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... Explaining his decision to agree to an interim peace deal, Trump repeated his insistence that the country would never get a nuclear weapon. Yet he went on to suggest that Iran should have the right to enrich uranium, be allowed to develop ballistic missiles and get access to billions of dollars in frozen funds.

Those three things have been at the center of the debate around how to approach Iran for years, dating to the 2015 agreement that the US, under President Barack Obama, and other great powers signed with Iran to limit its nuclear program.

Not only that: Trump had repeatedly cited those issues as reasons why Obama and past presidents had failed so badly in containing the threat posed by the regime in Tehran.

In a head-spinning turn of events, Iran hawks including former Vice President Mike Pence and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley lamented Trump's new vision, while some of the president's most vehement critics cheered.

"It's doing a lot of the things that Trump criticized Obama for doing," Christian Whiton, a State Department adviser in the George W. Bush and first Trump administrations, said of the president's comments. "And whether or not he means it, he has expressed to them he will not resume military operations because doing so will cause the worst recession since the great depression." ...