Not only does President Donald Trump’s “deal” to end the Iran war guarantee profits for the Tehran regime, but the money is already flowing as the United States lifts its blockade of Iranian ports.

Sanctions on the country’s oil sales, which have financed its military and nuclear programs for decades, appear to have been lifted as soon as Trump and Vice President JD Vance electronically signed the “memorandum of understanding” with their Iranian counterparts on June 16. The Iranians also gained immediate access to international banking and insurance services.

According to sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the first supertanker loaded with Iranian crude left the port of Chahabar, sailed past the US naval blockade, and cruised out of the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday. A second supertanker soon followed.

The Journal also reports that a draft of the memorandum of understanding outlined the resumption of oil sales, “along with the promise after further negotiations…of extensive sanctions relief, release of frozen assets and billions of dollars in reconstruction funding.” How soon the regime would obtain those additional funds remains unclear, although senior administration officials have suggested they would be tied to “performance” on issues such as nuclear enrichment and opening the Strait of Hormuz.

Murky as the MOU remains, what is becoming clear is that Iran has won a major strategic victory rather than suffering the “total defeat” that Trump has repeatedly claimed. The Supreme Leader and the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps will soon be collecting billions of dollars in fresh oil revenues, having achieved the sanctions relief they have long demanded from the United States. And they will have gotten that benefit, with all its dangers to the West, merely by returning to the pre-war status quo.

So why did we expend hundreds of billions of dollars in military and economic costs, along with more than dozen American lives and thousands of innocent Iranians we were supposedly trying to protect?

If the Journal reporting proves correct, it won’t be easy for Trump and his MAGA propagandists to answer those questions. Indeed, the Republicans who have stooged for the White House on this war and so many other ruinous decisions already appear to see a political disaster looming.