Now look, I want you to listen to me carefully this morning because something happened today that most folks probably scrolled right past on their phones. A social media post went out, just words on a screen. But I’m telling you, those words carry more weight than almost anything I’ve seen a president put in writing since the Cold War.
On June the 13, 2026, the president of the United States announced to the world that a deal to end the war with Iran will be signed tomorrow. He said the Straight of Hormuz will open immediately. He said Iran no longer wants a nuclear weapon. And tucked inside that post, almost like an afterthought, he wrote that if things don’t work out, quote, “We have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again.
” Now, I want you to sit with that sentence for a moment because we’ll come back to it later. And when we do, I think you’ll understand why it should concern every single American, regardless of party. This isn’t about left or right. This isn’t about who you voted for. This is about the most serious question a democracy can face.
How does the most powerful nation on earth make decisions about war and peace? and who gets to make them? Because right now, the answer to that question is one man, one platform, and zero institutional guard rails. And that should worry you whether you’re a Republican, a Democrat, or someone who’s never voted in your life.
So, let’s walk through this together, step by step, because the details matter here. They always do. Let me tell you something. To understand what’s happening right now, you’ve got to understand how we got here. In 2015, the Obama administration, working alongside Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China, negotiated the joint comprehensive plan of action with Iran.
Now, was it a perfect deal? No. No deal ever is. I’ve negotiated a few in my time and I can tell you that the nature of diplomacy is that nobody walks away fully satisfied. But here’s what the JCPOA did. It froze Iran’s enrichment capacity. It shipped out 97% of their enriched uranium stockpile. and it put international inspectors on the ground with the most intrusive verification regime ever applied to a nuclear program. It was working.
The IEA confirmed that 14 separate times. Then in 2018, the United States pulled out unilaterally. No violation had occurred. Our own allies begged us to stay in. And what happened next is exactly what every serious foreign policy mind predicted. Iran started enriching again. The inspectors lost access and the diplomatic channels collapsed.
Fast forward to June of 2025 and we launched Operation Midnight Hammer. Seven B2 bombers, 14 bunker buster bombs, strikes on Ford, Natans, and Isvahan. By February of 2026, we were in a fullcale war. A naval blockade shut down the straight of Hormuz. Gas prices climbed. Markets shook. And for three and a half months now, we’ve heard every other week that a deal is just days away.
And here we are still waiting. Now, I know what it’s like to manage a foreign policy crisis. I dealt with Saddam Hussein. I dealt with North Korea. I dealt with Bosnia. And I can tell you this, diplomacy is not a highlight reel. It’s a slow, careful, unglamorous process that requires patience, discretion, and partners who trust you.
What I see right now doesn’t look like that process. Now, let’s actually read this post carefully because the words a president chooses matter enormously and some of what’s in here deserves real scrutiny. First, President Trump says that Obama’s JCPOA was quote an easy, beautiful, smooth road to a nuclear weapon which Iran would have had six years ago.
Now, I understand the political instinct to draw that contrast, but it simply doesn’t match the factual record. Every credible arms control expert, every IAEA inspection report confirmed that while the deal was in force, Iran was complying. They were not on a road to a weapon. They were on a leash and we cut it.
Second, he says Iran quote no longer wants a nuclear weapon. Now, I’d love for that to be true, but wanting and not wanting are matters of intention, and intentions change with leadership, with pressure, with humiliation. What keeps a country from building a bomb isn’t desire, it’s verification. It’s inspectors on the ground with unfettered access.
And there is nothing in this post about the IAEA, about inspections, about any verification mechanism whatsoever. Third, he says no money will exchange hands, but Iranian state media and leaked reports have discussed sanctions relief and rebuilding funds as central to the framework. Somebody’s not telling the full truth. And then there’s this extraordinary phrase.
He says, “At the appropriate time, we’ll go in and get the nuclear dust buried deep under the powerful sunken granite mountains.” Now, that is a casual way to describe re-entry into the underground nuclear infrastructure of a sovereign nation we just bombed. What does go in and get it mean operationally? Under whose authority? With whose consent? And here’s what the post doesn’t mention at all.
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ballistic missiles, proxy networks, Hezbollah, congressional authorization, or any role for America’s traditional allies. Those aren’t small omissions. Those are the whole architecture of a real agreement. Here’s the honest truth about how diplomacy is supposed to work. And I say this as someone who spent eight years doing it from the Oval Office.
When I sat down to negotiate the Dayton accords to end the war in Bosnia, we didn’t announce the terms on television before the parties agreed. When we worked the agreed framework with North Korea to freeze their plutonium program, we didn’t tweet the details while the other side was still at the table.
You know why? Because successful negotiation requires that both sides can walk into the room with dignity and walk out with something they can defend to their own people. What happens when you announce a deal on social media before the other party has confirmed it. You box them in. You humiliate their negotiators. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmael Bagayi, said publicly on the same day that the deal will not be signed on Sunday and that negotiators aren’t even traveling to Geneva.
So now you’ve got the president of the United States saying one thing and the nation he’s supposedly making peace with saying another. That’s not a negotiation. That’s a collision. And this pattern has been going on for months. Every few weeks we hear the deal is imminent. Two to three days they say and then it doesn’t happen and the rhetoric escalates and we cycle through another round of threats and walkbacks.
I’ve seen this before. When you promise results you can’t deliver on the timeline you set, you don’t just lose credibility with your adversary. You lose it with your allies, with the markets, and eventually with your own people. Diplomacy by declaration is not diplomacy. It’s performance. And the stakes here are too high for performance.
