The memorandum of understanding signed between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States is a complex event with multiple dimensions. A close reading of the text reveals the depth of the internal crises afflicting both parties. Far from expressing any genuine will to peace or marking a settlement of their historic differences, the agreement looks more like the product of political deadlock, structural blockages and conjunctural pressures on each side. Confronted with mounting internal and external difficulties, the leaders of both countries have opted for limited de-escalation — a provisional truce, a temporary suspension of their confrontation — while leaving its root causes intact.
The memorandum from the US side
Official and semi-official statements from both sides make clear the fragility and precariousness of this memorandum of understanding, and highlight deep divergences over its interpretation and implementation. The prospects for its durable application remain shrouded in very great uncertainty; its future depends more than ever on shifts in political, regional and international balances of force.
Donald Trump has sought to present the agreement as the consecration of an unambiguous strategic success. In an interview with Axios published on 18 June, he stated flatly that the Islamic Republic’s acceptance amounted to “unconditional surrender”, adding: “This memorandum may be a real unconditional surrender. I think it is. Look, they have no army left. All their ships are at the bottom of the sea, 159 ships. That’s all they had.” The deliberately hyperbolic and martial register serves to fix a reading of the balance of forces as definitively settled in the United States’ favour.
This triumphalist discourse is in reality an attempt to manage strong domestic pressures. By framing the agreement as a total and unilateral victory, Trump works to project an image of power and political mastery, aimed as much at the international stage as at the home front. The narrative construction of diplomatic success is a strategic communication exercise: transforming a dynamic of compromise and constraint into a demonstration of strength.
After the text was published, fierce criticism rose within the Republican Party from officeholders and longstanding Trump supporters alike. Several conservative voices judged the document particularly weak and compared it to previous agreements such as the JCPoA. [1] This internal contestation reveals persistent tensions within the Republican camp over Iran strategy, and the difficulty Trump faces in stabilising any durable political consensus on this file.
His defence rested on a strictly pragmatic logic, centred on cost-benefit calculation. In the same Axios interview: “They’re telling me: why didn’t you push harder? Suppose I had pushed harder and the bombing continued for another two or three weeks. What would we have gained? The Strait of Hormuz would never have reopened.” He frames the memorandum not as an ideological concession but as a strategic trade-off to avoid escalation with potentially uncontrollable economic and geopolitical consequences. He had previously remarked, on Wednesday 17 June, with evident sarcasm: “If it works out, I’ll take the credit. If it doesn’t, I’ll blame JD [Vance].”
These statements have been read by some observers as signalling fault lines that could open within the presidential entourage if the situation deteriorates. The emphasis on “pragmatic” trade-offs and the prevention of uncontrolled escalation could, over time, provide the basis for redistributing political responsibility in the event of failure. In this reading, JD Vance’s role may leave him exposed to internal Republican criticism should implementation produce results judged insufficient — a dynamic that could affect his positioning within the party and his prospects in 2028, though none of this can be considered settled at this stage.
The painful recomposition of the theocratic regime into a military-security regime
In Iran too, the signing of the memorandum appears to signal a paradigm shift and significant recompositions within the bloc in power. The regime’s hard core now faces structural tensions arising from the progressive erosion of its capacity to secure legitimacy and governmental effectiveness, against a background of unrelenting economic, social and political crisis.
Acceptance of the agreement has reopened internal fault lines and sharpened already latent divergences between different tendencies within the power structure and its traditional social base. What is emerging is not homogeneous adhesion but a more contrasted dynamic — reservations, readjustments and varied forms of disillusionment — that reveals the fragility of the equilibria on which the current political architecture rests.
In the nights following the announcement, fringes of the Islamic Republic’s own supporters, including forces drawn from its ideological base who had organised nocturnal rallies in the streets and public squares, expressed profound anger at what they perceived as the abandonment of fundamental slogans. Participants accused government officials of compromise and of crossing ideological red lines — expressing a rupture between a part of the militant base and the political choices made at the summit of the state.
