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Notes -
Deal reached to end Iran war
Details of the deal are not publicly available right now. However, Trump has authorised an end to the US naval blockade, and Iran has agreed to reopen the Strait.
Not surprisingly though, Israel continues to bomb Lebanon and refuses to cede lands seized in southern Lebanon.
But MORE surprisingly, Trump actually reprimanded Bibi.
So it seems we were lucky to return to the pre-war status quo, even Trump had to tepidly admit that he bit off more than he can chew and Iran's regional dominance is not going anywhere.
For those interested, I'd recommend the William Spaniel (the Lines of Map guy) video posted today reviewing what we know, don't, and some other context.
One of the points he's made is that a lot of the current reporting of the moment is basically circular reporting of of some Iranian... 'claims' is too strong, since some aren't even claims of what is in the deal, but more like aspirations for future negotiation that implicitly confirm they aren't in the deal. He made a plausible case that some of the Iranian early release is to shape the information environment, though whether it's intended for the international environment (to frame things as a victory without caveat) or an internal audience (trying to sell the deal to hardliners) isn't something he takes a position on.
As for the rising critiques that the end-of-the-war deal is just Obama's deal but worse, I will just note that no one has ever presented evidence claiming that Obama's deal entailed significant destruction of the Iranian defense-industrial base.
There seem to be rumours floating around that the US is going to pay $300 billion into some vague "redevelopment fund". If thats the case then Iran might come out in the black, so to speak.
That particular rumor is raised in the Spaniel video above.
Fair enough, I'll have a look.
ETA: I've watched the video. That such money would come as a release of frozen assets rather than a direct transfer from the US doesn't seem like a particularly important distinction. In either case, it's $300 billion that Iran didn't have access to previously and now would (hypothetically).
It comes with a various distinctions, some by the nature of the initial seizure, some by the nature of the redevelopment package that we do not know, and then some by virtue of who is paying the cost of the money.
For example- frozen funds already belonged to someone's ledger when they were frozen, and depending on the nature of a ledger that person may be expecting them back. If, say, the funds frozen were part of an IRGC slush account, then there's a non-trivial chance that the IRGC will expect to get it back, and pull strings accordingly in Iran. While the IRGC certainly has a large hand in the civilian economy, it is not what is generally considered a healthy hand, and so this would be part of a reconstruction fund less likely to be for reconstruction and more for economically dead investments (be they arms or just patronage-graft).
Second, but also well beyond the ability of current facts to be clear on, the construct of a 'redevelopment fund' can imply restrictions on how certain money is used. An example of the concept here is what the US did with Venezuela oil proceeds after this January's intervention. The money went into bank accounts for use by the Venezuelan government, but only for uses approved by the US government, which in turn was very inclined to let Venezuelan oil money buy things from the US, but less inclined to approve purchases of weapons from Iran. While it is true that money is fungible, Iran's economy isn't in a state where $300 billion is behind the cushion to be swapped in, so a $300 billion fund is not the same as freeing up $300 billion in the rest of the budget, especially if/when the rest of the budget serves strategic goals like economic autarky such that no matter what is bought with the fund, you'd still have a political requirement to maintain domestic production anyway.
Third, there are currency strength (and convertibility) implications depending on whose money is being involved, though this gets back into the nature of a fund (and the frozen assets). While the frozen assets themselves aren't liable to be in the nigh-useless Iranian rials, the point here is that whatever they are stored in would be compared against the US dollar. The US dollar is and remains the worlds reserve currency, and while Iran really wishes it were not so Iran would also, all other things being equal, prefer something like the US dollar to, say, reclaimed Russian rubles, which would be purchasing only from the relatively inflationary Russian market.
Fourth, there is a considerable difference to the countries releasing frozen assets to releasing assets rather than a direct transfer- namely, how it works from their treasury balance and budget purpose. Generally, frozen assets are not held by the holding state in a way that provides the same monetary utility as money in an expenditure account. This is why the Europeans were garnering attention with the proposed war loan to Ukraine backed by Russian frozen assets- that was an atypical use, because frozen assets are frozen to the state holding them too. But because this isn't on the balance sheet, there's no particular expenditure with releasing the assets either. Congress doesn't need to write an authorization of $300 billion against the US treasury, and the US government doesn't need to assume $300 billion in new debt, that would be incurred if it were a direct transfer.
There are more that could be made, but then again I suppose someone could also insist they're distinctions without a difference / cope / etc. To me, the more relevant part of the rumored reparations / redevelopment fund is that the rumor was based on an aspiration, not a confirmation, and that aspiration in turn was deliberately using language that would resonate with the Iranian hardliner claims that war termination would require reparations as well as sanctions relief. The Iranians have held these to be distinct things, even if someone in the western audience doesn't view it as important, and so the potential conflation in the form of a redevelopment fund could be a way of trying to frame / sell the deal to the Iranian domestic (hardline) audience.
Which, in turn, begs the question as to why, since a glorious-victory-on-all-fronts deal wouldn't need to conflate categorically distinct things. To me that suggests- though hardly proves- there are policy concessions that the Iranian 'leakers' suspect the hardliners will find far less palatable, and this messaging piece is trying to get ahead of that (among other things).
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