Inland NW Republicans lukewarm on U.S.-Iran deal, but Baumgartner confident Trump won’t be ‘bamboozled’

WASHINGTON – When President Donald Trump chose to launch a joint assault on Iran with Israel at the end of February, he told Americans the war would last scarcely more than a month.

Nearly four months after Trump told the New York Times that U.S. and Israeli forces intended to attack Iran for “four to five weeks,” his administration now finds itself defending a preliminary peace deal that has few enthusiastic supporters, stuck between critics who want the war to continue and those who say it never should have begun. The shaky ceasefire was tested when Iran attacked a cargo ship Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that was supposed to be reopened by the agreement, and U.S. forces retaliated Friday, continuing into further strikes from both sides Saturday.

In interviews at the Capitol on Thursday, three Republicans who represent the Inland Northwest in the House voiced mixed feelings about the deal, which Trump signed at the Palace of Versailles in France on June 17. The agreement paves the way for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program while suspending U.S. sanctions on Iran and ending a U.S. blockade on Iranian oil tankers.

“My preference would have been that we maintain the embargo on Iran and not allow them to move oil out of the strait until we are in full possession of their enriched nuclear material,” said Rep. Michael Baumgartner. “But I do realize that the president has been pretty open about the perceived economic costs, of the cost of oil, and what it does in the next five months in the election cycle, and so he’s going to try a different strategy for now.”

Baumgartner, a Spokane Republican who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Trump “has a lot of credibility here to not get bamboozled” because “nobody’s been tougher on Iran.” He cited the president’s moves to withdraw from an Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and assassinate Iranian military chief Qasem Soleimani in 2020, then bomb Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025 and launch a full-scale assault on the country eight months later.

The “memorandum of understanding,” or MOU, kicked off 60 days of negotiations – a period that may be extended if both sides agree – over Iran’s nuclear material, which the Iranian government has enriched to near weapons-grade levels despite always claiming it wasn’t developing a weapon.

Along with ending the closure of the Strait of Hormuz – which had caused economic crises around the world by raising the costs of oil, gas, fertilizer and more – the deal gives Iran’s central bank access to $100 billion in frozen assets.

The United States also agreed to set up a fund of “at least” $300 billion to help Iran rebuild from the war. The details of that fund are still murky, but the Trump administration has said no American taxpayer dollars will be used, with the money coming instead from private investors in the Middle East, including some of the Arab countries that have borne the brunt of Iranian missile and drone strikes.

Rep. Russ Fulcher, a Republican who represents North Idaho and most of the state’s western half, said he doesn’t think “anybody wants to see more kinetic action” in the war, but the threat of resuming U.S. strikes creates important leverage.

“The staged release of their money – not our money, not American taxpayer money – is a good thing,” he said. “From what I understand about it, I think it’s reasonable.”

Northwest Democrats have roundly criticized Trump’s decision to go to war, often pointing out that the president campaigned on a promise to end U.S. military entanglements in the Middle East, and Sen. Maria Cantwell welcomed the ceasefire when it was announced.

“The President’s war with Iran was a mistake,” Cantwell said in a June 18 statement. “The MOU is the price the President must pay to get us out of this unauthorized war before it further damages our economy and costs more lives. The President should now work with Congress and our allies to negotiate a new regime of sanctions and inspections to ensure Iran never develops nuclear weapons.”

Democrats cried foul when Trump withdrew in 2018 from an agreement the Obama administration had painstakingly negotiated – along with U.S. allies and international organizations – to prevent Iran from creating nuclear weapons in exchange for economic benefits. The deal’s proponents hoped it would eventually weaken Iran’s hardline regime by empowering the country’s middle class and advocates of democracy.

International inspectors showed that Iran was complying with the agreement until Trump withdrew from it, but the Iranian government later began enriching nuclear material to levels not needed for civilian uses. Republicans argued the previous deal, known by the acronym JCPOA, wasn’t tough enough and didn’t address other ways Iran projected power in the Middle East, such as its ballistic missiles and support for proxies including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

“The JCPOA was not struck after we decimated Iran’s leadership and military over the course of a year,” Baumgartner said. “That was a naive deal struck for domestic political reasons, and not with a sober understanding of the Middle East. We’re in a much stronger negotiating position than we were in.”

Since Trump launched the war in February, he and members of his administration have given the American public several different reasons for the decision: preempting an Iranian counterattack in response to Israeli strikes, liberating the Iranian people, bringing about regime change in the country and eliminating the threat of Iran’s navy, ballistic missiles and proxy forces.

Trump has since abandoned some of those demands. After saying when he announced the war on Feb. 28 that the U.S. military would “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground,” he said at the G7 summit in France on June 17 that Iran should be able to have missiles.

“If other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some,” Trump said at the G7 summit . “Missiles aren’t the problem. They hurt a little location, but they don’t blow up the planet.”

Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican who represents central Washington, said he opposed the Obama administration’s deal with Iran, but he isn’t sure Trump’s approach has succeeded.

“There’s been some successes, but overall, I think the jury’s still out on whether the war has been a total success,” Newhouse said Thursday. “We don’t have them exactly where we want them, right? We would like to see some improvements, and so I think the current agreement falls short.”

Some Republicans in Congress have been harsher. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called Trump’s deal with Iran “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told reporters giving Iran access to billions of dollars is “an exceptionally bad idea.”

But on Thursday, Baumgartner said the bottom line is that Iran can’t be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and he supports the president’s approach to achieving that goal.

“It’s a tier-one national security threat to have a bunch of jihadists that have been chanting ‘Death to America’ have the most dangerous weapons ever created in the history of man,” he said. “It is an ongoing challenge, but America and the world are safer for what’s happened over the last 12 months with respect to Iran.”