Iran-US MoU ‘great victory’ for Tehran as US failed to achieve war objectives: Former diplomat

By Press TV Website Staff

A former Iranian diplomat says the finalized memorandum of understanding (MoU) reached between Iran and the United States is a “great victory” for Tehran as Washington failed to achieve its war aims.

Speaking to the Press TV website on Monday, hours after the MoU was finalized, Seyyed Jalal Sadatian, a veteran Iranian diplomat, reflected on the agreement that brought an end to months of war following the unprovoked US-Israeli aggression on Iran.

"This is, in my view, a great victory, achieved through the unity of the people, their serious support, battlefield strength, and the alignment of diplomacy and media with that effort," said Sadatian.

The MoU, finalised in the early hours of Monday and set to be officially signed in Geneva on Friday, followed intensive negotiations in Islamabad mediated by Pakistan and Qatar.

It mandates an immediate and permanent halt to war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and also ends the illegal US naval blockade against Iran.

Sadatian noted that the document serves as a ledger of American failure in the face of indomitable Iranian resistance and resilience.

He outlined several dimensions of Iran's decisive win. Chief among them, Washington's core objective of using coordinated military aggression to engineer “regime change” and install a “puppet government” in Tehran, which failed to materialize.

"They were forced, under various pressures, to accept Iran's existing government and to agree not just to a ceasefire but to an end of war," the seasoned diplomat told the Press TV website.

Having been drawn into the war under Israeli pressure, Trump is now "ordering Israel not to make a wrong move," Sadatian noted, adding that this shift alone carries significant weight.

The former diplomat highlighted that the imposed war inflicted lasting damage on American “credibility, its global image and its posture as a superpower.”

He noted that Trump's domestic popularity had fallen sharply, and that US economic pressure had spread across multiple continents, from American households to South Korea, Japan, India, and European nations.

"Taken together," Sadatian said, "despite his contradictory and agitated statements, he has ultimately been compelled to submit and accept these realities."

Leverage of the Strait of Hormuz

On the question of the Strait of Hormuz, Sadatian dismissed American claims of having secured its reopening as a diplomatic achievement, pointing out that the Strait was open before the war began. The framing, he argued, reveals more than it conceals.

"It shows how much pressure the Strait's status exerted on the global economy and on Trump personally," he said, referring to the closure of the waterway to US and allied hostile vessels.

Trump had campaigned on economic recovery and an "America First" agenda, but the war against Iran produced the opposite: fuel and energy price spikes drove up the cost of food and consumer goods for ordinary Americans, while allied governments in Asia and Europe lodged formal protests over rising prices.

Sadatian credited Iran with a calibrated strategy. Rather than closing the Strait outright, Tehran “controlled” the waterway, releasing daily figures on ship transits to signal controlled authority.

He noted that Iran has consistently maintained that the strategic waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman is not international waters but a shared waterway with Oman, and that its management going forward must follow defined rules.

"It appears the United States has implicitly accepted this," he said, describing the current understanding in plain terms.

Washington has tacitly agreed that, while sanctions are being lifted and negotiations come to a gradual end, Iran will allow increased vessel traffic, but not a return to the pre-war status quo of unchecked passage. Full Iranian control, Sadatian suggested, is now the implicit baseline.

Israel may try to undermine MoU

The question of whether Israel will attempt to derail the MoU drew a measured but cautious response. Sadatian said Israeli regime officials, both within Netanyahu's war cabinet and in the opposition, are “furious” over the end to the war of aggression against Iran, insisting no objectives were achieved and that resistance to any Iran-US deal must continue.

He pointed to a recent Israeli strike on the southern suburb of Beirut as evidence of this disruptive intent. "The probability that they will try to undermine and upend the process must always be accounted for," he noted.

Yet he assessed Israeli room for manoeuvre as limited. "Israel knows that if it makes a wrong move and it attacks Iran and does not have American backing in the face of Iran's response, it will not have the capacity to withstand it."

"Netanyahu tried to encourage all previous presidents to participate in an attack on Iran," he said, "but it was Trump who fell for it."

Trump, he added, has since grown visibly regretful, recognising the scale of the diplomatic and political damage done, and the absence of any meaningful gain.

The MoU brokered through Pakistani and Qatari mediation has been widely welcomed by world leaders, from the Arab world to Europe and beyond.

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