Simultaneously, factions within the regime itself — notably the hardest currents — multiplied sharp criticisms of the negotiating team, seeking to distance themselves from the content and implications of an agreement they prefer not to be associated with.
In reaction to this tense and disordered climate, a singular message widely interpreted as responsibility-deflecting, attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, testifies to instability and confusion at the highest level of decision-making. The message implicitly validates the necessity of the compromise while aiming to redistribute its political and symbolic costs. Responsibility for the retreat is attributed, by a logic of distancing, to Masoud Pezeshkian in his capacity as President of the Republic and head of the Supreme National Security Council — consistent with a discursive style often associated with Ali Khamenei, in which the centre of authority is preserved by externalising operational responsibilities. In this instance, Mojtaba Khamenei is using the same strategy as Trump.
This political manœuvre aims to construct a symbolic protection mechanism: containing the anger of the ideological base while preserving the internal equilibria of power, and designating in advance a figure capable of bearing the political and institutional cost if the agreement fails. It amounts less to a clarification of responsibilities than to a strategy of political stabilisation through differentiated accountability.
Behind these performances, some analysts argue that a deeper shift may be under way. The military-security bloc in power — embodied notably by figures such as Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament — seems gradually to have reached the conclusion that the system has entered a structural impasse. Its leaders appear to have taken stock of the growing limits of reproducing the old ideological registers: slogans such as “Death to America” or “Destruction of Israel” can no longer, by themselves, meet the material and institutional demands facing the state. Beyond their symbolic dimension, this points to a broader constraint — the economic and administrative sustainability of a particularly extensive bureaucratic and security apparatus.
That apparatus depends on access to substantial financial resources. In a context of international isolation and persistent geopolitical tensions, the capacity to secure those resources appears increasingly constrained — a dynamic that is forcing a redefinition of the regime’s strategic room for manœuvre.
This is why, in this reading, the political struggle and internal recompositions likely to unfold in Tehran over the coming weeks will centre on heightened rivalry between different power networks for access to resources and post-conflict rents — notably the economic dividends potentially linked to a loosening of sanctions, control of the principal national economic circuits, and the terms of any possible reintegration into international financial markets. The regime’s factions are repositioning to secure the most favourable share of benefits from the easing of external constraints. These developments reflect less a brutal rupture than a progressive recomposition of internal balances of force, in which economic, security and political considerations are tightly intertwined.
The petty and criminal bargaining of Reza Pahlavi, and the frustration of the monarchists
One of the most significant indirect effects of this memorandum may lie in the recomposition, if not weakening, of certain fractions of the right-wing Iranian opposition established abroad. Currents such as the monarchists and the supporters of Reza Pahlavi have in recent years structured a significant part of their political strategy around the hypothesis of maximum external pressure on the Islamic Republic — combining the intensification of economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and, for some segments, the hope of more direct support from the United States and Israel.
The petty and criminal bargaining attributed to Reza Pahlavi, combined with the growing frustration of monarchist circles, fits into an increasingly visible dynamic of political radicalisation. Their slogan remains unchanged and is asserted without ambiguity: “Thank you Trump, thank you Bibi”, in celebration of the bombing of Iran. History has rarely seen a pretender to a throne associated with a crime of such gravity.
The conclusion of this agreement lays bare the fragility of that strategic approach. The external powers on which these currents rested part of their hopes have ultimately prioritised their own geopolitical, economic and security interests, rather than any logic of regime change in Iran. This has weakened the political prospects of these exile opposition segments, by revealing the limits of a strategy dependent primarily on international dynamics, the weakness of their social roots inside the country, and their structural dependence on external conjunctures they cannot control or anticipate.
Remote from, by reason of their own social roots, any approach built on mobilising workers, women, students and other contestatory forces inside the country, these currents have largely privileged diplomatic action, lobbying and the pursuit of support from foreign decision-making centres in Washington and Tel Aviv. For their most radical representatives, this orientation has sometimes tipped into open advocacy for military escalation, in the hope that regime weakening would open the way to its overthrow — a posture that has provoked sharp controversy, including within the Iranian opposition, with critics reproaching it for subordinating political change to foreign strategic calculations.