Now, we’ve got to talk about something that goes beyond any one president because this is about the health of our institutions. Think about what has happened in the course of this conflict. The United States launched strikes on a sovereign nation’s nuclear infrastructure. Then we entered a fullscale war. We imposed a naval blockade that closed one of the most critical shipping lanes in the world.
And now we are reportedly on the verge of signing a deal to end that war. And at no point at no point has the United States Congress had a meaningful role in any of it. No declaration of war, no authorization for the use of military force that was publicly debated and voted on. No treaty clause engagement for the deal that’s supposedly coming.
Now, our Constitution doesn’t put those requirements in there for decoration. The founders understood that decisions about war and peace are too consequential to rest in one person’s hands. Because the passions of a moment can overtake the judgment of a generation. And it’s not just Congress. Where is the IAEA in this framework? Where are the P5+1 partners who built the original verification architecture? The negotiations are reportedly being mediated through Pakistan and I have great respect for Pakistan’s diplomatic role.
But this is not a bilateral dispute between Washington and Thrron. This is a nuclear proliferation question that affects every nation on Earth. When you cut the international community out of a nuclear agreement, you don’t just weaken the deal, you weaken the entire non-prololiferation system that has kept the world from nuclear catastrophe for 80 years.
And here’s what worries me most, the president this sets. Because someday there will be another president of either party and they will look at this and say, “Well, if it was acceptable then, it’s acceptable now.” Institutions erode not in one dramatic moment, but through a thousand small concessions that nobody fights hard enough to stop.
We’ve got to remember something here. And I want to be careful about how I say this because I think it’s important to be fair. But timing matters in politics. It always has. It mattered when I was president and it matters now. This deal is announced as being signed on Sunday, June the 14th, which happens to be the president’s 80th birthday.
Now, I’m not going to stand here and tell you the motivation because I don’t know what’s in any man’s heart. But I will tell you that the American people have a right to ask the question, are we making the best deal or are we making the fastest deal? Because those are not the same thing. Gas prices are high.
Markets had been rattled for months. The war was supposed to last four to six weeks and we’re in month three and a half. There is enormous political pressure to deliver a resolution. And I understand that pressure. Believe me, I do. But when you’re negotiating something this consequential, speed is not a virtue if it comes at the cost of substance.
And the criticism isn’t just coming from Democrats. Senator Ted Cruz has warned against a deal that leaves Iran with effective control of the Strait of Hormuz and the ability to enrich. Senator Lindsey Graham has said there should be no enrichment at all. Senator Wicker called a proposed ceasefire a disaster.
When members of the president’s own party are raising these red flags, that’s not partisan noise. That’s a substantive warning. And then there’s that phrase again, the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again. Now, let me tell you something. When a president references a weapon that has only been used twice in human history in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the same breath as announcing a peace agreement, that is not reassurance.
That is a threat. And presidential threats have consequences that ripple through every foreign ministry, every defense department, every intelligence service on the planet. Words like that change calculations in ways we cannot predict and may not be able to control. So, let me walk you through where I think this goes from here because I think there are really three roads in front of us.
The first possibility is that the deal does get signed tomorrow just as the president says. But if it gets signed without verification mechanisms, without IAEA inspectors, without a framework for monitoring compliance, then we’ve seen this movie before. I lived it. In 1994, we negotiated the agreed framework with North Korea.
It froze their plutonium program. It was a real achievement at the time, but it didn’t have deep enough institutional roots and when the political winds shifted, the whole thing fell apart and North Korea eventually built nuclear weapons. Anyway, a deal without verification is a photograph, not a foundation. The second possibility is that the deal doesn’t get signed Sunday because Iran isn’t ready and their foreign ministry has already signaled as much.
In that case, we enter yet another cycle of the pattern we’ve been living through. escalation, threats, market disruption, and a credibility gap that keeps widening. The third possibility, and this is the one I’m pulling for because I believe in the resilience of American leadership, is that a real deal eventually emerges.
But it will only emerge if we bring the international community back to the table. If we insist on genuine verification, if we involve Congress in a meaningful way, and if we build something that can survive the transition from one administration to the next, that’s what durable peace looks like. It’s not glamorous.
It doesn’t fit in a social media post, but it’s the only thing that actually works. Let me leave you with this. I have spent my entire adult life in the service of this country and I have never once stopped believing in its ability to correct course. But I want to be honest with you tonight. I am concerned. I’m concerned because the words a president uses about nuclear weapons are not just words.
They are signals. They are commitments. They are red lines that other nations build their entire security strategies around. When the president of the United States casually references the ultimate alternative, and we all know what that means, on a social media platform in the same post where he’s announcing a peace deal, he is sending two messages at once that fundamentally contradict each other.
He’s saying, “We come in peace. And by the way, we can end your civilization.” Now, you might say, “Well, that’s just leverage. That’s just negotiating.” And maybe that’s how it’s intended. But here’s what I learned in eight years of sitting behind that desk. The world doesn’t parse your intentions. The world responds to your words and once those words are out there, you cannot take them back.
So here’s what I’d ask of every American watching this. Pay attention not to the noise, not to the spin, but to the substance. Ask what’s actually in this deal. Ask who’s verifying it. Ask whether your representatives in Congress have had any say in it. Ask whether this agreement can outlast one president and one news cycle because this is your country.
These are your tax dollars. These are your sons and daughters in uniform. And you deserve a foreign policy built on transparency, on accountability, and on the steady, deliberate judgment that democracy demands, not the whiplash of a single feed refreshing every few hours. We’ve corrected course before.
We’ve rebuilt trust before. And I believe with all my heart that we can do it again. but only if we demand it.
