Susan Rice blasts Trump’s Iran deal as a strategic blunder

Susan Rice argued that Donald Trump’s Iran agreement handed Tehran leverage before Washington had secured anything in return, calling the preliminary memorandum of understanding a “very bad outcome” and a “strategic blunder.” Speaking Sunday on ABC News’ This Week with Jonathan Karl, the former Obama national security adviser said the administration had granted “so many concessions” in a “flimsy” two-page MOU.

Rice’s critique went to the core structure of the deal. The 14-point memorandum of understanding, finalized in mid-June 2026, begins a 60-day negotiation period, opens the Strait of Hormuz and allows Iran to sell oil while talks continue. Reports on the text also say it includes a proposed $300 billion reconstruction package for Iran. In Rice’s view, those terms should have come only after a full, comprehensive nuclear accord, not before one had been written.

She sharpened that argument by comparing the Trump arrangement with the 2015 nuclear deal she helped negotiate under Barack Obama. That agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, took about a year and a half to complete and forced Iran to make concrete concessions first. Tehran accepted limits on uranium enrichment, dismantled two-thirds of its centrifuges, gave up 98% of its uranium stockpile and allowed U.N. inspectors to monitor compliance.

That contrast is the heart of Rice’s warning: the Obama-era framework used verified Iranian steps to win relief, while the Trump approach appears to have delivered relief before the hard part of the negotiation has even started. Rice said earlier in the week that the arrangement was a “jaw-dropping, horrific surrender document,” underscoring how sharply she believes the administration reversed the usual bargaining sequence.

The stakes are not only diplomatic. The deal follows months of conflict that rattled markets and raised fears of broader regional escalation, and it has already triggered backlash from some Republicans as well as questions about whether the United States conceded too much, too soon. Rice’s intervention puts the agreement under a simple test: whether its early concessions produce leverage in later talks, or whether they lock in gains for Tehran before Washington has extracted the kind of verifiable limits that defined the 2015 pact.