The memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran appears to have ended the war on terms favorable to the Islamic Republic. It releases frozen Iranian assets, relaxes restrictions on Iranian oil sales, and lifts the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz'in exchange for Iran ending its closure of the waterway. In other words, Iran receives things it didn't have before the war in exchange for giving up something it wasn't doing before the war. But as good as these terms might look for Iran, they've still proved controversial within the Islamic Republic. In the days before the agreement, a loud coterie of hard-liners threw everything it had against the deal. A member of Parliament from Tehran said that signing the deal would make Iran 'a colony of the United States.' Hard-line demonstrators wished 'death' on the two men who led the talks with the U.S.: Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of Parliament, and Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister (respectively...
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