Analysis: Why Trump’s secret and vague MOU is stirring a political storm | CNN Politics

The text of President Donald Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran — when it is finally published — may not dispel his critics’ fears of a bad deal. There are increasing signs that it will confirm them. The failure to make public the terms of the memo to end the war — greeted as an epochal breakthrough by Trump on Sunday — seeded a vacuum quickly filled by confusion, anxiety among Republican hawks and growing attacks by Democrats. Leaks of the purported terms of the agreement in Middle East media outlets that suggest the MOU will lack firm commitments, benchmarks and concrete sequencing meanwhile made the White House’s stance increasingly dicey. Controversy broke out over a reported $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran to be financed by regional powers and guaranteed by the US government, forcing officials to insist that no US cash was involved and that any such benefits depended on Iran submitting to Washington’s demands. But the issue opened the administration to claims of hypocrisy given Trump’s frequent, inflated claims about Iranian assets released to Tehran after the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal. Trump defended his agreement at the