Former national security adviser Susan Rice blasted the preliminary agreement between the Trump administration and Iran in an excusive interview Sunday, calling the war with Iran a “strategic blunder” and arguing that the United States has now made “so many concessions” that amount to “a very bad outcome.”
“It’s egregious, Jon, because so many concessions were granted up front in this flimsy, two-page memorandum of understanding that wouldn’t normally and shouldn’t have been granted until after there was not only a full comprehensive deal to at least deal with their nuclear program, but also that those provisions that were negotiated had been agreed,” Rice told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
Rice served as former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser when the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was negotiated over a year and a half before ultimately being signed in July 2015. Under that multinational agreement, Iran made numerous concessions on its nuclear program and agreed to never seek or develop a nuclear weapon, something it reaffirmed in the latest agreement. Among the concessions Iran made were not enriching bomb-grade uranium for 15 years, dismantling two-thirds of its centrifuges, giving up 98% of its uranium stockpile and allowing United Nations inspectors to monitor its adherence to the deal’s terms.
Former Obama national security adviser and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice appears on ABC News’ “This Week” on June 21, 2026.
ABC News
According to the text of the current agreement, the most sensitive nuclear issues are not yet agreed to on paper. Only one paragraph of the memo addresses Iran’s nuclear program — “The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons” — but on the issue of enrichment limits and dealing with the country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the text is not definitive.
“The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpile enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon … with the minimum methodology to be down blending on site under the supervision of the (International Atomic Energy Agency). The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs,” the memo reads.
As of the signing of this agreement, Rice noted, Iran “is now able to sell all of its oil and all of its oil products on the market unimpeded, and use that money to re-hold itself.”
“Second, they get access to tens of billions of dollars of frozen assets in the very near term, within the next 60 days, contingent only upon the memorandum of understanding, this flimsy two-page document being implemented. That means essentially, once they’ve opened the strait, they get all the access to their frozen assets without any constraint on how they spend it,” Rice said. “In the Obama-era deal, they could only spend those frozen assets on humanitarian things — food and medicine. Now they can use it to fund their terrorist proxies.”
Rice also criticized the provisions regarding the Strait of Hormuz, the future unfreezing of Iranians assets and the plan for the U.S. and Gulf partners “to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” as the memorandum states. U.S. officials say Iran will not be able to impose tolls in the strait, even after 60 days, that Iran will only be rewarded economically if it complies with the deal, and that the U.S. will not contribute any money to that $300 billion fund.
Karl asked Rice whether it’s better to have a deal rather than none: “Isn’t a weak peace agreement better than a resumption of a war, which I know you opposed from the start?”
“I oppose this war because it was a stupid war, and it was obvious that when you wage a stupid war that every prior president had the wisdom to avoid, that you were going to end up with either bad outcomes or worse outcomes,” Rice said. “It was obvious for decades that the only way to resolve this problem is through diplomacy. And now we’re back to diplomacy with a far weaker hand. Yes, their military has been degraded, but Iran has now figured out they can use the Strait of Hormuz to hold us and the global economy hostage anytime they want.”
Rice, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before her tenure as national security adviser, said the war overall was a “strategic blunder.”
“We have suffered enormously. The American people have suffered. We’ve lost 13 servicemen and women. We have paid over $50 billion of taxpayer money for a war we never should have waged. The American consumer is paying more than $50 billion in increased costs. Our standing in the world is weakened,” she said. “And we’ve shown that when the United States, the greatest military on the face of the planet, and the Israeli army, the Israeli military, throw the kitchen sink at Iran, they can left — be left still standing, which weakens us globally.”
While Israel and the United States started the war together, they do not appear to be ending it on the same page. On Thursday, Vance chastised Israeli officials who were publicly criticizing the agreement.
“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” he said at a White House press briefing.
Rice said she thought Vance’s statement was “extraordinary” and “I’m sure it shocked a lot of people, particularly in Israel.”
She said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to “persuade many prior presidents to engage in war with Israel against Iran.” Trump, she said, was the first to “take the bait,” but now, Rice said Israel is worse off.
“What we’ve got as a result of that war … is a strengthened Iran in terms of its geopolitical stature in the region, not militarily conventionally in the short term, but its nuclear program is fully intact. There is nothing in that agreement that requires that the nuclear material, the dust, as the president likes to call it, will be removed from Iran,” Rice said. “So, the Israelis have suffered the most because now — you know, this administration, if you take the president and the vice president’s words, has basically said to Israel, ‘Your concerns are not ours.'”
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