What is in Trump’s Iran Deal, and What Does It Mean for Ukraine?

By Robert Harris

Thursday 18 June 2026

As I write this, it has been about a week since Donald Trump made a “yooge” announcement on Truth Social saying a deal with Iran was nearly completed. Soon after, he and the Iranian government both announced an agreement had been reached to open the Strait of Hormuz, and the entire industrialized world breathed a sigh of relief. But the next question was “okay, so what are the terms of the deal?”

Predictably enough, pro-Iran social media accounts (most of which seem to have the same scriptwriters as the pro-Russia accounts which have spent the last four years claiming the Russian tricolor would be raised over Kyiv by the end of the week) were quick to call it an Iranian victory, with the IRGC’s “official”(?) Facebook account even going so far as to say “the US and Israel realized they had no choice but to accept defeat and sign a humiliating surrender accord recognizing Iranian dominance.” This is a bold claim to make, considering Iran’s military has been reduced from four branches to two, while only inflicting thirteen fatalities upon the US military, but outlandish declarations by a Russian ally are hardly surprising these days (which is not to say that the US precisely covered itself in glory through this campaign either).

As is expected in the internet age, misinformation is far more readily available than information, but a few details have begun to emerge about the shape that this “deal” actually takes. First though, I’d like to give a brief recap of how we got here.

For more than thirty years the US has considered (more often than not at the urging of the EU) military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a government who seems to take an almost North-Korean-level delight in drawing ire by threatening nuclear war. There never has been any analysis anywhere saying Iran had the capacity to resist a decapitation strike from an all-out US air offensive. However, there are limits to what a decapitation strike can do in a well-entrenched regime (eliminating the dictator does not, contrary to commonly held Western belief, ensure that the people will rise up, dismember the regime that produced him, and suddenly fall madly in love with the country that bombed their leaders).

Furthermore, Iran’s topography makes a ground invasion nearly impossible (a fact to which every incarnation of the Persian Empire from antiquity to the Shah owes its very survival), but the biggest problem was that even if Iran’s regime did collapse, they would maintain the ability to cut off the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil supply (and nearly ALL of China and Japan’s oil supply) flows.

Well, the Trump Administration, more emboldened than they should have been by their swift victory in Venezuela (as well as Iran’s apparent helplessness during the US bombing campaign against their nuclear facilities last summer), calculated that they could overpower the regime so thoroughly that the Ayatollah would be dead within hours and his air force and navy destroyed within days, after which his terrified replacement would agree to any terms the US demanded. Alas, in war, the only thing more dangerous than being wrong is being almost right, and the Trump Administration was right about all of those except one.

The Ayatollah was indeed dead within hours (and several of his successors, one after another, were killed over the following weeks), and Iran’s air force and navy -at least in terms of major surface combatants- were both utterly obliterated before they realized they were under attack. The problem was, the expected fearful grovelling by the replacement leadership didn’t occur. Iran responded by unleashing the drones and missiles they had been stockpiling for decades (giving the Gulf States an introduction to the Shahed, a familiar face in any Ukrainian city, while forcing the US to temporarily withdraw from a few dozen small installations that can barely be called “bases”) and, of course, blocked the Strait of Hormuz, insisting no US allies would be allowed transit.

While Ukraine, wisely, took this opportunity to demonstrate its hard-won experience with defense against Shaheds (thus securing massive investment by the Gulf States and a huge market for exporting its technology), the US -somewhat chagrined- quietly backpedalled on their disdainful sneering at Ukraine’s drone defenses and, somewhat more loudly, put a blockade of their own around the Strait, saying “if our allies do not get to ship oil through here, neither does anyone else.” The logic was that it denied Iran the ability to say “the only way to get your oil back is to sever ties with the US.” Now, a ship sailing under the flag of an Iranian ally would be stopped by a US blockade, and a ship sailing under the flag of a US ally would be stopped by an Iranian blockade. Iran’s oil tanks (as well as many of those in Saudi Arabia) filled with nowhere to ship their oil to, ports in Asia waited for oil tankers that were no longer coming, oil prices skyrocketed, and such has been the situation for roughly three months.

