Ehsan Salehi: Iran’s Agreement with Washington Achieved Multiple Strategic Objectives

Iranian political analyst Ehsan Salehi wrote:

 After JD Vance attributed the Republicans’ electoral defeat to the war with Iran and relations with Israel, voices aligned with Netanyahu began promoting a counterargument: that the real reason for the defeat was Trump’s decision to leave the war unfinished.
According to this narrative, Trump followed Vance’s preferred approach—accepting a ceasefire and reaching an agreement with Iran—instead of continuing the war and finishing the job.
Interestingly, there are also people inside Iran who accuse their own negotiators of essentially the same thing: accepting an agreement and halting the war just as Iran had reached the enemy’s doorstep, thereby preventing its ultimate destruction.
But setting aside such idealistic expectations and unprovable claims, Iran achieved several objectives through a single agreement:

1. A diplomatic victory:

Salehi argues that the consensus among international analysts was that the memorandum of understanding clearly favoured Iran and that Trump had effectively signed a document acknowledging his own defeat.

2. A strategic economic advantage:

Iran managed to move 80 million barrels of oil out of the region, buying valuable time in the broader contest of economic resilience.

3. Maintaining leverage after the agreement:

Once its oil shipments had left the region, Iran acted decisively and at the right moment to resist violations of the understanding. According to Salehi, this prevented Trump from using the agreement to secure a sustained reduction in energy prices and turning it into an electoral advantage.

Salehi concluded that the strategic judgment and timely decisions at each of these stages—which, in his assessment, delivered a lasting lesson to what he called the “criminal Trump–Netanyahu camp”—were the result of the guidance and leadership of Iran’s Supreme Leader.