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Posted on 06/18/2026 9:20:41 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
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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]
Some on the left have framed this as Trump giving away billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to the Iranian regime, referring to it as a major concession. But, as Trump stated, this is not what the deal says.
White House officials stressed that the United States is not investing any taxpayer money into the fund. Vice President JD Vance affirmed that not a single cent of American money will go to Iran under any circumstances.
Instead, any investments in the fund would come from private sources in Gulf states and elsewhere if the regime meets strict conditions on its nuclear program, inspections, and other requirements. Yet, left-wing politicians and influencers conveniently left this part out.
The only role the U.S. will play in this fund is in setting it up and removing barriers for those who wish to invest. However, Washington can shut it down if Iran does not follow through on its promises related to its nuclear program.
Out Freaking Standing.
Sorry to Everyone Who Thinks They Are Smarter Than Trump
When the Strait of Hormuz reopens, crude oil prices will likely fall
significantly, but consumers won’t see immediate relief at the gas pump.
A full normalization of the energy marketplace will take months:
<><>due to necessary security clearances,
<><>logistical challenges in clearing stranded tankers,
<><>and the time required for halted production to resume.
If this is a truly an investment deal with private and corporate investors measuring the risk of investing in Crazyland, this is a hard sell convincing them that setting their funds on fire makes good investment sense and the crazies running Iran ultimately won’t raise a dime. May as well invest in Zimbabwe
FIVE-D chess moves!
Of course, I personally prefer regime change. It is THE REGIME that is the problem.
But but but .... If we want to achieve Regime Change, I’m afraid bombing from the air ain’t gonna work. This will require BOOTS ON THE GROUND like what was done in Iraq and Afghanistan. But then, it’s definitely going to be a bloody mess and more of our soldiers will be killed ( like in Iraq ). The American people are NOT going to stand for that.
So, 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.
Like your post.
Trump is a peace seeking man that will use force as necessary. He truly avoids actions that will kill innocent civilians if possible. I think killing anyone other than evil ones is abhorrent to him.
I like this. I trust he will guide things to a just conclusion.
“ FIVE-D chess moves!”
More like Checkers or even Tic-Tac-Toe!
The opener of this article has nothing to do with what is being laid out.
The author wanted to sound smart.
Bullshit upon bullshit.
“The opener of this article has nothing to do with what is being laid out.
The author wanted to sound smart.
Bullshit upon bullshit.”
____________________________________________________________
Exactly. They begin talking about the investment fund proposal, and then apply it to the Iranian money Obama returned to Iran.
Using that same comparison, the MOU commits to returning Iran’s $23+ billion dollars immediately, with the investment fund money to follow.
Iran has all sanctions lifted, gets it’s $23 billion returned, and can sell oil again.
June 19th won’t be forgotten over there, since it will be Iranian victory day. They’ll probably have demonstrations and burn the great Satan in effigy again.
5th dimension chess? Ha!
You leave out one inconvenient part of the MOU. Iran must comply with any agreements to get any money, and they must remain compliant to continue.
Personally, I doubt that the present regime can keep their hands off the trigger, and will not get anything.
If this works out, and there is a chance that it will, it will effectively change the existing regime; same leadership, bu they will have to change to remain in power.
I like this analysis. I don’t like the way things have gone down in Iran but this deal is probably the least bad move given the circumstances. I do like the idea of the $300B being an investment fund rather than just slush for them to do whatever they want with.
Plan A was regime change which was a long shot and didn’t happen. Plan B is to entangle them in foreign investment. IOW we’ll change them through capitalism.
OTOH, consumer prices are already falling; this will probably accelerate it on psychological, even if not on hard financial, grounds.
In just the last 3 weeks, pump prices have dropped 70 cents/gallon, locally.
My go-to Oroweat Oatnut bread has dropped $1/loaf so far this year Ribeye has dropped over $3/lb to merely ridiculously high prices in the last month or so; other beef prices, and also chicken, have had proportionate drops. Maybe seasonal; maybe not.
I anticipate more of the same leading up to midterms, even if it doesn’t last.
Beef prices are artificially elevated because of the ridiculously low cattle herd sizes. They crashed at the end of the last administration because of ridiculous policies and that is a hard, slow process bringing those herd sizes back up. Screw worm doesn’t help - also something tbat crept in in the nest minites of the last administration because of more bad policies. And work is on to eliminate it in the states again, but that also takes a little time and is not helping with building herd sizes.
It was easier to fix the chicken problem after so many were culled for bird flu. Much shorter breeding cycles and maturity times. But this administration is fixing it all.
Just pray like never before we don’t lose the midterms so the demons can slow it all dkwn.
Gee. Who around here was saying *lierally* this a week ago?
Hmm. I wonder?
And who around here was screaming, “taxpayers are on the hook for $300B - this is 10x worse than Obama,” *literally* all week long??
Anyone gonna own that?
I know. I’m clueless. It’s all lies and you all know better.
I posted this back on April 7:
There are several mutually exclusive factions remaining within Iran that are competing for control: 1) the IRGC is the fanatical wing, who are seeking an apocalypse to usher in the return of the 12th Imam; 2) the Ayatollah and the mullahs, who want Islamic law to rule the world; 3) the Artesh, or regular army made up of conscripts, that is secular and intended to defend against invasion; 4) what remains of a diplomatic corp, probably aligned with the religious leadership; 5) the Basij, the "shock troops" of the IRGC whose purpose is to terrorize the Iranian people into submission.
President Trump's escalating rhetoric is psychological, intended to drive the Artesh to lay down their arms and rebel against the IRGC. Trump wants these ordinary citizens to believe that the IRGC is using them as fodder for their goal of annihilation as the precursor of the return of the 12th Imam.
Someone on FR a few days ago asked the question, how do you negotiate away from mutually assured destruction when one side wants that destruction? That's the situation that President Trump is faced with.
The answer is that you can't. The only thing left is to collapse their society before they can attain their goal. If Iran would collapse anyway if the IRGC is successful in attaining their armageddon, then the goal must be to collapse it first under our conditions to prevent them from having the means to finish the job.
Then we can go in and root out the remnants of the IRGC, and then rebuild the power plants, rebuild the oil infrastructure, and rebuild the Persian state as a secular nation that is ready to join the community of nations. The Iranian people must do their part to come back from the collapse to make the country what they want it to be. Currently, it's the IRGC + Basij that is preventing that from happening.
A series of regionally funded reconstruction projects managed by the major engineering companies in the Middle East will be the foot in the door to opening up Iran. It will provide jobs to the Iranian people, it will naturally import secular exposure into Iran that will affect everything from workplace attire during construction, as well as establishing personal relationships with others from "free" countries.
Hopefully, it will create enough conflict between the region's financial power-players and the Iranian militant hard-liners that the people will finally get to choose a side: the extreme religious subjegation that used the people as human shields against the IRGC, or the secular way of life of those who are in the country to rebuild it.
-PJ
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