The agreement has shown that, from the standpoint of the great powers, figures such as Reza Pahlavi are not central actors in any durable political project but can be mobilised conjuncturally in diplomatic and media pressure strategies. Once Washington opted for negotiation, this form of “opposition under external tutelage” found itself largely marginalised and stripped of part of its political function.
A breath of oxygen for social and civic movements in Iran
Nothing in the available evidence or past experience permits the conclusion that this memorandum will enjoy lasting stability. The deeply rooted mutual mistrust structuring relations between the two countries for decades, combined with the essentially pragmatic, conjunctural and often opportunistic character of the motivations on each side, considerably limits its strategic reach. More than a step towards a lasting normalisation of bilateral relations, this agreement appears as the product of a provisional balance of forces and immediate necessities specific to both parties — a tactical truce to manage a crisis situation and offer a temporary respite, rather than a fundamental settlement of the antagonisms that continue to divide Washington and Tehran.
Nevertheless, even this fragile agreement has had the effect of temporarily lifting from Iranian society the heavy, paralysing and destructive shadow of war. For Iranian civil society, the suspension of hostilities represents not only a respite from the material and human destruction of continued open conflict; it also entails the weakening of one of the power’s principal instruments of legitimation and political control.
For decades, the authorities have regularly invoked the threat of war, foreign aggression or national insecurity to justify reinforcing the repressive apparatus, restricting the space of public freedoms, and deferring any substantive response to the population’s economic, social and democratic demands. The temporary attenuation of this threat deprives the power of a central argument for mobilising opinion around “national unity” and relegating internal crises to the background.
Accordingly, the structural difficulties of Iranian society — inflation, poverty, unemployment, corruption, social inequalities, discrimination against women, political repression and the absence of fundamental freedoms — will reappear with heightened acuity at the centre of public debate. The relative disappearance of the war factor could open a new space of expression for social demands accumulated over recent years and bring back to the foreground the conflicts opposing society to the state rather than those opposing it to external adversaries.
With the provisional attenuation of this external threat, one of the system’s principal mechanisms of political protection is weakening. The security shield that served to justify the permanent state of exception looks less solid than before. The political and social space, long subjected to the constraints of an environment marked by the prospect of war, could experience a certain relative opening — even a limited and reversible one.
This creates new breathing room for society. It fosters conditions more conducive to the reorganisation of social actors and the re-emergence of civic demands. Workers, employees, pensioners, teachers, women and students potentially have an opportunity to make their demands heard outside the atmosphere of urgency and mobilisation imposed by war. Long-suppressed, deferred or marginalised demands may reinvest the public space with greater visibility, coherence and force. The suspension of hostilities is likely to displace the centre of gravity of political debate: from external threats towards the structural problems of Iranian society itself.
The end of the bombing does not signify the disappearance of the structural crises traversing the Iranian economy. Extreme poverty, persistent inflation, mass unemployment, the continuous degradation of household living conditions, and systemic discriminations based on gender or ethnic belonging all remain fully present.
The suspension of external hostilities is therefore not a resolution of internal contradictions but a displacement of the field of conflictuality. It marks the opening of a phase in which social and political tensions manifest themselves more directly, less mediated by the logic of war — the relations between society and power revealed in a more immediate and potentially more acute manner.
Within this framework, the authorities’ priorities remain centred on the preservation of their authority and the protection of the networks and interests that sustain the regime’s architecture. This maintains a high level of structural tension between the population’s social demands and the imperatives of power preservation. While the power clans and clientelist or mafioso-type networks within the state apparatus reposition themselves for the competition over resources and rents in the new environment, the different components of society and the progressive forces are equally confronted with the necessity of adapting to this new conjuncture — less a spontaneous dynamic than a process constrained by the evolution of the balance of forces, imposing new forms of structuring, coordination and intervention.
