Donald Trump spent months bombing Iran and demanding "zero enrichment," then walked out to a G7 podium in France on Wednesday and said, actually, Iran can have a nuclear program. He also said they can keep their ballistic missiles. Oh, and there's nothing in the deal that's legally enforceable. Other than that, total victory.
Sure, Let Them Have Nukes, Whatever
Here's how Trump explained his reversal on Iran's nuclear program at the G7 summit: "It is a little hard that when you say that somebody wants it, other people have it, other adjoining states have it, and you're not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that. It's always a little tough. You have to use a little common sense."
That's the quote. That is the sitting president of the United States, standing next to Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent, explaining why a country he just bombed should be allowed to run a nuclear program. Common sense. You gotta use it.
The New Republic points out that this is a direct reversal of everything Trump claimed Operation Epic Fury was about. For months, the line was zero enrichment. Full stop. No nukes, no program, nothing. Now Iran gets to keep the lights on with enriched uranium because, hey, other people have it. Tough to argue with that logic. Really airtight stuff.
The Missiles Are Fine Too, Apparently
It gets better. Trump also gave up on destroying Iran's ballistic missile stockpile, which was, again, one of the stated goals of the war he just fought. His explanation at the G7 was a masterpiece of backward reasoning: "Missiles, they hurt a little location. But they don't blow up the planet."
A reporter pushed back, asking Trump directly why it's acceptable that Iran keeps missile capabilities when eliminating them was a central aim of the operation. Trump said they knocked out "84, 85 percent" of Iran's missiles, and the rest are underground. So it's fine. They're keeping some missiles, but the missiles they're keeping are the hard-to-reach ones. Great. Mission accomplished.
According to The New Republic, Trump's memorandum of understanding with Iran secures virtually nothing he originally sought. The Strait of Hormuz was already open before the war started. Iran wasn't close to having a nuclear bomb before the war started. So the question of what exactly was accomplished here is not a rhetorical one. It is a real, pressing, embarrassing question that nobody in that G7 room seemed eager to answer.
This Deal Is Worse Than the One Trump Spent Years Screaming About
Remember the JCPOA? The 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump spent years calling the worst deal in history, the deal he pulled out of in 2018 because it was supposedly a catastrophic surrender? That deal was negotiated between the U.S., Iran, China, Russia, the UK, and the European Union. It had binding terms. It had inspections. It had international oversight baked in.
This deal, as The New Republic reports, was negotiated without Congress even being aware of the details. Iran is reportedly set to receive $300 billion in reconstruction funds. They keep their missiles. They keep nuclear enrichment capacity. And Trump himself admitted at the G7 that there is nothing enforceable in the drafted agreement.
So to be clear: the deal Trump blew up in 2018 was better than the deal Trump just signed after a bombing campaign. If a Democratic president had done this, the Republican Party would be holding televised hearings until the sun burned out.
Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans Told Trump to Go Jump
In somewhat less catastrophic news, Georgia Republicans told their own governor and the White House to slow down on redistricting this week. Governor Brian Kemp called a special session to redraw the state's congressional maps ahead of 2028, part of a broader Trump-pushed effort to gerrymander as many House seats as possible before the next election cycle.
The Georgia House declined. Speaker Jon Burns said it wasn't "the right path forward" and that the state needed to do things "the Georgia way," which apparently involves transparency and public input, concepts the White House has not been burdened by lately.
As The New Republic notes, several red states already caved and redrew their maps in time for the 2026 midterms: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Tennessee all got in line. South Carolina and Indiana balked. Now Georgia joins them. Not exactly a resistance movement, but at least somebody down there is reading the room.
The Enforcement Question Nobody Wants to Answer
The most damning detail in all of this, per The New Republic's reporting, is that Trump himself admitted at the G7 press conference that there is nothing enforceable in the Iran agreement. He said enforcement would essentially come from America's continued presence and influence in the region. Which is a fancy way of saying: trust us.
This is the same administration that abandoned the last enforceable Iran agreement. This is the same president who said "zero enrichment" and then walked it back at a summit in France with a shrug. The international community is supposed to take this framework seriously because why, exactly?
Iran is getting $300 billion, keeping its missiles, keeping nuclear capacity, and living under a deal with no binding enforcement mechanism. The U.S. spent real money and dropped real bombs to arrive at this result. Someone should probably be asked to explain that.
The Dingo Take
Look, let's be honest about what happened here. Trump started a war with Iran, dropped bombs, called it Operation Epic Fury, gave it a cool name, declared victory several times, and then showed up at the G7 and personally dismantled every single justification he'd offered for the whole thing. Zero enrichment? Gone. Destroying the missile program? Mostly done, close enough, don't worry about it. An enforceable agreement? Nope, just vibes and American presence. Three hundred billion dollars out the door. This is the deal.
The cruelest irony is that Republicans in Congress spent years screaming that the JCPOA was a betrayal of American interests and a gift to a terrorist regime. That deal had multilateral support, congressional awareness, binding inspections, and real enforcement teeth. This one has none of that. If Obama had handed Iran $300 billion and told them to keep their nukes and missiles, Fox News would have run that chyron every single day until the republic collapsed. The silence from that corner right now is deafening.
Georgia Republicans pushing back on the redistricting pressure is the one data point this week that suggests some Republican lawmakers still have a faint pulse of independent judgment. Don't get too excited. They said they'd revisit it later. But for one brief moment, someone in a red state looked at a White House demand and said "not yet." Given everything else going on, that counts as news.
