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The point of an MOI, in commercial law at least, is that in complicated negotiations with a lot of moving parts, it makes sense to have a written record of the items the parties actually agree on so that they don't become issues later on. To that effect, the idea that the negatives for the US in this memo won't end up as part of the final agreement is wishful thinking. The reason this deal repeatedly came close and then failed was because the Iranians were demanding that the US front -load most of the benefits to Iran, as they were always going to be inclined to do considering Trump's track record when it comes to looking for reasons to back out of deals, including with the Iranians themselves. That's what makes this deal so bad, before it's even been finalized; the Iranians get everything they want, and what the US wants is still subject to negotiation. The only way the 300 billion, or sanctions relief, or the unfreezing of funds, is off the table is if the entire deal goes sideways, at which point we're in the same place we were a week ago with the strait being closed except we don't have a navy in the region to enforce a blockade.
To be clear, I'm not going to criticize Trump for making a bad deal, because sometimes a bad deal is better than no deal. I will criticize Trump for putting the country in a position where they were forced to accept a bad deal. The nuclear question isn't even relevant at this point, because Iran found out that the greatest military in the world can't stop them from nuking the global economy, which is a much more powerful weapon considering they can actually use it. Prior to this war, there was a question as to whether Iran had this capability, and previous presidents agreed that it was better not to find out. Now we know, and the answer isn't good.
The nuclear threat of oil though seems to be rapidly disappearing. If Venezuela and Argentina energy comes online plus some pipelines built in the gulf the leverage here will dissipate. Even now it was a weaker threat. The Straight was closed and 1970 energy issues didn’t appear.
Eventually electric cars will reach a level of adoption where oil is less immediately critical (the demand for ships, trucks, trains and planes which are harder to electrify will be easier to satisfy). But that's a ways off and in the meantime we've avoided crisis by eating into inventories and strategic reserves to the tune of ~6-7 million barrels a day. If thing continue that will eventually have to come out of demand destruction through prices high enough to reduce demand and gas demand is pretty inelastic. I'm not sure you can get 1970's style crisis without the political component, but prices and inflation could definitely be squeezed quite a bit higher.
The US though probably is past the point it matters. Provided we can figure out how to legally ban oil exports domestically so the US market balances on domestic supply/demand.
It can hurt the rest of the world. But we do have policy levers for it not to effect the US.
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What does Iran actually get before the final deal besides the blockade being lifted? Sanctions waivers are pretty much a nothingburger when China buys as much oil as Iran can sell at only a tiny discount. There were a few posts in the previous thread about how the unfreezing is also a nothingburger and the US can easily sandbag on that.
Nothing in the mou requires any us force withdrawal before the "final deal" and us officials claim they're not going anywhere either.
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The downblending of the uranium, as a minimum, is as much a part of the MOA as the 300B is.
Anyway, in commercial law it is understood that both sides are expected to be negotiating in good faith. That is very much not true here.
That applies to literally everything Trump is involved in.
It also applies to Iran.
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This whole "good faith" negotiation is very much a civilian (meaning civil law)/American thing, in English contract law there is no obligation that the parties are acting in good faith or anything like that. Good faith is mostly reserved for "relational" contracts in English law meaning things like Employment contracts and Franchise agreements where both parties expect there to be long term relations between them.
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