President Donald Trump grew up in Queens and likely observes the street credo, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” In the ceasefire memorandum of understanding, Trump was clearly fooled once by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which played his vice president like an Iranian flute. Will Trump allow himself to be fooled again?
The reality of Islamic jihad, waged where Islam does not reign, for 1,400 years, did not seem to enter into the vice president’s thinking. He told Megyn Kelly in June 2026, two days before the agreement was signed and made public, that the Iranian regime was ready “to turn over a new leaf” and cease “funding revolution and terrorist groups.” It may have escaped his attention that no member of the Guard Corps signed the MOU.
Recommended Stories
The MOU was seriously harmful to the United States and its Middle Eastern and Ukrainian allies. The Guard, with intelligence help and weaponry from China and Russia, along with billions in sanctions relief, was enabled to rally from the nearly dead.
Even this MOU, so favorable to Iran, was nonetheless never destined to be honored by the Guard, obvious to any informed observer. But the consequences go far beyond strengthening Western civilization’s most aggressive enemy. It also weakened what portended to be the broad unity of America’s allies after the brilliantly successful five-week bombardment.
The Middle Eastern Arab countries, now fearing the revived Guard, are begging the U.S. not to involve Israel’s military and intelligence network, thereby weakening U.S. power against the Guard. The MOU had been championed through Vice President JD Vance’s wrongheaded, naive views that America had been unnecessarily drawn into the bombing by an Israeli canard. Clearly, chamber leaders Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) could not have been more pleased with this sophomoric narrative, quite helpful in lowering the president’s approval ratings and clouding his midterm prospects.
At least the Trump administration should have learned a lesson from the MOU that any deal enabling the Guard is a bad deal. However, just as wars often involve “mission creep,” appeasement often requires “narrative creep,” which now, sadly, may be occurring.
Vance supports the present hostilities as a way to bomb Iran back to the negotiating table. But hasn’t Vance already shown such negotiation to be a fool’s errand? How can America be fooled so badly twice?
Vance has recently explained to Joe Rogan that the Guard-controlled Iran isn’t such a bad thing after all, because wiping out the present Iranian regime would be destabilizing. His theory is that a destroyed Iranian regime would cause mass out-migration, and a destabilized Iran would leave the Middle East vulnerable to widespread terrorism. So, according to Vance, America should want a Guard-controlled Iran in order to maintain global stability.
It’s one thing to argue that there’s little chance of dislodging the Guard Corps quickly. But it’s another to claim the U.S. should pledge billions of dollars to a regime that, on Jan. 8 to 9, 2026, killed roughly 40,000 protesting, unarmed civilians, and continues to suppress gay people and women. More ominously, that same regime is widely expected to seek nuclear capability by hook or by crook, regardless of any purportedly binding promise. Therefore, if Vance’s views are to be credited, the U.S. would, by any binding deal, effectively become the protector of one of history’s most murderous, terrorist regimes.
Seemingly to justify this dysfunctional strategy, some faction in the administration is also leaking that America is running out of weaponry. But all this accomplishes is a further emboldening of the Guard, in turn rendering any decent deal impossible.
WHY IS IRAN SUDDENLY DESPERATE TO KILL TRUMP?
If Vance has his way, never will one American officeholder have done as much to weaken the country’s national security.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Vice President John Nance Garner once remarked that “the vice presidency is not worth a bucket of warm piss.” If Trump wants to right this ship, he should send Vance to an isolated sandbox — off-limits to the media and to power — where he can perhaps build yellow-tinged castles, but nothing more.
John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened. O’Connor and Felt also collaborated on the 2006 book, A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, Being ‘Deep Throat,’ And the Struggle for Honor in Washington.
