Whoever Trump’s Republican successor is, he’ll be lugging the baggage of Trump’s surrender with him into the next presidential election cycle.
The president has struck an obdurate pose in defense of his supposedly war-ending memorandum of understanding with the Islamic Republic. For the most part, at least.
In his extemporaneous riffs into microphones during his trip to a G-7 summit in France this week, however, Donald Trump has occasionally adopted a somber tone. He’ll defend the deal against his critics with more sorrow than anger. He’ll nostalgically reenact the tough guy pose that was once credible. And, in his more nihilistic moments, he’ll throw his subordinates under the bus — sacrificing their credibility as well as his own.
That’s what Trump did to Marco Rubio this week:
🚨WATCH: In another stunning statement, Trump just normalized Iran having a ballistic missile program: “In other words, they must have missiles to some degree, because others have them. When others have them, you need to have them too. There are people who say: 'It is forbidden… pic.twitter.com/OUwiuSoehy
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) June 17, 2026
Phil Klein already issued a searing indictment of the president’s sudden comfort with the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile arsenal. Indeed, Trump defended the legitimacy of Iran’s missile stocks. Phil noted that Trump’s 180-degree pivot undermined the rationale for the war that Rubio often articulated, but this was no glancing blow. Trump’s casual hypocrisy could haunt his secretary of state for years to come.
“Why does Iran want that ballistic missile capability?” Rubio patiently explained to reporters in early March. Tehran’s goal is to “build a conventional weapons capability as a shield where they can hide behind,” so that “no one can do anything about their nuclear program.”
“They are producing, by some estimates, over 100 of these missiles a month,” Rubio added. “Compare that to the six or seven interceptors that can be built a month.” You do the math. What’s more, those missiles are illegal — they’re being built “under sanction.” And they’re being used to attack civilian targets: “airports,” “hotels,” and “embassies.” The Iranian missile arsenal and its support facilities are a criminal enterprise. There is nothing legitimate about it.
As Operation Epic Fury unfolded and the defense industrial base that supports Iran’s missile arsenal was steadily degraded, Rubio highlighted that fact as a central achievement of the war so far. “The goals of this mission are clear,” Trump’s chief diplomat explained. “It is to destroy the ability of this regime to launch missiles, both by destroying their missiles and their launchers; to destroy the factories that make these missiles; and to destroy their navy.”
By saying whatever he needs to say to get through a tough news cycle, Trump has not only undermined the case that his war produced some victories along the way, he’s also cut the legs out from under a figure who will be invested, by virtue of his own political interests, in polishing the president’s legacy after Trump leaves office.
Rubio wasn’t the only possible Trump successor that the president has tarred with his own failure. His chief ideological rival within the administration, Vice President JD Vance, also earned himself a turn in the barrel:
Trump: "If [the Iran deal] works out, I'm going to take the credit; if it doesn't work out, I'm blaming [Vance]." pic.twitter.com/XSXlOj76SC
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) June 17, 2026
It was a joke. But, as Rubio’s expressionless face attested, it also wasn’t.
We didn’t need investigative reporting to know that Vance, along with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, advocated for the MOU, while Rubio and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth argued against it. Vance has carved out his own status as a dissenter within the administration he serves. He and his allies may think the vice president’s stock has risen amid the shambles of the cease-fire. After all, it was a war he never wanted, and he’s been happy to broadcast his dissatisfaction with his boss — albeit through channels that provided Vance with plausible deniability.
But it is hard to imagine the MOU being fully implemented. On Wednesday, with the formal operationalization of the agreement, a 60-day clock started. Trump now has until August 16 to finalize “the fate” of the Iranian nuclear program, unwind decades of economic sanctions against Iran, establish a durable status quo in the Strait of Hormuz, and figure out how to get $300 billion into the hands of the IRGC despite its designation as a terrorist enterprise. And all in the absence of a credible threat to return to high-tempo combat operations.
Good luck with that.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument Vance has made in defense of the MOU is that the United States can simply abandon it if necessary. Perhaps anything’s possible. But if the MOU falls apart and the administration is willing to acknowledge as much — two very big “ifs” — Vance will have a lot of backtracking to do. And he will do so, as the president intimated, amid Trump’s veiled resentment toward his own veep.
Maybe voters won’t care much about the Iran war by 2028, but the Islamic Republic will not keep quiet over the next two years. There is almost certain to be a long tail on this national humiliation. Whoever Trump’s Republican successor is, he’ll be lugging the baggage of Trump’s surrender with him into the next presidential election cycle.