Tales of Deceptive PR, Chapter 26: About fifteen years ago, I worked in-house for a billionaire who had just bought his own private club in Tampa Bay. The bayside property had been in and out of bankruptcy, and the billionaire hoped to rebrand it as exclusive, ultra-elite, and high-end.
The trouble was that the club had embarrassingly low, dirt-cheap membership rates because it was so desperate for members. It directly undercut our desired branding.
So I had the club create a brand-spanking-new “international corporate” membership category that cost foreign businesses $1 million a year.
Nobody ever paid for an “international corporate” membership, of course. (No foreign businesses were club members!) But that wasn’t the point: I just wanted to be able to tell the media that club membership rates ranged from surprisingly affordable to $1 million annually.
Technically, I didn’t lie — but I deliberately created a false impression. I used a big, impressive number to distract our target audience.
Today, the exact same strategy is at play with the just-revealed U.S.-Iranian memorandum of understanding (MOU), and the shocking number that has tongues wagging, the $300 billion Iranian investment fund.
It’s a huge number. Enormous! It dwarfs the billions in President Barack Obama’s 2015 deal. And because money is a fungible commodity, the $300 billion could be spent on anything — weapons, terrorism, you name it.
Except that’s not at all how President Donald Trump’s deal is structured.
When President Obama airlifted billions of paper dollars into Iran, the mullahs could do whatever they wanted with it. The money was theirs; they 100% controlled it.
In Trump’s deal, that doesn’t happen.
The new fund is a private investment vehicle, not a reconstruction or reparations programme and will not include any government money or grants, the source said, adding that companies based in the U.S., the Gulf Arab states, Asia, South America and Africa have agreed to commit financing.
Investments pledged span energy, logistics, manufacturing and transport, the source said.
U.S. President Donald Trump pushed back on Wednesday against any characterisation of the fund as a U.S. investment. "We're not investing, we're not putting up 10 cents," he said, adding that he was not asking Gulf countries to invest either. [emphasis added]
The first sentence is key: In a reconstruction or reparations deal, the only metric that matters is the amount you spend. If you offer someone $1 million for reconstruction or reparations, you cut a check and move on. What he spends the money on is none of your business.
But this isn’t a reconstruction or reparations program. It’s an investment fund.
And implicit to an investment fund is the ROI — your return on investment.
Investments aren’t charity. Instead, they’re an opportunity for investors to make more money. And if you’re an investor, your most meaningful metric is the ROI: You put some money in to get even more money out.
After weeks of American and Israeli military attacks, Iran has already absorbed between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in damages. (And that’s excluding the loss of revenue from oil seizures, sanctions, and the U.S. blockade. Plus all the missiles, drones, and hardware it’s already wasted.)
So if Iran behaves — and foreign investors think they can carve up Iran with sweetheart business deals — from America’s perspective, there’s far more upside than downside. Carve that sucker up!
In fact, if we can’t achieve regime change, this is probably our best long-term solution.
Worst case scenario: Iran sticks to the agreement juuuust long enough for foreign investors to spend billions of dollars — but then nationalizes those projects, steals from investors, and reallocates the money for terrorism, weapons, or nuclear development.
And that’s a legitimate concern.
But since the $300 billion won’t be spent simultaneously, Iran can’t steal all the money — that’s impossible. (The moment the first project is nationalized, all foreign investments will cease.) But yes, there’s still a chance for theft, graft, and misappropriation.
Presumably, the wording of the still-unfinished Iran-U.S. peace deal will close this loophole. (And just as presumably, investors will understand that investing in Tehran has obvious risk factors, and their terms will reflect that reality: The greater the risk, the more onerous the lender’s terms; that’s usually how investments work.)
Best case scenario: Foreign investors get their hooks deep into Iran, the mullahs participate in the profiteering, and the new Iranian government prefers this cozier status quo to the old one with large craters, rampant poverty, and a dead Supreme Leader. Iran honors the peace agreement, foregoes nuclear development, stops funding terrorism, and is gradually integrated into the family of normal nations.
