Right-wing media figures and outlets, including many that have been all-in on President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, are in open revolt against his proposed memorandum of understanding that seeks to deescalate the conflict.
On June 15, the United States and Iran agreed to a framework to bring the war to an end. The reported details reflect Iran’s relatively strong negotiating position, due largely to its ability to maintain and potentially extend its closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The New York Times reports:
The terms of the preliminary agreement between the United States and Iran would reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping and outline a $300 billon plan for Iran’s reconstruction, but push talks about its nuclear program into future negotiations, according to details described by a senior U.S. official on Wednesday.
The agreement has led to a palpable sense of betrayal from the White House’s hawkish media allies, who as recently as last week looked to be on the verge of persuading Trump to end the fragile ceasefire that’s been in place since April and restart the war.
Instead, the administration appears to be acknowledging the reality that this ill-conceived, unprovoked war of aggression — which the United States launched in coordination with Israel on February 28 — has been a failure on its own terms. It has also been a humanitarian catastrophe for people in Iran and Lebanon, which Israel has invaded and seeks to occupy. The global economic ramifications have been dire as well, with energy costs skyrocketing and food shortages looming — consequences the hawks apparently want to bomb their way out of.
The backlash to the deal from conservative pundits and outlets, especially those within Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, has been swift and harsh. The day the agreement was announced, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote of the proposal: “Trump Stages an Iran Retreat.” The same day, the New York Post published an editorial that glumly concluded the MOU “seems to leave things right back where they were before the bombs started dropping.” A day later, the Post was even more critical, writing: “Trump’s Iran deal gives the Islamic Republic big wins upfront — and America nothing.”
Outside of primetime, the story was largely the same at Fox News, where Iran hawks have struggled to swallow the bitter pill of defeat. A day before the agreement was announced, Fox News host and Iran-warmonger Mark Levin said he was “very skeptical about any deal.” The next day, Fox contributor Marc Thiessen, who has reportedly advised Trump on the war, detailed his objections to ending the conflict at all, in part because “the Iranian regime, thanks to all those military strikes, is on its back and a deal, even a good deal, helps them get up.”
On June 16, Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones channeled the pro-war crowd’s displeasure with the MOU, saying: “I don't think it serves our audience by sugar coating it — there is some real dissent when it comes to this deal right now.”
The same day, Fox contributor Ben Domenech lamented: “This doesn't feel like a victory.”
“I do not think that this is a deal ultimately that achieves the high goals that the president set," Domenech said. Those supposedly lofty goals have in fact been notably fungible and contradictory since the outset of the war.
On June 17, Fox & Friends continued to throw cold water on the deal. Jones said that Iran getting financial help for reconstruction was “a problem,” even if “it won't be American money.”
Jones’ co-host, Brian Kilmeade, tried to draw a red line on a reported possible future point of negotiation that would allow Iran to dilute — rather than surrender — its enriched uranium, calling it “not acceptable.” He also called into question Trump’s decision to appoint Vice President JD Vance as a top negotiator, saying that maybe he “wasn't the right person to bring this conflict to an end.” Kilmeade was one of many in right-wing media who sought to absolve Trump by hanging what they think is a terrible deal on Vance.
A guest from conservative think tank the Hudson Institute said the “memorandum of understanding is worse than not having it.”
The critical coverage continued into Fox’s dayside programming, where anchor Dana Perino implicitly acknowledged that the war had backfired and endowed Iran with the power to close the Strait of Hormuz, “which is leverage that Iran didn’t have before hostilities.”
Perino’s guest, former NATO ambassador Kurt Volker, concurred. “You go back to January, shipping was moving, Iran's nuclear program had been bombed six months before and was largely destroyed,” Volker said. “We launched this war, the global economy took a big hit. Oil prices skyrocketed. Now we're winding this down but we have Iran now emboldened to exercise some kind of control over the Strait of Hormuz.”
The frustration extends beyond Murdoch media. On June 16, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, another major supporter of the war, expressed his own skepticism. “We'll wait to see the MOU,” Shapiro said. “I will say that the early returns do not look wildly promising at this point.”
Former Fox News host Eric Bolling, now at Real America’s Voice, was even more blunt in an appearance on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast. “In this deal, the biggest loser is the United States and India,” Bolling said, referencing high energy prices in both countries. He added: “In essence, I think we lost the most here.”
As is always the case with Trump, his position could shift, and then shift again, and then shift again, all over the course of a single day. Trump has a history of breaking contracts, and the MOU and subsequent negotiations could fall apart at any minute, not least of all because Israel may attempt to draw the United States back into open war. For now, right-wing media hawks seem desperate to blow up the deal and get back to the war they’ve wanted for decades.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