Societal transformations making ideological framing more difficult
Iranian society stands on the eve of potentially decisive transformations. The weight of economic failures has borne down directly on the popular strata, pushing the living conditions of millions of people to increasingly difficult, even unsustainable levels. The political system — authoritarian and highly centralised — responds principally through coercive devices and an intensification of punitive practices, which contribute to worsening the climate of confrontation between state and society.
When a population perceives that the legal and peaceful channels for expressing its fundamental demands are progressively closing, its political engagement is liable to take a more determined and intense form than in previous phases — with a heightened charge of anger and insistence vis-à-vis the structures in place.
The experiences accumulated during previous cycles of mobilisation constitute a significant political and social acquisition. Through successive events and confrontations, Iranian society has become hardened socially and politically, developing a more lucid reading of internal balances of force and of the mechanisms of power. The series of strikes in key industrial sectors, the national mobilisations of pensioners, the broad uprising carried by the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”, and the remarkable perseverance of teachers, healthcare workers and victims’ families have all constituted major social and political experiences. These struggles have contributed to accumulating significant gains in collective consciousness, the structuring of demands and organisational capacity, and to forming a bolder generation, more conscious of the social and political challenges it faces and of its own role in the dynamics of transformation to come.
Citizens today have a finer knowledge of the mechanisms by which security and administrative institutions tend to frame, neutralise or deflect social and professional demands. Any significant advance — whether professional, social or political — seems increasingly to depend on the capacity to build durable forms of solidarity, to develop network-based organisations, and to articulate the different social movements with each other more coherently. The connection between workers’ networks and teachers’ organisations, the convergence of women’s rights defenders with student movements, and mutual support between different categories of wage earners, could considerably reinforce the capacity for social pressure.
These evolutions are part of a broader set of profound demographic, social and cultural mutations over recent decades. Iranian society has experienced, over forty-seven years, significant and often irreversible transformations affecting modes of socialisation, political expectations and forms of collective expression.
The regime’s capacities for control and ideological framing are more limited than before. The development of internet access, the rise of social networks and the diversification of information channels have weakened the traditional mechanisms of censorship and state monopoly over the public narrative. New generations are inscribing themselves, in their daily lives and social representations, within frameworks of values that are increasingly diversified, which in part transcend the frame of official ideology.
The increasingly assertive presence of women in social, educational and professional spheres — despite legal obstacles and constraints on the public space — constitutes a major factor of transformation. It puts patriarchal structures and traditional frameworks of power organisation under tension, introducing social dynamics that progressively call their foundations into question. Women’s broadened access to education, work and social life contributes to redefining existing social relations and to altering the cultural balances on which certain forms of authority rest.
The human geography of the country has also shifted significantly. Vast zones of precarious housing have formed on the outskirts of major cities, grouping a population estimated at more than twenty million people — the product of deep economic mutations linked to inegalitarian policies of resource redistribution, rent dynamics, and processes of environmental fragility and unbalanced urban development. These peri-urban spaces concentrate a high proportion of precarious workers, the unemployed and populations excluded from the formal economy; they are marked by limited access to public services and infrastructure, and by the accumulation of economic frustrations and feelings of exclusion that reconfigure relations between centre and periphery within Iranian society.
If this vast population managed to articulate itself with independent organisations, develop class consciousness and inscribe itself in structured forms of organisation, it could constitute a determining factor in the dynamics of social and political transformation. That would however depend on the capacity to build durable frameworks of mobilisation capable of transforming situations of social fragmentation into organised collective force liable to exert a significant influence on existing social equilibria.
The organisation of this part of society could modify profoundly its place in social relations, moving it from the condition of victims of the dynamics of unequal development to that of a structured collective actor capable of weighing significantly on the political balance of forces. In such a configuration, and in articulation with the industrial working class, it could constitute a determining social force capable of challenging the mechanisms of domination and control of the state apparatus.