Now, back to the present. The deal reached between the Trump administration and the Tehran regime does indeed include both countries dropping their blockades and allowing oil to flow through, but what else? What about Iran’s nuclear enrichment? What about their demands for sanction relief? And what about the rumor that the US is paying Iran $300 billion as a “reconstruction fund?”

Well, neither of the first two has been resolved. The only agreement reached regarding those two was that the two signatories agree to extend a ceasefire for another 60 days to continue discussing those. As for the $300 billion dollar rumor (an interesting number, considering it perfectly matches the amount which Donald Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed the US donated to Ukraine), that’s also false…

…partly.

To begin with, no, the US is not giving Iran $300 billion dollars. In fact, the US is not giving Iran a dime. The terms of the agreement do say that private investors, some in the US but mostly in the Gulf States, will invest $300 billion into rebuilding Iran’s oil infrastructure, in return for a major stake in the ownership thereof. That’s a vital point. This is not a gift, it’s a purchase, and brings with it an ownership stake, which means a share of the profits and -more importantly- a voice in the operation, providing the US and the Gulf States a lot of influence in Tehran while driving Chinese influence out.

And if this writer is to be blunt, one could safely bet a year’s pay that that, rather than actual “regime change” or any curtailment on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, was the Trump administration’s goal from the word “go.”

So, then, what has been achieved by the deal (and, from the US’s perspective, by the war)? Well, the regime has not changed, at least on paper, but most of the people leading it have been replaced (and in many cases their replacements have been replaced). Iran has lost its force projection capacity and used up forty years worth of munitions stockpiles. The US has proven its ability to militarily remove world leaders at will with near-impunity (even if that is rather pale fire considering that the regime’s continued existence disproves the effectiveness of doing so, thus marring a lot of the military prestige the US gained by toppling the Venezuelan government in 2 hours).

The detail that will cause the greatest sighs of relief in most European capitals (especially Kyiv) is that oil prices will go down, which is a big loss for Russia. In the past 90 days, the Kremlin’s oil revenues have dropped dramatically as a result of Ukraine’s… let’s call them “long range, targeted, kinetic sanctions,” even as the price of their oil has doubled, so with the price of that oil now slated to drop almost as quickly as it rose, the impact on Russia’s oil revenues (the only thing keeping their economy even partially afloat at this point) is likely to lead to the kind of economic news one does not want to be selected to deliver to Vladimir Putin unless one is quite good at avoiding tea or windows. But most importantly, Iran’s oil industry is now economically beholden to foreign investors, most of whom come from countries who are now partially reliant on Ukrainian anti-drone technology (and yes, to a large degree, still dependent on US anti-missile technology as well). Given Russia’s reliance on Iranian weaponry, this gives Ukraine a few levers it can now pull, considering Iran is now partially economically answerable to countries whose ability to sleep at night is in Ukrainian hands.

In short, the US achieved – albeit clumsily and gracelessly – exactly what it set out to achieve (even if the nuclear guarantees Israel wanted out of the deal remain yet to be determined), with minimal casualties, while gaining badly needed experience in what drone warfare looks like (experience which would have been a lot more painful if they’d waited to receive it at Russian or Chinese hands, and which they are currently putting to use by turning their attention back to Ukraine in far more polite tones than before). Ukraine, as well, gained new sources of investment by exporting its drone technology (to the countries which now hold a partial ownership stake in Iran’s oil industry), and oil prices, which temporarily spiked, will now drop back to their previous levels.

Iran and the US will each swear they won, Ukraine has meteorically risen to become one of the primary defense exporters in a wealthy region of the world that previously took little notice of them, and Russia … well, they managed to suffer a potentially crippling defeat in a war in which they were not even a combatant.

As for me, I’m fine with that outcome.

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Robert Harris is a teacher in Lviv and the author of Smells like BULL-Shevik to ME! – A Conservative Talks to Conservatives About Russian Lies.