. Yet the situation here is not some incomprehensible row between foreigners about foreign politics: it is about peaceful fellow citizens made to live in fear. The rest of us must not accept it.

Rory Hanrahan shares these feelings. He is, by trade, a publican, running several pubs in rural Oxfordshire. As the son of the late Sean O’Callaghan, almost the only IRA terrorist to have been genuinely repentant and brave enough to become an informer to the authorities, Rory knows the horrors that can be wrought by terrorism and ethnic hatred. He believes that what is happening to Jews here goes against the British spirit of fair play.

His first step is to try to encapsulate, in the fewest possible words, the cause which we should all support, regardless of the views we may have about the particular policies of Israeli governments. He is producing badges which, against a Union flag background, say “I Stand with British Jews” and inviting people to wear them on Thursday, July 23, the Jewish day of mourning. They can be obtained here.

I have ordered some. If you worry that by wearing such a badge you will suffer insult yourself, you might consider that such an anxiety proves why we need to take a stand: the evil is in our midst.

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ANALYSIS

Trump has admitted defeat on Iran war after historic blunder

Dominic Waghorn

International affairs editor @DominicWaghorn

Tuesday 16 June 2026

Donald Trump has arrived for this week’s G7 summit in France keen to celebrate his peace deal with Iran. But the agreement has only proved this war was one of the greatest strategic blunders in US history.

The Iran “deal” is a tacit admission of strategic defeat by the Trump administration and of a failure to achieve nearly all of his war aims.

The US and Iran have agreed to stop fighting and to open the Strait of Hormuz. Everything else is being kicked down the road over 60 days of ceasefire and beyond.

Given that the Strait was open before the conflict was started by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, reopening it is no great achievement. It simply restores the status quo ante bellum.

After a war that has cost an estimated $30bn, killed thousands and destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US military hardware, have any of Trump’s declared objectives been fulfilled.

Five big nos

• No on Iran’s nuclear programme: both the fate of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile and its enrichment project are to be discussed over the coming weeks. It remains far from obliterated.

• No to changing the regime: Ayatollah Khamenei and a slew of top-ranking commanders have been killed but have been replaced by even more hardline figures, apparently in no mood to compromise.

• No to helping the Iranian people who rose up against their government. If anything, the war has strengthened Iran’s leadership, particularly if it benefits from sanctions relief as part of this deal, which seems more than likely.

• No to destroying Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal. America’s self-styled bombastic ‘Secretary of War’ had claimed it had largely been neutralised; US intelligence estimates 70% of Iran’s missiles remain serviceable.

• No to reining in Iran’s proxies. These are not part of any deal, it seems, for now at least.

Trump’s supporters will point out that Iran’s military has been massively degraded.

His lieutenants are fond of saying most of its navy is at the bottom of the sea. But not where it counts. Iran’s naval potency has remained intact in the Strait of Hormuz, giving the Iranians leverage they could only have dreamt of before.

Iran’s air force has been destroyed, but it was largely obsolescent anyway.

A huge number of Iran’s IRGC and military bases have also been taken out, but their occupants have survived and remain firmly in control of the country.

A deal that achieves nothing new

In short, Iran priced in the beating its conventional military would take and has prevailed where it’s mattered most.

As things stand, the deal achieves none of what Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal did. So far, the highly enriched uranium stays in Iran, the enrichment programme can be reassembled, and there is no moratorium yet on enriching more.

Trump accused Obama of handing the Iranians billions. Negotiations following this memorandum of understanding are likely one way or another to do the same.

TRUMP AT THE G7

The US president arrived in Evian-les-Bains, an upmarket French resort town on the shores of Lake Geneva, on Monday.

Upon arrival, he said he was “very happy” with the deal he’s agreed to with Iran. It will be signed in Switzerland on Friday, with JD Vance set to attend on behalf of the US.

For Trump, attention apparently now switches back toward Ukraine and Russia – which will be a focus of other leaders at this week’s summit, including Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer, who will announce a new sanctions package targeting Moscow.

Trump – as he has said many times to no avail – believes the end of the war is in sight.

Speaking to the media alongside Emmanuel Macron on Monday, he said: “We had a very good conversation yesterday with President Zelenskiy and President ⁠Putin, and I think maybe we can do something there. I really do. I think they’re both open to it.”

Trump has found his off-ramp to this war. He has a better chance now of averting global economic meltdown. He hopes to move on and salvage his party’s political chances in America’s forthcoming midterm elections.

There is a huge amount at stake in the diplomacy that now follows, which will be fiendishly difficult.

Iran has acquired leverage through this war that it never enjoyed before. Its control of the Strait of Hormuz gave it a grip on a fifth of the world’s oil supply. It can wield that power at will in the future.

It is likely, therefore, to be even less accommodating in these negotiations.