These investments, after all, are contingent on Iran’s behavior: If the mullahs want the money, they must behave.
Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. But to dismiss the idea as dead-on-arrival is unfair and inaccurate.
I’m also unpersuaded by MOU critics who say we’re “rewarding” Iran for closing the Strait of Hormuz. Not that closing the Strait was a good thing (it wasn’t), but personally, I’d much rather Iran saber-rattle by threatening shipping than by dividing atoms. If one of the Iran War’s long-term legacies is Iran pivoting from nuclear blackmail to shipping blackmail, so be it.
In hindsight, it seems that President Trump had a two-prong Iran plan all along: The first part was to overwhelm Iran with military force, kill its leaders, decapitate the government, and see if regime change could be achieved without any U.S. ground troops. It was the “go big or go home” philosophy — and we rolled the dice to see what would happen.
But the regime didn’t fall. (And based on Trump’s decisions, it’s clear that U.S. intelligence agencies no longer believe regime change is in the cards.)
So our president — who’s transactional by nature — opted for the second plan: Apply maximum pressure with bombs, missiles, and Truth Social posts, destroy as many Iranian military and/or nuclear targets as you can on your own, and then negotiate the best possible peace deal.
The way Trump sees it, the American people lack the patience for a longer Iran War — and we definitely aren’t clamoring for U.S. boots on the ground. The polls are what they are; it’s a losing political issue that could cost the GOP the midterms.
But y’know what could win the GOP the midterms? A dramatic turnaround with the economy — i.e., finally solving the Biden Affordability Crisis — and letting the American people feel all the glorious benefits of falling prices before Election Day.
While everyone was focusing on what Iran gains (and/or tracking the bitter flame-wars between Republican hawks, Groypers, and isolationists), the bigger story was being ignored: A remarkable glut of Iranian oil is about to hit the global market!
Iran now has a ridiculous amount of oil to sell. Because of the war, sanctions, and the U.S. blockade, all that oil’s been sitting on a shelf, getting stockpiled. And if Iran gets slapped with sanctions again, the oil goes back on the shelf.
Thus, Iran is heavily incentivized to sell its oil ASAP — and flood the market to offset all the revenue it lost. (And if doing so lowers the price for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., and the OPEC states that sided against it, too bloody bad.)
This means that — just in time for the midterms — oil prices are going to crash!
Everything that’s shipped by truck, ship, or plane will be cheaper. And as inflation drops, the new Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, will have a free hand to fulfill one of Trump’s biggest economic goals: lowering the interest rate.
Prediction: When the Federal Reserve meets again on July 28 — a mere 98 days prior to Election Day — interest rates will FINALLY be cut. The collapsing oil prices will negate the Fed’s (earlier) fear of inflation.
And that’s enough time for the American people to feel the benefit!
The 2026 midterms won’t rise or fall on the Iran War. Despite all the teeth-gnashing, the American people don’t care that much about it: Economic concerns still reign supreme. We care about gas, groceries, and household goods.
It’s (still) the economy, stupid!
The least-charitable interpretation of the MOU is eliciting gasps, curses, and moans from the MAGAverse — with the $300 billion payoff serving as Exhibit A. But that money doesn’t belong to Iran, and the MOU was never intended to be the finished document. They’re both a means to an end —and then, perhaps, to a new beginning.
And so was the Iran War.
President Trump had to thread the needle between an unpopular conflict, a vulnerable economy, a still-standing Iranian regime, and the 2026 midterms. Whether or not he struck the right balance remains to be seen — but the short-term political benefits for the GOP are considerable. Ignore them at your own peril.
Even if you hate the deal, you must acknowledge that it’s reasonable and logical… and it just might be the best deal that could’ve been brokered without losing the political farm.
Eating bad press in June so you can make a winning economic argument in November? It’s actually very smart.
One Last Thing: 2026 is a critical year for America First. It began with Mayor Mamdani declaring war on “rugged individualism” and will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the fate of the America First movement teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Win or lose, 2026 will transform our country.
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