Donald Trump is working on one of the biggest deals of his Presidency.
Some Republicans didn’t like what they were hearing about it and began attacking Trump.
And Ted Cruz Instantly Regretted Picking this Insane Fight with Trump When the Gloves Came off .
What Trump Actually Announced
President Trump posted on Truth Social that a peace agreement with Iran had been “largely negotiated,” with the Strait of Hormuz set to reopen as part of the deal. He had just wrapped up a call with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain — a remarkable multilateral push that regional leaders publicly praised.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking Sunday from New Delhi during a trip to India, told reporters that “significant progress, although not final progress, has been made” in negotiations. Rubio made clear the administration’s bottom line hasn’t moved: Iran will never possess a nuclear weapon, not while Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office.
“The idea that somehow this president, given everything he’s already proven he’s willing to do, is going to somehow agree to a deal that ultimately winds up putting Iran in a stronger position when it comes to nuclear ambitions is absurd,” Rubio told reporters.
Pompeo Opens His Mouth
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, now a Fox News contributor, posted on X that the emerging deal looked like something cooked up by the Obama crowd. Specifically, he called it “straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world.” He added: “Not remotely America First.”
Pompeo served as Trump’s Secretary of State during the first term. He was the face of the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran — pulling out of Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, hammering Iran with sanctions, and ordering the killing of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani. He’s been a consistent hawk on Iran for years, including during periods when he was publicly critical of Trump and reportedly weighing a presidential run of his own.
Worth noting: Trump pulled Pompeo’s security detail when he returned to the White House in 2025, despite known Iranian threats against the former secretary’s life. The two men are not exactly on warm terms.
And Pompeo’s prescription for Iran wasn’t diplomacy. “It’s straightforward: Open the damned strait. Deny Iran access to money. Take out enough Iranian capability so it cannot threaten our allies in the region. Overdue. Let’s go,” he wrote.
The White House Did Not Take That Well
White House communications director Steven Cheung responded Saturday night with a post that left nothing to the imagination.
“Mike Pompeo has no idea what the f— he’s talking about,” Cheung wrote. “He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know.”
Sebastian Gorka, the deputy assistant on counterterror, went a step further — suggesting Pompeo might be “illegally” abusing his residual high security clearance by commenting on classified negotiations he’s no longer read into.
“You have no knowledge of what is being negotiated in secret,” Gorka wrote on X. “If you did, you would be in possession of information illegally provided to you and which you are wholly unauthorized to have or to share.”
Then Gorka asked: “So are you a liar or a criminal Pompeo?”
Cruz Jumps In, Gets Dunked On
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) posted his own concerns Saturday, writing that he was “deeply concerned about what we are hearing about an Iran ‘deal,’ being pushed by some voices in the administration.” Cruz praised Trump’s decision to strike Iran as “the most consequential decision of his second term” and credited the military campaign with “destroying all of their missiles and drones and sinking their entire navy.”
But Cruz drew a hard line on what the peace deal could not include. “If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime — still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’ — now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium and develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake,” he wrote.
Cruz also added: “The details are still coming out — and I pray the early reports are wrong — but the fact that Biden’s Rob Malley is praising the deal is not encouraging.”
Outside Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz, who architected Trump’s podcast strategy during the 2024 campaign, was not impressed. “Cool, Ted. No one asked you, bro. Stop trying to undermine the President and his administration,” he fired back on X.
Cruz didn’t back down. “Hush, child,” he replied. “The adults are talking. I’m not your ‘bro.’ And young political grifters pushing Iran appeasement are not remotely helping the President.”
Bruesewitz then called Cruz a “clown” in a separate post and accused him of already positioning for a 2028 presidential run. “Ted is a do-nothing Senator rushing out ahead of the potential deal because he’s already positioning for 2028 and plans to use this as a wedge against our candidate,” Bruesewitz wrote. “The deal could be the greatest deal in the world (which it might be!) and he would still complain about it.”
What’s Actually in the Deal
Few hard details were public as of Saturday. Reports suggested the framework would officially end the nearly three-month conflict, reopen the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows — and establish a 60-day window for nuclear negotiations. The deal also appeared likely to end the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.
Gas prices in the United States shot up sharply as a result of the Iran war, putting real pressure on American families and on the administration to find an exit ramp from the conflict. Reopening the strait would go a long way toward fixing that.
The nuclear question is the sticking point. Reports indicated the deal would not include any immediate limitations on Iran’s enrichment program — just a 60-day clock to work it out. Iran’s state-affiliated news agency separately reported that Tehran had not agreed to any new nuclear measures. Rubio pushed back hard on the suggestion that Trump would let Iran off the hook, calling the notion “absurd.”
The Bigger Picture
The critics are also working with incomplete information. Gorka’s point — that Pompeo is not read into the current negotiations — cuts both ways. Pompeo doesn’t know what’s in the deal. Neither does Cruz. Neither does anyone outside the room where it’s being hammered out.
Trump has earned the benefit of the doubt here. He walked away from Obama’s weak Iran deal. He authorized the killing of Soleimani when every other president flinched. He launched military operations against Iran when the threat became undeniable. The idea that this president would hand Tehran a win on nuclear weapons — after all of that — is a stretch.
Cuz and Pompeo are neoconservatives who spent years demanding that Trump right an Iraq-style regime change war against Iran.
When Trump announced victory based on his own objectives of stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, Pompeo and Cruz exploded.
The deal isn’t signed. The details aren’t final. But if Trump pulls off a genuine peace agreement that reopens the strait, ends the shooting, and keeps Iran away from a nuclear weapon, the critics who tried to blow it up from the outside will have a lot of explaining to do.
Sources: Fox News; The Hill; Mediaite; Jewish Insider; Al Jazeera; Associated Press