Economic and social rights cannot be separated from democratic rights
In the absence of sufficiently developed class consciousness and without independent organisational structures, the social energy accumulated in peripheral spaces can orient itself towards unstable and potentially dangerous trajectories. Frustration not channelled towards structured collective perspectives and progressive objectives can be captured by reactionary, populist or opportunistic currents — mobilising simplifying discourses and demagogic slogans in order to capitalise on discontent. This type of dynamic can thus divert a widely rooted social anger from its principal structural causes — linked to mechanisms of exploitation and systemic inequalities — to redirect it towards objectives that distort its initial meaning. In certain cases this can favour the emergence of new forms of authoritarianism, the exacerbation of social divisions or the consolidation of exclusive and anti-democratic political projects.
The organised presence of civic and workers’ militants in these social spaces is therefore a determining factor in structuring mobilisations, avoiding the dispersal of collective energies, and limiting the risk of political capture by forces hostile to democratic and social dynamics.
The demands of different social strata form interdependent components of a single social whole. Requirements relating to housing, health, free and quality education, and universal social protection are in close connection with fundamental civic and political rights. Economic and social rights cannot be dissociated from fundamental freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of independent organisation and individual free choice, including in matters of dress. These demands form a coherent continuum in which the social, economic and political dimensions mutually reinforce each other within a single logic of emancipation.
The repressive and securitarian policy adopted by the regime in the face of union demands — even the most elementary — tends to accelerate the politicisation of social movements. The power appears reluctant to accept any form of reform, perceiving even the slightest concession or flexibility as a risk capable of destabilising the whole political edifice. This institutional lockdown widens the scope of demands, which progressively move beyond sectoral claims to interrogate the global structure of the system itself. Initial demands raised within a professional or social frame can transform themselves into a broader contestation of the mechanisms of governance and resource distribution.
The Iranian workers’ movement occupies a particularly central place in this dynamic. Workers in the industrial, services and petrochemical sectors — through the strike and the stoppage of production — possess a potentially significant capacity for impact on the functioning of the economy, making them a major actor in social balances of force. The development of this potential depends largely on convergence with other components of the social and progressive movement: closer articulation with the mobilisations of women, national teachers’ organisations, pensioners’ associations, student movements, ecological militants and the different peoples confronted with forms of national oppression.
Towards a strategic reckoning
The central question is the construction of forms of coordination and convergence that move beyond the fragmentation of sectoral struggles, favouring the emergence of a common space of demands and collective action. The formation of a united front of labour and the working classes is often presented, in socialist analysis, as the major strategic condition for lastingly modifying the balance of forces in favour of the popular classes.
The reexamination of recent developments and the nature of the agreements concluded between blocs of power illuminates a historical reality that is difficult to contest: the cost of the principal strategic decisions taken by ruling classes — military adventurism, proxy wars, policies of sanctions and economic blockades, tactical compromises and ceasefires — tends to be borne disproportionately by the working classes. Working populations are the first exposed to the social, economic and material consequences of political choices made at institutional and state levels largely disconnected from their daily experience. This asymmetry generates lasting structural tensions between the spheres of decision and the social realities on which they operate.
The different components of the system of power — military-security structures and other decision-making centres alike — along with the actors confronting them, tend to externalise the costs of their strategies of survival, compromise and interest preservation onto the living conditions of the most vulnerable populations, affecting their access to essential resources, their health and their social security.
A precise understanding of the internal contradictions of power, and the adoption of forms of struggle adapted to the historical and social context, constitute an important precondition for moving beyond the current crises. Building such organisational cohesion and more structured class consciousness remains the condition for modifying existing balances of force to the benefit of the majority social strata — limiting the grip of the networks of power and wealth accumulation concentrated in the hands of organised minorities, and opening the way to a social and political order perceived as more equitable, more democratic and more respectful of the fundamental rights of individuals.
Notes
[1] The Iran nuclear agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPoA) was signed in Vienna, Austria, on 14 July 2015, by the following eight parties: Iran, the P5+1 countries — China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany — and the European Union.
Houshang Sepehr is an exiled Iranian revolutionary Marxist and an organiser of Solidarité Socialiste avec les Travailleurs en Iran (Socialist Solidarity with the Workers in Iran — SSTI), based in Paris.
Both the original French version and this English translation by Mark Johnson were first published by Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières.
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